Connect with the infinite intelligence Part I: The thinking entity

“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.”

                                         Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

I am beginning this series with a lot of excitement. In a way, it is a sequel to the series on “The Law of Attraction (LOA)” which was appreciated by all of you. I would strongly recommend that you read the LOA series to obtain maximum value from the current series.

When I was young and there was a need to wake up early the next day, which invariably was the case due to the school timings, my mother used to advise me to give this “wake up” request to my pillow. Well, just to keep my mother in good humour I used to do this incredulous act, that of requesting my pillow to wake me up at, whatever time. Surprisingly, the pillow never failed to fulfil my request. Before you start to ask for that magical pillow, let me request you to do the same thing with your pillow tonight. As you settle down for sleep and reach a sleepy and drowsy state tonight, request your pillow to wake you up at a particular time the next day. Watch the fun, if you have made your request in the manner that I have outlined, you will wake up at the appointed time.

There is no magic in this act. When we supposedly talk to our pillow, we are actually making that request to our Subconscious Mind (hereafter called the SCM). The SCM, being the powerful entity that it is, carries out our request the next morning. The same is true of any affirmation that you make to yourself, meaning to your SCM, it will bring that to life as well. It is a natural law and never fails. This series is my attempt to bring before you the power of our SCM and how to exploit it to our benefit. But to do that, we must first understand how we think and act? You are bound to say that we think with our mind or brain (actually, both are different), but you will be only partially correct. The process of thinking is done by a “Thinking Entity” or TE of which the mind is just one part. So, let us learn about this Thinking Entity first with a mix of scientific and scriptural knowledge.

The Thinking Entity

The Thinking Entity consists of four parts – the Objective Mind, the Subjective Mind, the Intellect, and the Ego. In Hindi/Sanskrit, this entity is referred to as Mana, Buddhi, Chitta and Ahankara.

1. The Objective Mind

This part of the TE is the Conscious Mind or the Objective Mind. It is called objective because it operates in the world of objects, the world outside. In Hindi and Sanskrit, it is also called the Mana or Manas. The stimuli to this part of the TE are received from the five sense organs – eyes, ears, tongue, skin, and nose. In the absence of an outside stimulus, this mind cannot function. It is also called the Conscious Mind because it is conscious of the stimuli which are available in the outside world for perception. This mind is the “watchkeeper at the gate” so far as your thinking is concerned and allows only those stimuli to come in which are available in the outside world or generated by your own thoughts. This mind also acts as a “thought filter” for the SCM.

2. The Subjective Mind

This part of the TE is called the Subjective Mind because it does not need outside objects to function like is the case with the Conscious Mind. The inputs to this mind are received from the Conscious Mind, which in turn, may have been generated by the outside stimulus (outside of own body) or by the conscious/ unconscious thoughts of the Conscious Mind itself. This is the reason for it being called the subconscious Mind. It is like the bottom submerged part of the iceberg called the mind. The SCM is a faithful slave to the Conscious Mind and strives to bring forth whatever has been desired by the Conscious Mind. In Hindi and Sanskrit, it is called Chitta.

The Chitta has tremendous processing ability. The Conscious Mind can only process about 50 bits per second while the Subconscious Mind can process a staggering 11 million bits per second. This marvellous processing speed of this mind is what makes it capable of finding solutions to any problem you (the Conscious Mind) may throw at it. This mind is carrying the information, memories, and impressions of everything that has ever happened to you or whatever you have thought, saw, felt, touched, smelled, heard, ever. Interestingly, it is carrying these memories from your past births also and hence is capable of talking to you in intuitions, hunches, sixth sense, intuitions, déjà vu, etc.

This mind, the SCM, being the ancient part of our TE, is connected to the Infinite or Universal Intelligence or Superconsciousness through the Solar Plexus, which is referred to as the brain of the SCM. We will revisit this assertion later in the article. But what is important to be kept in mind is that any original and new idea and thought will emerge from the SCM due to its connection with the Infinite Intelligence. Your Conscious Mind can only give you solutions that are available with the intellect, the next part of the TE.

