"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man possesses extraordinary abilities that allow him to rise above all other animals and conquer the world as lord and master. But just as a gun can be used to survive against predators and feed the family, it can also be directed to the destruction of other human beings. As History has shown repeatedly, wars, famine and pestilence have been a common occurrence in every civilization ever since modern times began.
Luckily, Great Men and Women have appeared from time to time to show us the path to wisdom, happiness and peace of mind. They have told us again and again that we can channel that most extraordinary tool called the Mind to lead "The Good Life", to use our brain to the fullest and fulfill our enormous potential, to do good in our environment, to help others when needed and to control our most destructive instincts.
Yet, most scientists agree that we use only 5 to 10% of our mental capacity, perhaps even less. For example, a great portion of the population gets along with only 700 words in their vocabulary. How can they express their innermost thoughts with such a limited lexicon? How can they understand the complexity of modern civilization and the important role they could play if they took the time to contemplate their wonderful inner self?
The answer is disheartening: they cannot do it, because they are satisfied with a "simple" life that repeats itself day after day; work, television, chores, paying the bills, driving the kids to school and washing dirty clothes. Reading has become an activity threatened with extinction; why read when the "dumb" screen gives me all the emotion that I crave? I watch "The Apprentice", or "American Idol" or "Desperate Housewives" or the Game with a capital G on a daily basis, without ever considering that I am not exercising that most valuable tool, my Mind.
And so my days pass with the same insipid fare, with the same absence of meaningful communication with the children, with the same routine. Even sex becomes a calendar activity that takes place every Friday night, after the show of course. And what happens to the Great Tool ? Like any body muscle, it atrophies, it becomes less and less active and less and less capable of transcendent activity. Is this really the purpose of my life? Is there something more uplifting, more meaningful that every adult is capable of experiencing?
On that subject Buddha said:
"Transcendental Intelligence rises when the intellectual-mind reaches its limit and, if things are to be realized in their true and essential nature, its mental processes, which are based on particularized ideas, discriminations and judgments, must be transcended by an appeal to some higher faculty of cognition."
Transcending means going beyond the rational processes, just as intuition is believed to appear from some subconscious source. For religions, praying is a transcendental event which allows us to communicate with the Universal Mind.
You may interpret Universal Mind as synonymous with God or Allah or whatever name you prefer. The incredible revelation made by the Enlightened One (Buddha), is that we can "communicate" with that Universal Mind through the intuitive-mind, which allows us to reach self-realization - a term which can also be understood as seeing the light or the truth about ourselves.
The key term is "transcendental intelligence". In other words, we must go beyond our rational intelligence in order to reach the ability that we all have and that we call "Intuition". If asked for a definition of "intuition", most of us would be hard pressed to explain the word. A philosopher would call it instinctive knowledge; something that we know without knowing (pardon the repetition) how we acquired it. A common person would answer the question saying: "I just know this is so". As a matter of fact the belief in God is based precisely on intuition, since we cannot present proof of His/Her* existence.
*Note: Please do not be shocked at the use of a feminine pronoun. There is no proof that God is male and He/She could very well be both or something completely different. Using the term Universal Mind eliminates the problem of gender.
We feel a little wary when we see books that offer an easy way to boost our Mind Power, to acquire the ability to heal the most dreaded illnesses, to predict the future, to win the lottery, to seduce the opposite sex (or the same as the case may be). Indeed we should reject all types of psychic rip-offs, but sometimes desperate people will waste thousands of dollars on fruitless searches for the miracle cure.
The Great Minds of the past do not offer easy solutions; the road to enlightenment is hard, full of trying obstacles and at times, intense suffering. It is true, and surely you have read about these phenomena, that certain wise men of the East are able to accomplish extraordinary feats through the power of their minds. These fakirs, mostly from India, can control their bleeding, their heartbeats and even their body temperatures. Some were even able to levitate according to some observers. But these extraordinary men have spent a lifetime of meditation and fasting to reach such control of their autonomous nervous system (autonomous because we cannot control it, supposedly).
Most of us don't want to reach their level of mind control; it would suffice to exercise our introspection on a regular basis to analyze our subconscious Ego and establish the necessary controls. That is the way to the Good Life, defined as our personal legacy to our children and to our society.
