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Although the mind deludes us into thinking that the outer world is made up of separate names and forms (duality), it can also be used for its own liberation and the realization that all is one. The first step in gaining control of the wayward mind is to control the senses. Then aention can be drawn inward to love that transcends mind.
The whole world, along with its joys and sorrows, vices and virtues, truth and untruth, justice and injustice, is in the mind only. What man has to achieve primarily is the purification and final annihilation of the antahkarana, inner instrument (mind). (SSB)
Purifying the Mind through Sense Control
The senses direct awareness to outer objects. We then desire these objects and become aached to and addicted to them. In the course of excitation and frustration, we confront the six inner enemies of lust, anger, pride, greed, hatred, and aachment. This process agitates and confuses the mind and causes distracting and deluding thoughts, which in turn prompt harmful actions. Thus, our energy is dissipated and wasted, and we fall from the status of a human being to that of an animal. The first step in transcending the mind is control of the senses. When I refer to sense control, I am including in this concept detachment from desires; they go hand in hand.
The senses are always extroverted in nature; they are greedy for external contacts. They drag the ignorant perpetually toward external objects. So the spiritual seeker, endowed with discrimination and renunciation, must place obstacles in the senses’ outward path and suppress their outbursts, just as the charioteer, wielding the whip and the rein, controls the raging steeds. Uncontrolled senses cause great harm.
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