The Nature of the Mind

We met in january at Amit & Archana's place to discuss a very interesting topic - what is the nature of the mind? I spoke about it from the point of view of Indian traditional schools like Sankhya, Mimamsa and Nyaya. My main aim was to explain how 'experience' travels from the outer world into the inner world of our experiences, feeling and memory.

First of all, it would be interesting to note that according to almost all the schools of philosophies in India, the focus is on the inner world of the individual and not the external world of 'objects' because what is controllable is this inner world.

As experience travels from the outer world of objects into the inner world of the individual through the senses. The first stop after the senses is Manas. If we strip the other mental instruments such as buddhi, Ahamkara and Chitta, the job of manas is to focus attention so that individual's consciousness is connected to the external world of senses or internal world of Memory. Manas makes plans (sankalpa) and thinks of different ways (vikalpa) to run towards or away from the experience. It is like the rat running on the wheel.

The next internal instrument after manas is Buddhi. The job of buddhi is get the experience from manas and Judge it. The judgement may be 'like' in which case buddhi forces the manas to focus the manas on the stimulus further. If the judgement is 'dislike' or 'ignore', manas if forced to look for more stimulating experience. The buddi also is coupled with Chitta (memory store) to identify, classify the experience.

When the experience thus classified moves up to the level of Ahamakara, it is used to 'define' the individual's properties. This needs some explantion - We as individuals have built a self description of ourselves based on our experiences and our reactions to them. These may be of the form - " I am a good worker", " i cant lead but can follow" etc. These stereotypes of ourselves are lodged within to form a platform from which we react. This is false self because such 'self' judgements are only belief's which changes with positive or negative experiences.

Finally, the experience that is thus judged and classified get lodged in the Chitta (memory store) as samskaras (memories of experiences). These samskaras are the most powerful influences of individual's journey of life. It is these samskaras that teach the buddhi how to classify experiences, how to react to stimulus. That is the reason why in our tradition Vidya (education) is held as the most sacred since that is the way good samskaras are created.