Where are the mind intelligence and ego located?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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Where are the mind, intelligence and false ego located? Is there a Shastra reference for this? The mind, intelligence and false ego, they are subtle. And when we say they are subtle, the whole idea of physical location, it correlates with physical dimensions.
So, now if you consider the bodies made of the earth, water, fire and ether. These are five elements. And then there is mind, intelligence and ego.
Now, where is earth, water, fire situated in the body? It’s everywhere. It’s distributed. So, the subtle elements, the very fact that they are subtle means that we can’t necessarily point a specific location for them.
So, broadly speaking, we could say the soul is in the region of the heart. The soul is not in the heart, in the region of the heart. So, basically there are four prana vayus.
And the four prana vayus are like five, sorry, not four, five prana vayus. And these are like five directed vectors which pull in five different directions. And the point where the resultant of these five vectors is zero.
That is the point where the soul is situated. And as a person’s consciousness becomes more and more elevated, the soul also rises up. So, the location of the soul is in the region of the heart.
That’s where the prana vayus balance out and resultant becomes zero. So, around the soul, we could say the subtle body. And then the gross body is the second layer of covering.
So, we could say in that sense that the soul is in the region of the heart and so the mind, intelligence and ego are also in the region of the heart. But because they are subtle, the whole logic of applying a precise physical location that does not apply so much to it. And as far as specifically each of these three are concerned, the difference because it’s subtle, so again we can’t really apply our analytical categories there.
The difference between mind, intelligence and ego is more functional than structural. That means like earth and water, they are structurally different. They have different structures.
And the function is also different. But in the mind, intelligence and ego, the primary, the way we know about them is through their functionality. So, as far as I have read in Sankhya, ontologically, ontologically means in terms of nature of their existence, not much is talked about where they exist.
Generally, this whole analysis of mind, intelligence and ego is always done in functional terms. In the Bhagavad Gita also, we are talking about the characteristics of various elements. Mind, intelligence and ego are talked entirely in functional terms.
What does the mind do? What does the intelligence do? So, I think because it is subtle, so trying to apply the whole concept of a physical location and a physical composition, that may not apply to the subtle elements. We understand them more in terms of their functionality.