Mind Control ... By Swami Vivekananda

I made these notes almost 25 years ago in 1993. These are possibly the most sophisticated concepts that I have ever come across in the area of Controlling the Mind.

From Point 41 Onwards, Vivekananda gets really serious, but to appreciate what he is saying , you may have to read from the beginning. Point 47 is especially significant.

All the best. I hope everyone who reads this really benefits from Swamiji's ideas.

So here is what Vivekananda Says ...

1.  Abhyasa and Vairagya are the secrets as told by Shri. Krishna

2.  Our will to control the mind can never be strong until and unless we have deliberately and irrevocably renounced pleasure as one of the main pursuits of life. The strength of the mind will be proportional to the degree to which this is achieved. The ultimate aim should be spiritual bliss.

3.  We have to conquer our lower nature

4.  The highest objective of life is spiritual illumination. Nothing in life is as important as controlling the mind.

5.  Passions cannot be eradicated but they can be educated

6.  Bliss exists not in the body or in the mind but in the Spirit. Man must learn that bliss is different from pleasure and pain and that to attain it he must control his mind … by giving his pleasure motive a higher direction.

7.  The mind operates at three levels :

i. Subconscious

ii. Conscious

iii. Super Conscious

8.  Through the practice and the development of “ One Pointedness “ ( one goal ), the mind reaches its concentrated state where super consciousness is attained.

9.  If we have the feeling of guilt, we shall not be able to control the mind. Therefore we must erase all guilt from within us. To repent for all sins committed and sincerely ask for god’s help for strength of will, so that these sins will not be repeated. That is all that is needed to be free from guilt.

10.  To control the mind, two things are needed :

i. A very strong will

ii. Faith in oneself … One has to rise alone oneself by oneself

11. All our difficulties are created by our own minds.

12. I am the outcome of my own deeds and whatever be my deeds, good or bad, I shall be heir to them. By contemplating on this the evil propensities of thought, word and deed are curbed or at least subdued.

13. One must cultivate two sets of inner disciplines, one as a permanent routine, including certain moral values and the other for use in emergencies.

14. What is needed is a system of discipline for controlling the mind which will also obliterate its impurities.

15. The impurities of the mind are urges, impulses and emotions like envy, hatred, anger, fear, jealousy, lust, greed, conceit, temptation etc , which are born of our lower nature.

16. For getting rid of these impurities we must change the constitution of our minds so that Sattva predominates over Rajas and Tamas. It is true that Sattva has to be transcended ultimately but first it must predominate.

17. Pure food leads to a pure mind and to good memory. Food here refers to anything that is taken in through the senses.

18. A man behaves according to his nature, be it Sattva, Rajas or Tamas & the factor among these that predominates determines his nature. Shri Krishna has said “ Even a wise man acts in accordance with his own nature : beings follow nature : what can restraint do ?

The implication of this statement of Shri Krishna is that man must change his nature. It is a statement with very DEEP meaning and in it lies the secret of mind control.

19.  The gunas Sattva, Rajas & Tamas belong to the intellect and not to the self. Through Sattva he should subdue the other two and sattva itself later on. Through developed Sattva a man attains that form of spirituality which consists of devotion to me.

20. Sages praise Sattva, they despise Tamas and they ignore Rajas.

21. Early morning is to be preferred for meditation in preference to hours during which we are likely to get distracted or get dulled.

22. Obligatory and unselfish acts alone must be done

23. Mantras such as OM are preferred, not those bringing prosperity or causing harm to others. Purification of the mind should be the main aim of such meditation.

24. One must first concentrate on changing the gunas and then go forward for mind control. However these two cannot be performed in a mutually exclusive manner and must be done simultaneously.

25. Sattva binds one too in the sense that it creates an attachment to happiness and to knowledge. It does however show the path beyond but it is itself very far from Brahman

26. According to Shri Krishna one goes beyond the gunas “ by serving me with unswerving devotion, he going beyond the gunas, is fitted for becoming Brahman.

27. The worldly man must constantly live in the company of holy men

28. The ultimate goal should be the one and only one God. If we regard anything else with importance, the mind will then be scattered. One must drop ones Ego “ I “ and identify constantly with the self and always realize that “ I am that “.

29.  If we delight in the good then we imbue good qualities.

30. Everything we do bears its fruit. Therefore one must have a clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong.

31.Seize the unstable wandering mind and by the power of will make it stop ( not for now for people whose mind is going round like a gramophone record ) and reflect on the glory of god. 

32.The true position , however should be that we put our minds on things at will and not the other way round. Learning to do this is the most important step in controlling the mind. For this we must develop will power, by developing ones will power one attains mastery over ones senses, thoughts and emotions and finally actions.

33. Human relations are important and has much to do with our state of mind on which depends the building up of spiritual life.

34. Basically our minds are to be used for higher purposes, we therefore should overcome our lower nature and rise through our own efforts. One should do ones duty towards others and practice detachment, forgiveness and humility and keep our relations straight.

35. Wrong thoughts are at the root of our troubles with the mind. Therefore we need to guard our thoughts with maximum steadfastness. Thoughts well guarded bring happiness ( Buddhist teachings ). One should never be careless in watching our thoughts and correcting them.

36. Shri. Krishna teaches “ Charity, the performance of ones duty, the observance of vows, general and particular , the hearing of scriptures, meritorious acts and all other works – all culminate in the control of the mind. The control of the mind is the highest yoga.

37. Right use of the imagination :

-      Our mental troubles are a result of wrong use of this faculty

-      We sometimes expect too much / we worry about useless things and this causes a lot of mental tension

-      If we are dreamy, we think a lot anout things that do not exist and a great part of the day is lost thinking useless thoughts

-      One remedy is to use one sort of imagination to counter the harmful one. Swamy Vivekananda has said that our imagination is capable of being either our greatest friend OR our greatest enemy. The purest of all imaginations is the thought of God.

