Mind is your Business and Body the Greatest Gadget

1. Your Mind is a Messy Circus Due to Identification

Only if you are out of the circus of your mind, you will be hundred percent free of madness.

Mind's dual nature. The mind is a dynamic entity, capable of taking you to great heights or plunging you into the depths of hell. Like a circus, it can be a highly coordinated activity (brain function) or a chaotic mess (most people's experience). This mess arises because the mind becomes deeply identified with countless things.

Identification distorts perception. Once your intellect identifies with something – your body, family, qualifications, beliefs, etc. – it gets chained. This distorts your perception of reality, permeating every aspect of your life and creating a complex mess. It's like a knife that becomes useless when the residue of what it cuts sticks to it.

Mental diarrhea. This deep identification leads to a continuous, unstoppable stream of thoughts, like "mental diarrhea." Attempts to stop it through external means like drinks or drugs only multiply the mess. The only way out is to become involved with life without getting entangled, which requires dis-identification.

2. Suffering is Manufactured in Your Own Mind

Every kind of misery that human beings are going through is manufactured in their minds.

Mind as torture device. The mind, which should be a miraculous instrument, has become a misery-manufacturing machine for most people. Unable to bear this mental torture, people invent various deviations and perversions for temporary relief, but these only worsen the mess. Your mind, meant to be a ladder to the divine, becomes a stairway to hell due to identification.

Unwillingness causes suffering. Whether your mind is a misery or a miracle depends on your willingness towards life. If you are selectively involved based on identification, you become unwilling to the full process of life. This unwillingness scales down your aliveness and makes life a suffering, like being "raped by life" instead of experiencing a "love affair."

Psychological vs. life process. Your psychological process (thoughts, emotions) has become far more important than your life process (simply being alive). This endless chatter and recycling of gathered nonsense prevents you from experiencing the immensity of being alive. The most beautiful moments are when you are not thinking, but just living.

3. Liberation Comes from Dis-identification, Not Control

Once you liberate your mind from being identified with anything, then mind is a miracle; mind is a spectacular circus, not a mess.

Mind needs liberation. People often talk about controlling the mind, but the mind doesn't need control; it needs liberation. Trying to control it is difficult because it only understands addition and multiplication – telling it not to think about something makes you think about it constantly. The desire for "no-mind" arises only because the mind has become a torture.

Morality creates identification. Imposing ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, creates strong points of identity. You identify with the "good" and have aversion to the "bad." This attraction and aversion are the basis of identification, and whatever you are averse to dominates your mind.

Involvement without entanglement. Detachment is often propagated out of fear of entanglement, but detachment avoids life. Involvement is necessary to experience life deeply. Entanglement happens not from involvement, but from discriminatory involvement rooted in identification ("This is my wife, my child"). If your involvement is indiscriminate, beyond identification, it brings absolute joy and enhances life tremendously.

4. The Body is the Greatest Gadget, a Tremendous Instrument

This body can be just a mass of flesh... or it can be made into a tremendous instrument – an instrument which can bring the Divine into your direct experience.

Beyond flesh and bone. Most people experience the body only as flesh and bone, a source of pain or pleasure. However, the yogic sciences see it as an intricately crafted system, constantly connected to the cosmos. It is the most sophisticated gadget on the planet, capable of perceiving the entire existence.

Limited utilization. Like using only 7% of a basic phone's capabilities, most humans use well below 1% of their system's potential. Instead of using the body to go beyond survival instincts, people merely raise their standards of survival (from a meal to a Mercedes). This is an unintelligent use of the human mechanism.

Instrument of perception. The body can be made into an instrument that becomes the very axis of the universe. By expanding your sensory body beyond the physical form, you can experience everything as a part of yourself. This is the essence of yoga – union, where the individual and universal become one in your experience.

5. Your Energy Body and Chakras Determine Wellbeing

If your energy body is in proper balance and full flow, disease cannot exist in you physiologically or psychologically.

Five sheaths of body. Yoga views a human as five layers: physical body (annamaya kosha), mental body (manomaya kosha), energy body (pranamaya kosha), etheric body (vignanamaya kosha), and bliss body (anandamaya kosha). The first three are physical, becoming subtler.

Pranamaya kosha is key. The energy body is fundamental; how it reverberates determines the state of the physical and mental bodies. Mastery over prana brings not just health but also mastery over external situations, making life effortless. Yogic practices primarily work on this level.

Chakras as energy junctions. The 114 chakras (junctions of nadis) are triangular energy points. Seven are major. For most, only three are active, related to basic survival and physical enjoyment. Activating more chakras reduces the sense of body. Chakras also have spiritual dimensions, allowing transformation beyond physical limitations.

6. The Five Elements are the Basis of Creation and Your Body

The five elements of earth, water, fire, air and space, are the basis of this body, the basis of this planet, and the basis of the whole creation.

Cosmic juggling act. Creation is a complex geometry, a juggling of just five ingredients: earth, water, fire, air, and space. Depending on how these elements play together, they can manifest as mud, food, human, or Divine. This apparent complexity, when understood, reveals itself as a cosmic joke.

Bhuta Shuddhi for mastery. The most basic yogic practice is Bhuta Shuddhi (cleansing the elements). Sufficient cleansing leads to Bhuta Siddhi (mastery over the elements). This transforms life from an accidental, compulsive reaction to a conscious process, making pleasantness and bliss natural.

Elemental alignment. Keeping the five elements properly organized within yourself handles everything: health, wellbeing, perception, knowing, and enlightenment. Temples were built for specific elemental sadhanas. Being in touch with the earth, like walking barefoot or mud baths, helps reorganize the system and reminds the body of its nature and mortality.

