Does the mind have any power to change reality or does everything happen according to karma?

Have any power or does everything happen according to our karma is the body itself a result of vibrations and energy there are firstly the three levels of reality the Bhagavad Gita talks about the physical the mental and the spiritual and each level of reality has its own you could say principles or its nature and each level of reality is distinct they are interrelated so a physical problem can't be reduced to a mental problem if I have got a fracture in my body it's not that my mind and thoughts in the mind are going to cure it there is a physical rupture and it will require physical healing now the thoughts in my mind can aid or impede the healing process even after I do a fracture if I have negative thoughts then let me impede the healing process so similarly if I am physically incapacitated because of some reason that may also affect me mentally if I am used to being very active and energetic and I'm reduced to a bed or a chair that may make me depressed so the physical and the mental are at one level distinct but at another level they are very strongly related so certainly if somebody's very psychosomatic diseases do exist and stresses at the level of the mind do cause diseases at the level of the body now within our philosophy the physical and the mental are both considered as vehicles for the soul so the body-mind combination is the tool which the soul uses during a particular body or during a particular lifetime so now just as we could say at one level that whatever happens at the physical level is a result of karma sometimes we fall sick sometimes we are healthy but at another level we are also told that we need to function in a way that is regulated Ayurveda talks about taking medicines or Ayurveda talks about how to enhance health by medication by diet by lifestyle change so if all our disease and sickness is already ordained by karma then why should we have Ayurveda at all so that means that what happens to us is not just a result of past karma it's also a result of present karma if i have cold and if i take ice cream and then my cold aggravates that's not result that's not the result of past karma it's the result of my present karma so just as the body there are certain principles which generically apply to all bodies and there are certain principles principles which are specifically applied to each to one particular body and those those specifics if they're the specifics and universals if they're taken care of the body will function more healthy similarly the same we can say applies to the mind so the mind does have a power has power and if the mind is filled with positivity then that creates an energy if the mind is filled with negativity that drains energy and we can ourselves each of us experience the power of the mind so we do we definitely acknowledge the power of the mind at the same time we do recognize the limitation so reductionistic science assumes that everything is physical reality everything is following simply the laws of physics which is something which we counter by talking about various phenomena in which the mind affects the body something beyond the physical affects the physical so placebo effect is a well-documented phenomena where without medication that means without the physical mechanism there is activation at the physical level because the medicine triggers the positive thoughts in the person thinking that i'm going to be healed so if somebody goes to the extreme and says the physical alone is real then we in order to give people faith there is something beyond the physical we do talk about the power of the mind and this placebo effect is say far more well-documented and accepted as are the psychosomatic diseases then we might say something like near the experiences of past life memories so just to extend people's faith beyond the physical that there is something beyond the physical definitely we can we can and we do use examples of the power of the mind which have been accepted even by mainstream science now in self-help literature some teachers or some books over emphasize the power of the mind and they make they go to the extreme of saying the mind alone is the reality and they say the physical is irrelevant that is not true um sometimes to promote elderly people to be healthy be positive it may say age just a state of the mind if you think you are 60 years young you're 60 years younger you think you're 60 years old you're 60 years old now yes even in age we should have a positive attitude but at the same time a 60 year old body biologically is not the same as a 30 year old boy so the state of the mind does affect how we look at our age but age itself is not a state of the mind so the physical reality is also real and if we make the mental reality of the soul reality that is a problem but that doesn't mean the mind doesn't have power it does have a lot of power and within our philosophy also the idea that the mind is a tool which we need to program or reprogram uh in a positive way that is itself the process of purification the process of bhakti yoga we may not use that same terminology but changing the impressions in the mind changing the samskaras that is all for actually training the mind so today we might do some mindfulness exercises to train our mind and they may be done in a more utilitarian way for just functioning better in the world samskaras may have a more religious or transcendental stress but the principle that we can and should retrain the mind is accepted within our tradition also what we do not accept is that the mind can be supreme that the mind alone is the reality so we don't accept that the mind alone is supreme that the mental alone is the real is is the absolute reality in the physical is entirely irrelevant so the absolutism of the mind can also go in the other extreme where we may equate the mental with the spiritual and there are some some schools of thought within the self-help genre which make the mind practically into god we say that if you can conceive something if you believe something then you will achieve it well that doesn't mean that certainly by our power of positive attitude by our power of conceptualization we can it