Is the mind or a source of desires or just a channel of the soul’s desires?
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Transcript
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yes so the question is what is the relationship between the soul’s desires and the mind is the mind simply a root for the soul’s desires or is the mind also the source of desire yes it is both in the sense that the mind is a subtle reality a subtle thing and no one metaphor can accurately reflect what the mind is but I’ll start I’ll use two metaphors here first is say the metaphor of a bulb of a bulb a bulb has white light but if there is a red film on it then the light that will come out of it will be red so this is a standard metaphor that we use the soul originally has pure desires the pure selfless love is there but because of the conditioning of it in nature that love becomes selfish desires so this is the standard way the pure desire of the soul gets distorted that is true but there are gradations within those desires also especially when we are sadhakas trying to practice bhakti so as I said there are three kinds of desires there are soul spiritual desires which are also expressed to some extent some days you may just feel very inspired to chant a lot just absorb avasana shastra go to temple, go to pilgrimages these are very good desires those are the soul spiritual desires that means those desires which are connected directly with the core activities of bhakti the desires for those activities are reflective of the soul’s pure desires but along with that there are the soul so when this example of a film is given that simply implies as if the light is coming only from the bulb and the film is simply a distorter for that but that is not just the complete truth about the mind because I said the mind is like a program and the program means it’s like you say if I am working on a computer at that time I am using the computer for a particular purpose so the way the computer should work it should be driven by my desires but along with that depending on what kind of programs there are on the computer the computer will function in a particular way so if there are certain defaults put in if I have made a particular site as my homepage then even without my exercising any command the browser will automatically go to that homepage so there is certain default programming that is there which causes certain functioning in the computer that I don’t consciously initiate now that default functioning may be desirable it may be undesirable but there is default functioning that is there so like that within the mind there is a lot of default functioning that happens so now some of the default functioning is undesirable like I said that about lust, anger, greed whatever happens that is undesirable that needs to be countered but there is some default functioning which corresponds with our sabha so that may not be the soul say for example a person who is of a brahminical nature here may not necessarily be a brahmana in the spiritual world because they may have a different swarupa so even when certain swabhava is used in bhakti that did not necessarily reflect the original swarupa of the soul but that doesn’t matter to us right now what matters is that we stay engaged in the practice of bhakti so if we can, if we find that there are certain default functions of the soul with default programs of the mind which can be developed in bhakti which can help us in the practice of bhakti then we should certainly do that so yes the mind is a channel for desires the mind is the channel for the soul’s desires but along with that mind is also the source of its own desires now these desires when they come they are they are subtle proposals to us it’s like say if I open a browser it by default goes and opens a particular site which I had earlier chosen as my home page now I may not even remember that I have chosen this as my home page it just goes there so only when I go back into the settings and I find out ok there is no setting I need to change it so like that there are certain default patterns which are there so even the mind is the source of it yes it is the source but still it is we who approve it although that approval may not be conscious so in the ultimate sense the mind is unconscious but although it is unconscious it is not exactly like dead matter it is a software which also does functioning based on its programs so we need to select those programs which are doctorable in bhakti and use them and other programs we need to counter them does that answer your question? thank you very much so if there are any other questions