What to Do with the Mind

Erasmo Calzadilla

In a Hare Krishna inspirational pamphlet they’re passing out somewhere around here, you can read:

“… the mind, without traces of pity or compassion, drags us from one side to the other, obligating us to please even its most implausible desires, transforming it into our owner.”

And a few lines later, it continues:

“If we are able to get our mind drunk with the sweet sound of the nectareous glories of Hare, then we will have defeated it.”

Now discover something similar in the warning of Osho:

“Remain alert and don’t listen to the mind.  The mind represents the past that forever tries to control your present and your future.  It is the dead past that continues controlling the living present.  Simply be aware of this.”

In one of his top-selling books, the apprentice of sorcerer Carlitos Castaneda tells how his charismatic teacher, Don Juan, taught him how to “to stop his mind” as a path for accessing another level of reality.  This singular knowledge came from ancestral Toltecs.

On the other hand, political and commercial advertisements manage us with their techniques of persuasion.  They especially take advantage of when the “machinery” of the receiver (meaning our little minds) function at a very low-level or operate amused by stupidities.  The cinema and television leave us ready and ripe for “abduction.”

A naïve person would believe that the philosophy and science studied and practiced at the university actually revolved around thought, but in fact they serve as only cheap substitutes for this (there are many exceptions of course).

It’s better not to even talk about professional sports (including the Cuban Baseball League). Every year they break records for the number of minds they stop or slow down.

Mystics, scientists, politicians and marketing specialists seem focused on a sole function: to prevent people from thinking – and they often achieve this.

I know very decent people who, with the best aims and intentions, work arduously at stopping their own minds and those of their friends.  Some have already passed the limit of no return, or so it seems.

NOTE: Mystics say that their intentions are radically different from those of politicians and the mass media.  According to the mystics, the politicians and the media don’t stop minds; they accelerate them.  Despite the sharp differences between the two positions, both wind up with the same result: the disappearance of conditions for a critical posture in the face of “reality.”

The mind doesn’t need to be stopped, entertained or made to get drunk; instead, it needs to be improved, and the mind itself will set its own limits.

In addition to being strict, who’s the one going around trying to annihilate the mind but the mind itself.  And by the way, a genuine annulment of the mind would in turn imply the annulment of the intention to annul the mind.