38.  Meditation :

We should steady our mind and meditate ( control and meditation) together , focus it on god, because one becomes imbued with the quality of the object on which one meditates. Whenever un-desirable thoughts enter our mind, turn it towards god and pray earnestly.

39. Despondancy :

When we want to achieve the Supreme, there are bound to be difficulties such as temptation, attachment etc. Whatever be the problem, we should never give in.

When we feel we have lost all strength and will never be able to rise and meet the demands of the struggle within us, then we must see our mind as something from which we are separate.

In fact we should never identify ourselves with any of our mental states ( good or bad ), with happiness or with extreme sorrow, for we are different from the mind.

We are really the Atman and should identify ourselves with it. However certain things in this world are wrong and we should never think about those things or associate ourselves with those things.

Bad and good moments come and go. Therefore we should never rejoice or feel sorrowful and we will only be deceiving ourselves.

40. Emergency Control Devices :

When thoughts such as Anger, Lust , Hatred etc, enter our mind then we have to deal with them by raising contrary thoughts. This has to be done at the very beginning … for example when we are getting angry we must think of love and when we are prone to lust we must concentrate on the pure mind of a saint.

If things go too far and we get angry then we must tear ourselves from the situation and go to a lonely place and cool off by persuading the mind by reason … as to the damage that can be done if we lose our temper and our self control.

41. Useless Thoughts :

If a useless thought enters our mind then impress upon the mind that this thought is very damaging to me and this will make the thought vanish.

If on the other hand you try to wrestle with the mind it will lead to exhaustion and physical ills and the mind will only become more turbulent.

To avoid this we have to disassociate ourselves from the mind. This is achieved by philosophic thought. Once this is done the mind has nothing to stand on … to create trouble.

42.  Thought Control :

-      In the initial stages thought control means developing the capacity of deliberately thinking good thoughts and to desist from thinking wrong ones

-      Taking care of what we think is so important that we must learn the art of achieving this through discipline and hard work

-      Our food must be pure ( including the intake by the senses )

-      Thought control does not mean suppression of thought , but mastery of it

-      As long as we identify ourselves with our ego or with our body we cannot achieve complete thought control

-      We must not be over zealous and try to get to the ultimate first. By purifying the mind gradually and reciting the Gayatri mantra the ultimate state is attained of itself. The Gayatri Mantra is a prayer for clarity of understanding which grows out of purity of the mind

43.  Importance of the Mantra OM

One should repeat the mystic syllable OM and contemplate on its meaning (God). We will gain inwardness of thought and concentration. It is a means of bringing up your latent tendencies ( which are good ) and reciting OM is keeping good company in your mind.

44. Control of the Subconscious Mind :

The moment we seriously try to control our minds we are beset with inner difficulties and this makes it appear that we are getting worse.

The opposing forces are nothing but stored up Samskaras, past impressions and tendencies.

45. When our previous impressions in the subconscious mind are inconsistent, with what we have been thinking with the conscious mind, that causes strife.

46. Sometimes the subconscious mind is filled with much and unless it is cleaned fully, we can never be sure of controlling the conscious mind

47. We must pour holy thoughts into our mind and not get distressed when dark water comes out. It will get over slowly.

Swami Vivekananda has said that the mind is like a dried bottle of ink. The dried ink analogy describes the tendencies and impressions stored in this life and from our previous lives.

When we try to clean the mind my remembering a Saint , it is like pouring CLEAN water into a dried ink bottle ( The mind ). When we do this the dark ink ( worrying thoughts ) come out and we are shocked that we can think such vile thoughts. As a result we lose courage and think about giving up the attempt to clean our minds.

Swami Vivekananda says that these Vile thoughts coming out of our minds ( Dark Ink coming out of the Ink Bottle ) is very normal as the exercise of “ thinking about a saint “ is bringing out the Bad thoughts and impressions stored in our sub-conscious mind during thousands of previous births. We should understand that the cleansing process is underway and continue striving towards achieving a “ Pure “ state of mind.

48. If we do not aim at the attainment of lifes goal, which is the experience of the super conscious state, we cannot really control our mind, conscious and super conscious. It is only the experience of the super conscious state, or the vision of god that destroys all attachments and delusions.

Swami Vivekanand Has Said

First and foremost we must seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts as they are the cause of our actions on the conscious plane.

The subconscious thoughts have to be controlled through the conscious.

The great task is to revive the whole man as it were in order to make him master of himself.

The books say that he alone is the Yogi who after long practice in self concentration has attained to this truth. The Susumna now opens and a current which has never before entered into this new passage will find its way into it and gradually ascend to the different locus centers till at last it reaches the brain and the yogi realizes his true nature. That he is God.

49. The Kundalini is the latent spiritual power and when it is awakened in a person, the control of the subconscious mind, which is hard to handle is taken care of, but in fact the Raja yoga method of awakening the kundalini cannot be easily practiced by the vast majority of people. The kundalini is awakened if one feels a restlessness for god.

Be aware of a trick of the mind :

The subconscious mind tries to trick our conscious mind. Then we have difficulties or are faced with temptation. A difficult situation flashes before us and by worrying about the future we become off guard and are swept away. We must remember that in the heart of this moment is eternity.

There is no greater blessing in life than a controlled state of mind.   

-      Concluded - 

The other really sophisticated master who I have read is Swami Ramsukhdas Ji Maharaj. The difference between Vivekananda and Ramsukhdas is that while Swami Vivekananda conveys ideas very well, Ramsukhas Ji is very simple in his expression and his is the path of Pure Bhakti.