is like using our physic our psychophysical tool better in a more positive in a more optimum way but that doesn't mean that just by willpower anything and everything just by positive thinking or willpower anything and everything can be achieved positive thinking is a potent tool or affirmation whatever positive thing i'm using as a general word affirmation or any kind of mindfulness or any kind of mental exercise for training the mind that is a potent tool for better tapping our own subtle energies but it is not the mind is not god and positive thinking cannot grant us omnipotence there are some realities that just are beyond the beyond the mental so if somebody is about to die and if they just think i'm not going to die i'm not going to die that's not going to change the fact that they're going to die and some terminal diseases are terminal and death is a fact of life so at one level we do say that many of our problems can be aggravated if the mind is wild and uncontrolled and training the mind can minimize our problems no matter how well the mind is trained that doesn't mean that the world is not going to be having its distresses such as old age disease and death now with respect to the brain where does all this figure in with respect to say neuroplasticity or retraining the brain now whatever we do whether it is with this whether whenever the soul does anything at the physical level or anything that is expressed at the physical level it will have a physical component so if i need to learn public speaking then i need to organize my thoughts which will happen at the mental level but i also need to organize my speech which will happen at the level of my training my voice which is a physical component of me i may have to learn the proper pronunciation the proper speed the proper modulation so just as there is a physical component to the act of speaking although the thoughts that we enter originate in the mind and if my speech itself is harsh and grating then i may have to endeavor to soften that speech and of course how much i can do it will vary but the physical component is there for speech and similarly there is a physical component to thought and thoughts themselves are subtle but the physical mechanism that we use for expressing those thoughts or for thinking that is the brain and the way we think causes the brain connections to be formed and every time earlier scientists used to think that memories are stored in specific brain cells but then now they have found that even if sometimes a person 50 percent of their brain is lost or removed surgically as happens in hemispheric tommy still people's brains still function so earlier there's just like in a computer we have a particular area in which particular data is stored that was the computer model of the brain but that is no longer accepted because even if large parts of the brain are removed still people seem to be able to function so in fact that computer model is now called as the grandma cell model that means all the information about my grandmother is stored in one cell and if that cell gets damaged i'll forget my grandmother entirely life doesn't we don't work like that so currently the understanding is that's that our memories and especially our behaviors in terms of our patterns and our habits they're stored not in the brain cells but in the pattern of connections between the brain cells so the more a person say drinks then the more the brain becomes rewired in a particular rewired means the brain cells through the synapses get connected in a particular way by which that behavior tends to become more and more easier natural and almost unavoidable and that's why if we consciously choose to act in a different way then by that we can reprogram or rewire the brain so rewiring the brain is simply when we consciously decide to think thoughts in a particular way and then we cultivate those thoughts then as those thoughts are expressed at the physical or the neural level then they will rewire our brain so currently in say cognitive behavioral therapy um the idea is it said that sometimes the brain is cast as the as the bad guy there is something within us which is considered which acts against us so sometimes some people may call it the mind some may call the devil so sometimes it's considered in the mind sorry it's considered with the brain that means our brain because of our past actions has become wired in a particular way and because of that wiring it will prompt us to think in particular ways and if we change that wiring by conscious effort by consciously repeated behavior then the brain will also start functioning in a different way the wiring will change so in that sense the mind and the brain are very closely connected because the mind's primary functioning is thinking and the physical instrument for thinking is the brain so rewiring the brain it can also be said to be the same as retraining the mind so what samskaras do say for example if we practice meditation regularly if we do some mindfulness exercise or we just consciously cultivate some thoughts then we basically we are retraining the mind and we are rewiring the brain and by this we can significantly change the quality of our life it's not that this alone is the one solution to all problems but this can help us significantly deal with other problems and it's just that we are learning how to effectively use the tool that we have been given in this lifetime by according to our past karma so the more we learn to train our mind properly it is just like we could have ayurveda for the body and when we live in harmony the principles ayurveda or any other form of medicine whether it is allopathy or any other kind of medicine the more we take care of the physical body the more the likelihood of our physical health being better improves similarly the more we learn to train the mind the better our mental health will be and that will express itself in all aspects of our life that will also have physical expression in terms of say placebo effect like or mind body health medicine or mind related mental health that promotes physical health and with the body mind machine functioning better we will also be able to practice our spirituality in a more harmonious way in a less distressing way.