'Thou shalt not let their senses make a playground of thy mind'
Anger, lust, pride, jealousy and greed all act like sensations on the mind, often pushing our thoughts to negativity. When one is angry, one tries to justify his anger with all sorts of explanations and justifications. When one has lust, one thinks that just as one satisfies the hungry stomach, its ok to satisfy the desirous body. When we are proud, we tend to run other people down, get an unrealistic image of ourselves and when we are jealous, once again we tend to nurture feelings of hatred and anger towards another. Greed makes us want what is not ours, forcing us to feel unhappy and ungrateful for what we already have. In fact all these thoughts and their accompanying sensations run amok in our mind, taking complete control of our rationality, so much so that we become temporarily blind to the truth or reality of things.
To get a grip over oneself, one has keep watch out for how these sensations creep in stealthily robbing us of our sanity and our sense of compassion for all, in fact stealing our very humanity from us.
This aspect of control is called will and one has to constantly use it to keep the mind out of muck. The state of mental harmony and quiet rationality is the highest mental state one can aim for through our days and nights.
These mental states affect not only the mind but cause diseases in the body as well. Its very important to control, clarify and purify one's mind of such instability.
Daily awareness and meditating over the whys of this and replacing the negative emotions with positive rational ones, will help us grow healthy both in mind and body.
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'Live in that MASTER as its ray in thee. Live in thy fellows as they live in it'
To be aware that the divine is not a force out there but actually in us or is us, is by itself a difficult concept to live by and accept. It takes a lot of determination and awareness to dis-associate oneslf from the personality we so pain-stakingly create through childhood and adulthood and seek something much much higher and greater that us. To also be aware that that ray is in each and every being around, makes one humble immediately.
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Before thou standest on the threshold of the path; before thou crossest the foremost gate, thou has to merge the two into the one and sacrifice the personal to Self impersonal, and thus destroy the "path" between the two-Antaskarana.
This Antaskarana is the communication path between the lower manas or the personality (the temporary reincarnating entity) and the higher manas or the monad(the permanent reincarnating entity). At death it is destroyed as a path and its remains to survive in the form of kamarupa or the 'shell'. This is an important piece of information and its good that this matter is clarified here. I had heard so many other definitions like the word 'conscience' used as an explanation for antaskarana. But that it is the lower mind, is a more rational explanation. And that it is also the only way to communicate with our higher selves our reincarnating ego/monad/soul. Protecting this communicating corridor is very important for its our only link to our higher selves.
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'If thou would'st not be slain by them, then must thou harmless make thy own creations, the children of thy thoughts, unseen, impalpable, that swarm round humankind, the progeny and heirs to man and his terrestrial spoils.'
Our thoughts are real creations which we cloud the mental space of the world influencing others.
Its important to control and let thoughts that help not harm be sent out. This is of utmost importance. Though this is mentioned as the fourth portal- the first three being Dana or charity, Shila or courage in the face of adversities due to karma, and Kshanthi, patience, the fourth portal is Viraga or detachment to both pain and pleasure.
