Do animals have mind – how do they control it?
Hare Krishna. Question from Ujwal Mahajan. Is mind present in the animals? If so, then how do they control it? Because the mind is forwarded to the next birth.
Answer? Yes. Mind is definitely present in the animals also. Now, the word mind may be used in different senses by different people.
Today, often people use the mind to refer to the higher intellectual capacity and if that is the sense, then the mind is not present in the animals. They don't have the higher intellectual capacity. But the Bhagavata explains the mind to be the mechanism that interfaces between the soul and the body.
So, the soul's consciousness comes through the subtle body which comprises of the mind and other things also and then it comes to the body and gets rooted throughout the body. So, the animals do have a mind because the mind is a part of the essential mechanism needed for the soul to be situated in any body and to interface with the body. So, in 15.9 Krishna says śrutraṁ cakṣuṁ sphaṛṣaṇam ca rasanaṁ grāṇam eva ca adhiṣṭhāya manaścāyaṁ viśayānupasevate that actually inputs from the various senses come to the mind.
So, the mind is the integrating sensor of the inputs from the various senses. So, in that sense because the animals have senses and the animals' senses or sensory input needs to be integrated for the soul to be able to process. So, that is where the function of the mind comes in.
Now, the animals don't really control the mind in the sense that animals' free will is largely covered over. So, they are governed by their biological and psychological impulses. So, that means when hunger strikes, the animal will eat.
When the breeding season comes, the animal will breed. When the bodily exhaustion comes up, the animal will sleep. And the animal doesn't discriminate.
So, in that sense, animals cannot practice voluntary self-control for some higher purpose. So, they, for example, a cat on seeing a rat can't think today is Ekadashi. So, the cat will simply pounce on the rat if it is hungry and then it will devour it.
So, in our human form actually, we need to control the mind because we need to pursue the higher values of life. If we just let ourselves be governed by our impulses, then we ruin life's potential not only spiritually but even long-term materially. So, we humans have been given an intelligence.
Now, by intelligence, if we refer to intelligence as the faculty for perceiving higher spiritual truths, then that faculty is not present in animals. But of course, the subtle body contains mind, intelligence and false ego. So, the intelligence in that sense is present even in animals but their intelligence doesn't have the capacity for higher spiritual inquiry.
The soul's consciousness is too covered by that body and that's why they cannot perceive it. So, now the animals, they are simply products of, largely products of their impulses and their impulses make them function and they don't have the capacity to resist their impulses. So, in that sense, they don't, they can't and they don't need to control the mind.
In our case, we need to control the mind because we can pursue longer longer term goals and even when animals seem to do something long term, for example, they may build a nest for a future season or they may build a nest for their for their offsprings. This, they are doing largely by instinct whereas we humans, when we do it, because we have a higher faculty, we not only do it, we think of constantly improving things. You know, a cow will eat grass generation after generation, the cow will not think how can I make the taste of the grass better.
But we human beings try to do that. Why? Because we have a tendency to seek greater happiness than what the body naturally offers us, what bodily activity naturally offers us. We seek that higher happiness because the soul's consciousness is more awakened and the soul can perceive eternal happiness.
So, now, but to pursue, to attain eternal happiness, the soul has to rise to the spiritual level. But when the soul does not rise to the spiritual level, then the soul tries to get higher happiness at the material level and often the attempt to get more happiness at the material level than is naturally available misfires. That's why animals generally don't overeat and get over it to the extent of getting severe indigestive problems.
But we seek more pleasure through eating than what is naturally available. And that's how we get severe digestive problems ranging from mild obesity to chronic and morbid obesity and other kinds of diseases also. So, we do need to control the mind.
The animals, they don't need to control the mind. They simply act for eating, sleeping, mating, defending. And that samskara, the mind with those default impulses for eating, sleeping, mating, defending gets forwarded to the next body.
When the next body is human body, then at that time, we have the intelligence and if we get associated with demons and learn from scripture, then we can learn to control the mind. Thank you.