Essential components

Aspect of intellect and mind

Definitely a human being is the cleverest living being among animals. The reason for it is the following: the more a human being develops his/her mind the less he/she considers itself as a body, and the more control on their bodies they get.

On a subconscious level, we still consider ourselves as a body. You easily feel it, for instance, when you get ill. Even if by your mind you perfectly understand that you are not your body, you forget this statement completely as soon as feel intense pain. But when your body is healthy, you have a chance to pull out a piece of your Energy and Consciousness from your gross body to your subtle body. As soon as it happens you aware yourself as “I’m a woman” or “I’m a man”. You realize that you have character and qualities. From that very moment we begin to live in the past or in the future, while a human being on the level of gross body lives in the present all the time. A motto “Live Here and Now” comes from our previous wild lives: “I have food, a cave and sex – it is enough for happiness.” There were no rhetorical and philosophical questions like “to be or not to be” or “what is the meaning of life”. There were no doubts and hesitations.

Gross body and subtle body

Evolution has made us to leave the level of the gross body and to move to the level of the subtle body. And we stuck at that level. Yoga says, “Tamas always is followed by pain”. It means: stimuli come to our life to make us to move forward. These stimuli sharpen our mind as a grindstone hones a knife.

At the same time our mind is a part of the subtle body. Our subtle body is soaked by Energy and Consciousness, which our Highest Self gives us. We identify ourselves as Energy and Consciousness, so our mind also is soaked by Energy and Consciousness – it makes us a slave of our illusions. We begin consider ourselves as our mind. And we like it. Let’s try to read philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment like Voltaire, Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert and many others. Their writings are the real hymn to the human mind! In contrast with the Middle Ages it sounds great and bright. A saying “There is no other God but our mind” was created at the Age of Enlightenment.

Our mind and our physical body have the same structure. The only difference is the material. The substance of mind is not from the physical world. And if we identify ourselves with our mind, it is just a question of time, when we get a depression, sufferings and dissatisfaction with life. You can easily observe it around you or maybe you yourself feel it from time to time.

Being happy

We are supposed to live happily, because we meet all our needs, at least our basic needs as food, shelter and safety. The paradox - the more people’s needs are met, the more dissatisfaction with life people feel. Why so?

It is exactly because we identify ourselves with our mind. Our lifestyle and desires are horning our mind more and more. We are studying for getting a better job, learning how to communicate in the best possible way to get respect in a society and do many other things, which make our mind sharper and subtler.

In a while your mind becomes so bright that if you need a million of dollars, you shortly find a way to get it. Or, for instance, you want to win the Nobel prize, so you would become a scientist and make a scientific discovery. So your mind is bright, and you are supposed to be happy about it, BUT… The sharper mind you have, the more you feel pessimism, the more you realize - it is just a fine line between life and death. You realize - there are so many coincidences that could lead you to the death. It is awareness of the fear of death.

Aspect of death

Undeveloped brain doesn’t think about death. An ancient man if he had escaped from a tiger, he was happy. He didn’t think about the future, he didn’t care about tomorrow. Nowadays it is completely different. Imagine, once on your way home you escaped from a maniac. Did you feel happy about it? Yes! But afterwards it you realized that you have to walk the same path day after day, and that frenetic is still somewhere there. How do you feel about it? Could you live happily? Could you sleep well? I guess the thought about that crazy man kills you faster than the crazy guy. This thought turns into the mechanism of self-destruction.

It is pretty hard to live only using your mind. Because your mind tells you that the life by itself is a very risky thing, and you should be on the alert all the time. The more you sharp your mind, the more possibilities of accidental death it shows to you. That’s why a lot of rich and clever people are paranoid about safety, cleanliness and illness. They try to prevent every chance of dying – hire bodyguards, wash hands hundred times a day, searching for new ways of extending life. They are scared to die every second of their lives. They turn their life into a nightmare. And this nightmare is nothing more than the creation of their mind. Actually almost all civilized people nowadays are more or less close to this nightmare. Yoga can help us to manage with it.

Breakthrough

Yoga in general, and Kriya Yoga in particular, says we need to make a big breakthrough, we must stop identifying ourselves with our mind. We should get an ability to drag our Energy and Consciousness out of the mind.

First, we need to develop our mind, because it helps us to move forward. Developed mind has already helped us to defeat animals inside us, cured a lot of diseases, and invented a lot of useful gadgets. But at the same time it has brought us to the awareness that the world around us is a very dangerous place and if we want to survive here, we have to fight all the time.

Until we allow our developed mind control us, we feel scared. For instance, you are driving a car and hear you inner voice: “Do you remember how many people die every day in car accidents? You can be the next… may be today is your last day…” You mind can easily spoil your life. As the Bible said: “Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.” But Yoga says about it: “These fears are nothing but just a stage of evolution.” The vast majority of your problems are programmed inside you. They are not your personal problems. Having these problems is the result of having a human body, the result of evolution. You follow your way: from an animal to a human being, from a human being to Enlightenment. You have to sharpen your mind, because humans can’t survive and move forward without it.