What is the mind? The mind is the subtle, dense energy within your human existence. Though invisible to your eyes, it exists as a powerful force working within you every moment of your life. Unlike your physical body, which you can see and touch, the mind appears as a separate identity—an inner existence that feels as if it has its own form, its own presence.
This separate identity works in such a way that you often fail to distinguish between your real self and the mind. You begin to believe you are the mind, yet in truth, you are not. At your core, you are consciousness. Only by returning to the awareness of your original self—pure, formless awareness—you can begin to understand the true nature of the mind. Without knowing this original identity, which is beyond all physical boundaries and beyond all definitions of matter, you cannot truly understand what the mind is.
Pause for a moment and try to locate the point within you that is listening right now. Who is aware of these words? Who seeks to know what the mind is? The one listening, the one aware, is not the mind. It is consciousness. The mind cannot know itself, for the mind is a construct, a mechanism, an energetic field. Consciousness alone is the seer.
How the Mind Appears in Daily Life
To make this more practical, let us observe how the mind functions in your daily life. The mind reveals itself to you primarily in two ways:
- As a chain of thoughts.
- As unconscious patterns of your neural pathways.
The first is easy to recognize. Thoughts keep arising in you, one after another, like a movie playing endlessly on a screen. From the moment you wake up in the morning until you fall asleep at night, you live in this movie of thoughts. They may relate to your daily activities, past memories, future plans, or worries. They never stop coming. This unbroken stream is the primary form in which you experience the mind.
The second form is subtler. The mind also works as unconscious patterns wired into your nervous system. You brush your teeth, you take a shower, you prepare food, you travel to work or school, and you perform countless tasks without consciously choosing them. These routines run like automatic programs, as if you are a robot conditioned to act in fixed ways. This too is the work of the mind.
The Complex Nature of Mind
Mind is a very complex phenomenon. It is not merely thoughts. It is energetic volatility itself, consisting of emotions, desires, tendencies, dreams, and fantasies. It is the restless mirror through which you interpret life.
The nature of the mind can be broken into certain faculties:
- The faculty of comparison.
- The faculty of judgment.
- The faculty of doubt.
- The faculty of inquiry.
- The faculty of confusion.
Each of these keeps you bound to mental clutter.
The Faculty of Comparison
The mind compares everything. It never looks at things directly but always through a relative scale. For example, if you meet an educated person, your mind immediately calculates: Is this person more educated than me, or less? This comparison produces emotions—either inferiority, superiority, or stupidity. In this way, the mind manufactures emotional disturbances simply by comparing.
The Faculty of Judgment
When someone shares information with you, or when you share with them, the mind instantly judges. It judges based on memory, on conditioning, on already stored impressions. If someone says, “I earn one lakh rupees per month,” the mind reacts not with pure awareness but with a judgment born of conditioning: This person deserves it, or does not deserve it. Judgment becomes automatic, and each individual mind judges differently, according to its design.
The Faculty of Doubt
Doubt is another natural quality of the mind. The mind refuses to believe what does not fit into its limited storage of knowledge. If someone tells you there are sacred places on Earth filled with high pranic energy, the mind doubts. Not because it is true or false, but because the mind itself is limited. What it cannot verify through its narrow store of information, it rejects.
The Faculty of Inquiry
Unlike doubt, inquiry is not negative. The mind asks questions; it inquires about everything. There is nothing wrong in questioning. In fact, inquiry can lead you closer to truth, provided it is not drowned in confusion. Through inquiry, you can satisfy your quest for understanding.
The Faculty of Confusion
Confusion arises because the mind is inherently ignorant. Imagine the mind like a chip into which only limited data has been entered. It processes only that data and repeats it endlessly. Every experience you have in life gets stored in your subconscious memory. The mind keeps repeating these impressions until you intervene from your consciousness, until you make an effort to dissolve or transform those patterns.
Individual Mind and Collective Mind
The mind operates on two levels: the individual and the collective.
The individual mind is made of your personal desires, tendencies, and beliefs. These are conditioned from your birth and are carried into your present life. Much of it feels inbuilt, but it can be observed and mastered.
The collective mind is the accumulation of conditioning inherited from your family, parents, relatives, society, and the larger world. It is the shared field of identity that molds you unconsciously. For instance, education, while valuable, often strengthens the intellect to the point of becoming a hindrance. Too much knowledge, too much accumulation of information, can obstruct the natural flow of life. You become trapped in intellect rather than living spontaneously from your life force.
The Volcanic Nature of the Mind
The mind is like a volcano. It erupts continuously, spewing its lava of thoughts, emotions, and judgments. This eruption destroys the harmony of your energetic existence. Your being consists of three dimensions:
- Body, the gross physical form.
- Spirit, the pure consciousness, ever-present awareness.
- Mind, the volatile energetic reality in between.
The body is stable. Consciousness is eternal. But the mind is volatile and unconscious, tearing apart the integration between body and spirit.
The Art of Mastering the Mind
To master the mind is an art. It begins with knowing who you are in your existential reality. When you recognize that you are not the mind but the consciousness observing the mind, you start regaining your power.
Living from this awareness allows you to operate in the world as a more integrated human being. You begin to see clearly how the mind creates problems—reducing efficiency, generating confusion, and binding you to suffering. By becoming aware, you grow, improve, and step into greater freedom.
Freedom is not the absence of the mind but mastery over it. When you can watch the mind without being consumed by it, you become powerful. You become free.
The Culprit Behind All Problems
Behind every problem in your life lies the mind. Whether it is conflict in relationships, struggles in career, feelings of worthlessness, or endless dissatisfaction, the culprit is always the same: the mind and its patterns. Recognizing this truth is the beginning of liberation.
The path forward is to bring awareness into the unconscious, to dissolve the mind’s hold over you, and to return to the natural state of consciousness. This requires effort, observation, and often guidance. With the right techniques, with sincere inquiry, you can dissolve the mental clutter and discover happiness that does not depend on external objects.
The mind is powerful, complex, and often destructive, but it is not you. You are the seer. You are the consciousness beyond it. To free yourself from the mind is to return to your true nature—ever-present, luminous, and whole.
