Vedic Wisdom - The Trio of Body/Mind/Intellect

Vedic Wisdom

The Trio of Body/Mind/Intellect

The material body is made up of matter and is controlled; and enjoyed or suffered by mind, guided by intellect and witnessed by conscience, the God’s proxy in beings. This ‘Trio’ is powered by the Gods spark and this entire unit is what we call as “Atman.”

Mind is sense oriented; Intellect is intuition oriented and Conscience is Truth oriented.

The predominance of which of these three aspects is more in a being decide that being’s pure and impure thoughts, words and deeds.

This trio of mind/body/intelligence is there in every being. The level of manifestation is varying depending upon that specie’s bodily carrying capacity and the level of evolution of that species.

This degree of the manifestation of this trio has been ascending and that is how superior species have evolved, up to human beings till now.

While there is intelligence in every being to help it to the extent of making it to live, enjoy, procreate and evolve, the intelligence of the human beings has evolved further and moved over to “intellect”-the discriminating faculty- which has made the human beings more powerful than any other species as on date.

It is this intellect that is expected to further evolve, into a Super human being, if human beings play the ball properly with the God.

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Gunas

In molding the matter in to body, God had to use three gunas or potencies viz., sattva - (pure, elastic, illuminating, blissful, good and translucent) ; rajas-(semi elastic, semi pure, passion, motion, force and partly solid); and tamas –(rigid, inelastic, dark, crude, ignorant, deluded and inert).

Since the God’s body is pure spirit and therefore the matter that sprang out of him was also pure spirit, in order to make it moldable into shapes he had to introduce and make an alloy of these three gunas.

In making the body, these three gunas forms various permutations and combinations because of which, so many varieties of species and even within the same species so many varieties of beings have evolved.

These three gunas account for the variation in tendencies and potencies of every being.

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Body the vehicle

It must be clearly understood that to be successful in our effort to realize the God and to be eternally blissful, a body is very important. Therefore it must be cared, nourished and respected.

Similarly since it is the abode of God it must not be misused or abused because then we will fail to realize the value of our human life and the purpose behind it.

Therefore both, the approach of the ‘Mayavadis’ treating the body as an illusion and an unwanted luggage ; and the approach of ‘Materialists’ who thinks the body is everything consisting of only pleasure organs and therefore to be exploited to the hilt to enjoy all the worldly pleasures; are wrong.

Body is the temple in which God resides and we have been endowed with it for a purpose.

Therefore it has to be kept up well- as we maintain a temple.

Since God is residing there, it should not be abused or misused.

It is a divine vehicle given by the God and we have to be conscious of that.

The human body what we see is the gross body-which is a food sheath. But is has another four sheaths-vital air sheath; mind sheath; intellect sheath and the conscience or bliss sheath.

The mind-intellect-conscience sheaths together make the subtle body.

Both the gross body and subtle body is kept active by the vital air -prana-sheath; and this entire complex of gross body and subtle body is animated by the God’s spark-the life principle.

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Mind

Mind is the linking point of the physical gross body of senses with the psychic subtle body of intellect and conscience.

On destruction of the gross body, the subtle body is not destroyed. It survives and awaits for its next incarnation and it gets what it has wanted -as may be permitted by its accumulated karmas (thoughts/ words/deeds) .

Therefore the “thoughts” are the key to bliss, since words and deeds follow thoughts.

Mind is the source of all thoughts and therefore mind plays the most crucial role in every being.

Ego

Though God seated in every being is the animating principle, the individual mind has mistakenly assumed and arrogated to itself a self ego, as if it is independent of the God’s spark.

This ‘ego’ is the reason for the first fall as Jesus Christ says-the ‘paradise lost’- from which the humans have to regain the paradise.

Out of that ignorance – ‘Avidya’- the Ego sways the mind and also gets swayed by the mind, towards the outwardly pleasures whether they are in accordance with the cosmic laws or not- forgetting the purpose for which it has been sent here and therefore gets caught in the wheel of karmic bondage-the ‘samsara’.

Nescience, Ego and Lust caused by ignorance are the villains. Having caught into this whirlpool of cause and effect- the karmic syndrome, the humans struggle and suffer, not knowing how to get out.

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This article is a snippet from the Book Vedic Wisdom, Authored by Pandit Sri Rama Sharma. Vedic Wisdom is available online at www.giri.in and across Giri Trading Agency Private Limited, A chain of Speciality Stores dealing in all kinds of products needed in Indian Culture and Tradition.