Sameep Dawar retweetledi
THREE WAYS TO NAVIGATE LIFE- Part 1/2
What do the subconscious mind, intelligence and consciousness have in common? They all can control your actions , decisions, emotions and inaction.
Subconscious mind is knows as manas, intelligence as buddhi and consciousness is called chitta.
In tamil siddha tradition they are called mel manam, nadu manam and adi manam respectively. Which means the subconscious is the surface mind, intelligence is the middle mind and consciousness is the deep mind.
This is opposite to western psychology which considers subconscous as the deeper mind and conscious mind as the surface mind.
Subconscious mind or manas is said to have two main motivations Raga and Dwesha. Raga can be translated as craving or clinging and Dwesha can be translated as hate or repulsion. Both are born of avidya or ignorance which means not knowing the full picture.
When the manas is taken seriously and given energy we have a series of negative emotions such as anger, jealousy, hatred, celebrating other people's losses, putting others down, dehumanising others, cruelty, fear of others and even dear of death. It also leads to victimhood, self-hate, loss of confidence, grief, stress, depression, dejection, nihilism, athiesm and constant unhappiness. It results in a fragile self esteem which leads to narscissism and self seeking.
Those that spend decades under the influence of the tendencies of manas lose their peace, health and wealth. Even if their punya or good karma is high, the manas manages to waste it all and get covered in sins and curses, paap and shaap. Such a person loses faith in God and even though they may visit temples religiously they are just gambling. To them life seems unclear and they have forgotten how to be happy.
Buddhi is more powerful than manas and it has the capacity to hope and be secure based on evidence and inferences. Taking the buddhi seriously is better than taking the manas seriously, buddhi can identify friends and foes and it also leads to self control, discipline, wisdom, care, cheerfulness, clarity, optimism, learning, accountability, faith, good self esteem and therefore ability to know right from wrong and correct oneself when one makes mistakes.
Buddhi also leads to invention, innovation, creativity, art, science, wealth and health, however buddhi has one flaw that defeats it, it can generate information from small samples of data and to be efficient this happens very often. Many times it is right but sometimes it is totally wrong and leads you into trouble.
Buddhi can hear about poisonous mushrooms and make a conclusion that all mushrooms are dangerous. It can see one person be rescued from drowning and decide not to learn swimming at all. So sometimes buddhi can't be relied on.
Science is bult on buddhi and medical science often makes conclusions about medicines and procedures based on averaging the results from lab studies. Governments are elected with buddhi even if a part of the mandate is not theirs, so there's always a part of the population unhappy with the government waiting to bring it down. Astrologers use their buddhi to match a few factors in horoscopes and advise people to get married who may not be actually matched.
Buddhi is far better than manas for running your life, however it has its faults.
Continued in part 2
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