Complete Man

This post is a continuation from my previous post here

We have seen how the mind is made up of two distinct (from the personal viewpoint) compartments. First we have to understand that the mind itself was not created by the person but by the world.
The genetic code was a big contributing factor as also the time of conception and the state of mind
of the Parents during that time. Then, after birth the environment started to mould the raw material.
Many a slights and mishaps are forgotten by the conscious, but the sub-conscious is having a perfect record of it. Whenever a similar slight or mishap occurs again our reaction to it is always tinged by the memory Submerged in the Sub-conscious long forgotten by us. Then we wonder ‘why did I react like that?’

'The Complete Man' is the one who is aware of both his conscious as well as sub-conscious functioning (Of course a complete Woman Also).
In our scripture 'The complete Man' is personified in two distinct forms.
One form is of Ravana (the King of Lanka in the epic Ramayana) - He is shown as having ten heads (fully conscious personality).
The other is Lord Ganesh (Son of Parvati and Shiva). He has an elephants head. Ten human heads equals to one Elephant head.

Both these forms are complete but, with a difference.

Can you find out?

Mind the content of consciousness.

The first thing that confronts a Spiritual aspirant on the path is his own mind.

So it is very important to understand what this mind is.

We know the mind to be a space somewhere inside our skull which is always buzzing with thoughts. When we try to come to grip with it we are bewildered by the complexities of this most intimate functioning and we thought it was only a mind- My mind at that. one on which I have total control, and we soon realize we were mistaken.

So it bides us well if we could come to an understanding of the "MIND".

Nisargadutt Maharaja terms mind as the content of consciousness (Pragnya).

Consciousness has many levels or layers. We will here deal with only two levels -

Normal conscious (that which a person is aware of)

Sub-conscious (that which the person is not normally aware)

The sub conscious is said to be more powerful in that it is ninety percent of our mental faculty.

the conscious is only ten percent.

This can be demonstrated by ice in a container of water.




(This is not a good image of the phenomenon of ice floating on water but the only good one i could find on the web)

The ice and water are both made of the same stuff but ice being less dense floats on water.

The Part of ice which sticks out of water is one-tenth the total volume of the ice and the rest nine-tenth is submerged below water.

This is very much like our mind. The part that peeks above water is the conscious, the submerged part is the sub-conscious and the water is of course the world mind. Our mind is derived or made up from the world mind only but because of our denseness (here we differ from ice) we feel we are different from the world mind.

One more thing that is noticed (not iced?) is that while the so called conscious part is not at all in touch with the world mind. Where as the sub-conscious is surrounded and in touch with the world mind from all sides.

cont.........