7. Yogic Practices Align Your System for Higher Perception

The whole science of yoga is to understand the geometry of your existence...

Body geometry matters. The way you hold your body affects your perception. If the geometry of your body aligns with cosmic geometry, it becomes an antenna to receive and download the whole cosmos. Rigidity or compulsion blocks this reception; ease allows it.

Asanas are not just exercise. Yogasanas are postures that lead to higher dimensions or perceptions. They are subtle processes to manipulate energy, not just physical exercises. Hata yoga balances the masculine ("Ha," sun) and feminine ("Ta," moon) energies (Ida and Pingala) within, a necessary step for scaling consciousness.

Spine as axis. The human spine (Merudanda) is referred to as the axis of the Universe because your experiential dimension is rooted there. The 72,000 nadis spring from Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna (the central, attribute-less channel). Life truly begins when energies enter Sushumna, leading to Vairagya (transparency) and inner balance undisturbed by external situations.

8. Awareness and Perception Trump Thought and Logic

If you turn inward for just one moment, everything that is worth knowing in the existence can be known.

Thinking vs. living. Most people spend 90% of their time thinking about life, not living it. Thinking is just recycling gathered nonsense and cannot be bigger than life itself. The most beautiful moments are when you are not thinking, but just living and experiencing.

Logic's limitations. Logic is useful for handling material realities, but applying it too much to life squeezes the life out. Logically, life has no meaning; experientially, it is full of reason to live. Logic divides; truth unifies. Even modern neurology suggests perception is not a direct reflection of reality but a brain-created image based on limited information.

Intelligence beyond logic. To know life in its immensity, you need something beyond thought, logic, or intellect. This is intelligence beyond logic, referred to as the Creator. If you operate only within intellect's framework, you only know the physical. Turning inward allows you to perceive the whole cosmos within.

9. True Devotion is Dissolving the Self, Not a Transaction

A devotee has no agenda of his own. His only objective is to dissolve into his object of devotion.

Devotion vs. deal. Devotion (bhakti) is the quickest way to the Ultimate, but for most people today, it's a transaction ("Give me this, save me"). This is not true devotion. True devotion means having no personal agenda, only the desire to merge or dissolve into the object of devotion.

Intellect hinders devotion. With the modern intellect's prominence, true devotion is difficult. The intellect is unwilling to bend totally unless overwhelmed by a deep experience. People may feel devout in moments of emotional upsurge, but their commitment to body and intellect prevents total surrender.

Reverence as a step. Since devotion as an ultimate vehicle is often unavailable, developing reverence for life around you is a better starting point. When the experience of life or someone's presence overwhelms you, and your mind and feelings become less important, then devotion becomes a possibility – not as a vulgar act, but as a way of life.

10. Chronic Disease Stems from Energy Imbalance

Disease and ailments happen fundamentally because somewhere your energy body is not functioning properly.

Infectious vs. chronic. Diseases fall into two categories: infectious (contracted externally, handled by medicine) and chronic (created by the body itself). Chronic ailments occur despite the body's deep longing for wellbeing, indicating a fundamental issue beyond external factors.

Mind-body connection. Psychosomatic diseases show the mind's impact; changing attitude (dropping anger, hatred) can make diseases disappear. The mind's state hampers energy function. If energy malfunctions, disease manifests, often in areas inherently weak due to inheritance or karmic tendencies.

Karma as software. Karma is like software, impressions creating tendencies (vasanas) that influence life and can manifest as disease if energy flow is impaired. External influences (people, situations, spaces) can also impair energy. Yogic kriyas can handle these impairments by reorganizing energies. Healing attempts often just remove symptoms (indicators), leaving the root problem to manifest more drastically later.

11. Transcending the Mind Transcends Karmic Bondage

If you transcend the mind, you transcend the karmic bondage also, completely.

Mind is the past. As long as you function through the mind, you are ruled by the past, as the mind is an accumulation of old data. This leads to repeating historical patterns and personal life cycles. The past exists only through the mind's activity.

Mind is karma. Mind is essentially karma – the accumulated impressions. Transcending the mind is transcending karmic bondage in one stroke. Trying to work out karmas one by one is endless, as you create new ones in the process. The key is to stop creating new stock.

Illusion of the non-existent. Karmas are non-existent past impressions, a trap of the mind. Dealing with them as reality is an illusion. Transcending the mind dissolves this illusion. The separation of "you and me," time and space, is a bondage of the mind. Dropping the mind drops these limitations; everything becomes here and now.

12. Freedom Becomes Suffering When You Are Unconscious

Human beings are not suffering their bondage, they are suffering their freedom, and that is the biggest tragedy.

Discretionary intellect. Humans suffer more than animals because of their discretionary intellect. Most human suffering is mental and self-created. You can choose to be joyful or miserable at any moment; the mind is fluid and can take any shape. Animals have fixed lives and are not confused; humans are possibilities, leading to confusion.

Freedom's paradox. Nature gave humans freedom to choose what they become, unlike other creatures whose lives are fixed. This freedom is the source of pain and struggle. It is a problem only when you are unaware.

Awareness is benediction. If you are aware, freedom becomes your benediction, allowing you to flower into a larger dimension. Meditation makes you conscious, so you don't suffer freedom but use it. The choice to make life heaven or hell is yours. As a yogi said, "I don't care what's on God's mind. I know what's on my mind. I am going to heaven and that's all."

Last updated: June 11, 2025