The Destiny of Man-9.

Have you ever asked yourself in all your life, sitting quietly, turning away from all your occupations and preoccupations, have you ever asked, becoming silent, becoming introspective and serious :-

 "From where have I come to this earth-plane?"—

I am intelligent enough to know that my father and mother fashioned my physical body upon the pattern of their own species, even as every father and mother, whether a bird, reptile, beast or insect, also fashion a biological gross body upon the pattern of their own species.

This is within their genes, within their biological make-up.

They are capable of manufacturing only a prototype of their own species.

Every unit of the biological world, every plant, every flower, every fruit tree, has this capacity of duplicating, reproducing, multiplying and bringing about a prototype of their own.

So upon the physical, material level the body has been fashioned.


But what is that within you which says "I am"?

You are not merely existence, you are conscious existence, distinct from the existence of a piece of metal or stone or mountain.

You are existence qualified by self-awareness which makes you assert :-

"Yes, I exist." What is this principle?

It is not a biological principle.

Your father and mother did not give you this principle.

They gave you the means through which this consciousness can express itself and can make itself felt by other such units of consciousness.

And that means is the human brain and the central nervous system.

The brain and the central nervous system are not the mind.

The mind is something beyond, it is a different tattwa, a different principle altogether.

If a person with the most perfectly fashioned brain and nervous system—perfect according to medical tests, scanning and X-ray—is struck with grief, overcome by anxiety, he suddenly becomes unhinged and is incapable of making use of that perfectly fashioned brain and nervous system.

The mind therefore is not a part of this biological unit brought about by our parents, which is only a medium, a channel for something higher to operate.

What the mind is, what the origin and the seat of its movements are, how thought comes into being, how a desire comes into being, this has been the special field of study of the great scientists of the mind, the yogis of the ancient East.

They have made a tremendous contribution through their science of the mind called Raja Yoga and Vedanta.

SRI SWAMI CHIDANANDA
To be continued .........