In this article, Hardik demystifies the different parts of the mind, and how each part of mind functions.
Physics Comes with Boundary
As Science describes, Everything that exist as ‘Physics’ has definite boundary.
- A solid thing has more atoms, and have a very clear boundary.
- A liquid thing has distributed atoms, and have lesser boundary than a solid thing.
- A gas thing has fewer atoms than liquid, and have limited boundary than a liquid thing.
- And a plasma thing is an ionized gas, and for lack of words – science defines it has lesser boundary than gas, like ‘the sun’.
Our physical body is solid, Mind is liquid, Energy is gas, and Sun/super sun is plasma nature.
The physical-body has a very clear boundary that humans can touch, so it’s easily identifiable.
For Mind-body, thought is an output in which humans can be sensitive to know that it has a boundary and what limited thought means.
Energy-body is also somewhat in human sensation when energy goes up or down humans can experience. In Yoga we were always knowing it, and now there are scientific ways to get a picture of it as well.
Parts of Mind
In ancient Yogic science, Mind has defined 16 parts, but for simplicity here we’d talk 4 generic parts here.
Buddhi / Intellect
The first layer is called as Intellect, which in Indian tradition is named as Buddhi.
This part of the mind helps us to react quickly and is a primary survival technique. When the mind requires to respond very quickly to situations, this part of the brain helps to turn around faster. That’s it’s strength. However, unfortunately, many people use it in decision making nowadays without thinking deeper, as this a quicker and easy way to respond.
Ahankara / Identity
Many people mislead Ahankara with Ego, this is Identity. People get identified by their body, name, family, social structure, race, work area, and so on. All these are a very good survival technique again but comes as a limitation. For example, if you are an IT engineer, it would be difficult for you to open a food business. It is like, you chose one role, and stuck on that role. Humans choose this, as repeating what we have done, gives a great amount of comfort. But, Eventually, when it blocks the growth of a human, he tries to break his existing identity to shatter the limitations.
Manas / Memory
This portion of the memory is used to store information. The knowledge that a person learns, the person of the experience gets through a lifetime, and the influence that person gets from outside gets stored in Manas as logic gates.
Then, when Intellect wants to make a decision, it accesses the memory to check previous experiences and knowledge and makes a logical decision. It is again a great tool to do ‘repeated’ things, but it is simply limited by memory stored in mind and body(DNAs). Relying too much on it, makes you better at ‘repeated’ things, but can limit the dynamism skills that human has.
People say, I ‘Learn’ and grow based on ‘Experiences’. What it simply means is, they are seeking a linear growth. You get exponential growth, only when you cross this layer and be adaptive to dynamic situations. That’s where you have seen, college dropout people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mukesh Ambani who do not get influenced by memory can make exponential growth a caring great sense of dynamism.
Memory makes people ‘judgemental’. In India, every function that we celebrate signifies to burn this memory region every certain interval. Not carrying past memory gives you a little bit of discomfort, but your intelligence doesn’t go anywhere when your memory goes so you function with great intelligence in newer areas.
Chiita / Intelligence
Once you cross this layer of Mind, you know ‘everything’ that can be possibly knowing around using Mind. You would notice your sense of dynamism would increase in dramatic ways.
We have google and Artificial intelligence to take care of memory and information part. Using it as a tool and touching ‘Chitta’ help dynamically apply it makes human intelligent way to function.
It is my wish and blessings, that you understand the strength and limitations of these pieces of the mind, and touch the Intelligence. That’s ‘Grace’.
Love and Grace,
