Journey of the Mind

By Pragyananda

The Journey of the Mind` is a collection of poems gathered into a little story describing the voyage of the author. It is an Adventuress journey into the depth of the mind. In The Journey of the Mind Pragyananda depicts, with figurative language, how one is structured within the mind; the mind that sees, perceives, destroys and recreates a world of its own perceptions. But how and why does this happen and what can be done about it?
That is the journey that he invites you on, to experience and to reflect upon with this introspective text that has its roots in the many revelations of saints and sages throughout the ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467001984

Pragyananda

The voyage of the author. Pragyananda, who prior to this journey was a musician, set out on a spiritual quest when he was just 20 years of age. He had developed an indifference towards the life he was living and thus began an exploration into the depths of his own being. At first he travelled in 1999 to the Sinai dessert where he went into seclusion. This then led him to the doorway of a spiritual master, the Tantric yogi named Swami Satyananda Saraswati. Pragyananda stayed with him for ten years in his ashram in India.

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Part I

The Mind, The Field and The Knower

Part II

The Search

Part III

Union

Part IV

Stepping up the ladder

This book is dedicated to my little brother.

May it live to inspire him as well as to a world of his kind, so the teaching of our beloved Sri Swamiji may nourish the heart and soul of all who strive to live a life enriched with a contemplative spiritual approach to life.

Introduction

I have always been amazed by this void we call the mind.

What is its substance? How do feelings and thoughts manifest in this mind? Are they a part of the mind; a quality inherent and therefore inseparable from this mind? If this mind is seated in the brain, and

thus is inseparable from this body, then how is it that it can experience things far beyond this tiny ‘prison’, as I dare call it?

It makes sense to say that the body is housing the mind which houses consciousness.

What is it that happens within this framework of the mind in relation to the world of objects? The mind cannot be limited to just this

body alone. It is so much more. The thoughts we have thought since we took our first breath are infinite in number. They are like the waves on the ocean, rising and falling. Can you count them? How can something which is subjected to both life and death contain the infinite?

How did the mind come into existence? What is its origin? How do all these notions inherent in the mind, become the mind?

We actually recognize them to be the mind, at least part of it.

I would rather say that it is something that is glued to the mind, as you will find described in the following story:

It is like the grass being covered with unseen dew,

   an invisible burden it is, I shall reveal to you.

We may not have a concrete answer to these questions, but that does not mean we cannot do a little research into the nature of the mind.

I do not want to become too intellectual on this subject, especially when we speak of something as the very root of the intellect, the Mind, which always wants to rationalize words and sayings and categorize them.

I mainly got the inspiration to write the ‘Journey of the mind’ poem during my stay at the Ashram of Swami Satyananda Saraswati. There I came across text like the ‘Mohamudgar’ poetry written by

Adi Shankaracharya, the ‘Yoga Vasishtha’ and the ‘Bhagavat Gita’ chapter 13 in which it talks about the body being the field; the mind

its knower. Having read this chapter from the Bhagavat Gita, helped me being able to analyse and better understand the mind as a separate identity.The first and last stanza of this chapter go like this:

This body is called the field. He who knows it is called the knower

of the field, by those who know of them.

Knowledge of both the field and the knower of the field is considered to be the Knowledge.

They who, by the eye of knowledge, perceive the distinction between the field and its knower and also liberation from the nature of being, unifies in the supreme.

(B.G. 13:1 & 34)

Who is this mind; what is this body in relation to the mind and how do we get to know it?

I have long thought about a way to be able to see and also separate all the many notions of the mind.

This great wide world has been providing many thinkers like Descartes—

je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore I am)—Plato and Socrates. Hence seers like Vishvamitra, Vasishtha, Buddha and many others you may, or may not have heard of. Socrates philosophy was enriched with tantric concepts and ideas.

It was said his philosophy was blasphemous; it opposed the religion and led the youth astray. The tantric concept has always provoked a very controlled set of rules laid down by the religions that have been governed by power and politics; because of its very free way of realizing and developing awareness that entirely aims for a higher state of consciousness in our every day. It does not speak of one God, one way, but it accepts—in brief—that every human being can reach the same hight of evolution by as many means as there are species here on this earth.

But it is not only the great ones who ‘once upon a time’ lived on this

earth who have been inspiring and guiding our life on earth. Look around and see what is hidden in fairytales, poetry, stories and songs. Throughout the story you will find that my source of inspiration lies in tellings like those of Hans Christian Andersen, Brother Grimm’s, old scriptures and songs from the Vedic times. The lyrics