“I study myself more than anything else; that is my metaphysics and that is my physics.”

Michel de Montaigne.







Where is the mind? Never mind! What is matter, then? No matter. This was the idea of modern reductionist science of the human mind up until the time, early in the last century, when quantum physics struck the scientific world like a meteor. No physicist, worth his salt, has seen a lepto-quark, the last bit of an atom. All our observations of the world, even the scientific methods, are but an illusion of the reality. Lepto-quark is what it is depending on who looks at it. It is in the eye of the beholder. When one does not look at it one does not know what it looks like or what it does.



This fits in very well with sanaathana dharma’s concept of the universe. Each one of us is but a miniscule bit of the Universal consciousness vis-à-vis our individual consciousness. This consciousness is the mind in itself. Human mind is a quantum concept and resides in the sub-atomic region of every body cell of the human being of which there are roughly one hundred thousand billion in all. Human mind is all pervading and present all over. This could easily exchange with the Universal consciousness.



The new concept of teleportation (tele-transportation) takes into account the possibility of our mind affecting someone or something even at a distance not to talk of our own body! A recent study published in the leading American medical journal, The Archives of Internal Medicine 1997 shows how intercessory prayer (prayer at a distance), without the knowledge of the patient or the treating cardiologist, did favourbaly affect the outcome in seriously ill myocardial infarction patients in a teaching hospital CCU. The study concludes: “intercessory prayer is a powerful adjunct to conventional treatment of acute myocardial infarction.”



Modern medicine has traveled a long way from the days of the conventional risk factor hypotheses of killer diseases, blaming cholesterol and what have you. Three new studies-medical students’ prospective study in the US, the White Hall study of men in London and, another Scandinavian study of men and women came up unequivocally in favour of the mind being at the driving seat in all killer disease causations. Ultimately, it is, probably, not what you eat that kills you but, it is what eats you (your negative thoughts) that kills you.



In an elegant review article in the Cardiovascular research and review the authors go to great lengths to show the results of many risk factor studies and two on-going interventional studies trying to change the human mind to help in healing the same killer diseases. Destructive hostility came up on top of the risks for acute myocardial infarction while, anger precipitated haemorrhagic stroke most of the time with frustration and depression leading the flock in cancer causation, as also playing a vital role in coronary heart diseases. This brings us back to the wisdom of Ayurveda which had eloquently put these risks on top of the agenda for killer diseases thousands of years ago.



Be that as it may, mind is shown to play a vital role in the healing process as well. This is the new concept in human immunology. The immune mechanism kept man alive here for well over 900,000 years in 50,000 generations without the help of modern medical divine interventionalists, indeed! If we were to believe these modern pundits, mankind should have been extinct long, long before the dinosaurs did, without interventions of today. Mind works through the immune system- a new specialty--psycho-neuro-immunology is born again. The body is built with a robust inbuilt repair mechanism, mainly the immune system.



The sympathetic system blows hot and cold from the same mouth! To keep the immune system in ready gear one has to follow the rules of the game of keeping the mind tranquil without undue chemical stimulation.Good health needs a robust mind free from avarice, greed, hatred and frustration. History repeats itself. Ayurveda did proclaim centuries ago that prasanna aathma, indriya, manaha swastha ithyabhideeyathe.

Fill the mind with universal love and forget the rest. Let there be moderation in everything one does. Hatred begets hatred and causes most of the ills of mankind. Hatred leaves us with a scarred heart; if we survive a heart attack that is. An Irish couplet comes to mind that runs somewhat like this:



“I eat when hungry,

I drink when I am thirsty,

If heavens don’t fall down,

I shall certainly live till I die.”

Anon.



The power of the mind can be gauged by the details in a beautiful book, Occult Chemistry written by Anne Besant and Charles Leadbeater in 1920, where the authors describe their experiences with yogic siddhis. They had described the atomic structure of nine elements ranging from hydrogen to helium. Their descriptions. One must realize that the mind is not in the brain alone as was thought by scientists in the past. “I was glad to learn that the mind of man (himself the product of natural causes) was a function of the brain subject like the rest of his body to the laws of cause and effect and these laws were the same those that governed the movement of the star and atom. ……..these concepts not only appealed to my dramatic instinct; they filled me besides with a very delectable sense of liberation,” wrote Somerset Maugham, who was not just a novelist but a trained physician. One should note the connection of the mind with the atom that comes out in Maugham’s opinion, even though he did not have elaborate knowledge of quantum physics.



One can not see the mind but one feels the mind in every single thought. Thoughts make the man. But physiologically each thought is a chemical and many of the negative destructive thoughts could be bad chemicals that destroy a part of us every time they get secreted. Similarly, positive thoughts are a tonic for the system as also to our enthusiasm to work. Just as hurting others in thought and deed is bad for the health helping others in deed and thought could boost one’s immune system. All these happen through that enigma called the mind. Who has seen the mind? Neither you nor I, but when the emotions come and go the mind is felt nearby! The science of yoga is nothing but having control over one’s mind-not by force but, by filling one’s mind with universal love. The word “love” here is spelt as altruism.



“Men are vain authorities who can resolve nothing.”



Michel de Montaigne.