3. The Intellect

The third part of the TE is our intellect which is not to be confused with intelligence. Intelligence is found even at the cellular level meaning every cell of our body, which in turn joins with others to create various systems of the body like digestive, reproduction, cardiovascular etc. The existence of single-cell organisms like Amoeba and Paramecium confirms this fact. The intellect on the other hand is our ability to discriminate, good from bad; ethical from unethical; moral from immoral etc. Of course, the datum to decide what is good, ethical, moral etc. is different from one person to another, but each individual will have his/her set of individual beliefs, values etc. which will dictate the application of intellect.

The intellect is also called Buddhi in Hindi and the absence of it will make you Buddhu (stupid). Once the synthesised inputs are received by the intellect from the objective mind, it dives down into its memory bank and decides on the action that is to be taken. In this context, not taking an action is also an action. So, if there is no memory bank for the intellect to operate, the directions it will give to the Conscious Mind would be in accordance with that. A toddler will keep inserting his/her finger in an electric socket because his intellect has no memory bank to perceive a danger out of this activity. Once he gets a shock or repeatedly moved away from the electric socket by the parents, the memory gets created and he will desist from this activity in the future.

Thus, after the Conscious Mind has received the stimuli through the sense organs, it will integrate these stimuli and present them before the intellect. The intellect will refer to its memory bank, decide on the action to be taken and convey to the Conscious Mind. The Conscious Mind will then direct the body to act in the manner directed by the intellect.

You mind ask, what then is the role of the SCM in all this? Well, say you are crossing a busy road and getting the sensory inputs (sight of vehicles, sounds, smells etc.) through your sense organs. Your mind is synthesising these inputs and presenting to your Conscious Mind, who is making continuous decisions based on the directions from the intellect. Suddenly you get an impulse and stop dead on your track, and within microseconds, a rash biker appears on that stretch of the road, where you would have stepped had you not stopped. Since you had not seen that biker, the Conscious Mind and the intellect could not have made that decision, then who did? It was your SCM, with its infinite intelligence, which gave you that intuition to stop. What this means is that in times of need, the SCM overrides the Conscious Mind. We will elaborate on this concept later.

We keep experiencing such moments in our lives where we act in a manner which at that time surprises even us but turns out to be the right one in retrospect. It is thus rightly said that we should never ignore our instincts, gut feeling, hunches etc. There is a force much larger than cold logic which is at play here.

4. The Ego

The ego or Ahankara is the I-ship that we have in life. Our possessions, actions, relations, achievements, fame, values, beliefs etc. are manifestations of our ego. The ego is not a bad thing to have and in fact, is a must for us to live our lives as per our values and beliefs. The ego separates one individual from the other and makes the world the beautiful place that it is.

In a way, the ego is nothing but a conditioned soul, conditioned by the impressions that have been gathered over the ages by the soul. These impressions, of greed, anger, fear etc. turn the pristine soul into a highly individualised entity, which craves worldly pleasures and ruminates for what it could not achieve. This is how when this conditioned soul leaves the body on death, it carries all these impressions with it to the next birth. In the new birth, the ego is born in a new body, with all the tendencies and impressions, of the past births, on its mind and intellect, which make up the distinct personality of the individual. This is the reason why even identical twins behave differently despite having the same parents and same environment of growth.

The ego drives us to do actions – good or bad. So, when Col Satish Babu sacrifices his life for the motherland on the icy heights of Galwan, it is because of his ego which compelled him to make the supreme sacrifice. At the same time, diabolical acts of rape and murder are also committed on the call of an individual’s ego, due to the evil impressions it is carrying from its past births. So, the kind of actions we take depends upon the kind of thoughts we entertain or how we interpret the stimuli received by the mind, which in turn depends on our basic Prakriti (character, nature, or disposition). The basic Prakriti, in turn, is so because of the kind of ego we are either carrying from past births or developing in this birth. The thoughts thus become extremely important and are akin to the seeds that are being sown in the garden of your mind.

I will stop here for you to mull over the Thinking Entity with its constituents of Mana, Chitta, Buddhi and Ahankara. We will tackle the brain of the SCM, the connection between the Conscious and the Subconscious Mind, and the miracles of the SCM, next week.

I am also eagerly looking forward to your feedback on my books, “The Millionaire Mechanic” and “Musings of a Financially Illiterate Father”.

Read more from Anand here:

Rich dad poor dad: Seven key concepts

The power of focus: the ability to do whatever you want to do and more