Control the Mind

If you take pure food, you will have a pure mind. Mind is formed out of the subtlest essence of food. If you have purity of mind, you will remember God or Atman. If you always remember God or Atman, the knots of the heart, viz., Avidya, Kama, Karma (ignorance, desire and action) will be rent asunder. You will attain Moksha.

That form which the infinite, all-pervading Atman has assumed through its power of imagination is called mind. Mind creates and destroys. It creates the whole universe by its power of imagination. It is the creator and enjoyer of all happiness and miseries. It is the cause for bondage and liberation. Mind is all. It is everything. It is your true friend and bad enemy. It causes various attachments. It is filled with various base desires and appetites. The highest mind is a rare friend and benefactor because it imparts true counsels in the way of obtaining the supreme Goal of life. The higher mind becomes your guiding Guru. Hear its sweet, small voice and follow its instructions. The voice of the pure mind is the voice of the God. It is an infallible voice. In the Gita (VI-5 &6) you will find: A man should uplift himself by his own self, so let him not weaken this self. For this Self is the friend of oneself and this Self is the enemy of oneself. The Self is the friend of the Self for him who has conquered himself by the Self. But to the unconquered Self the Self is inimical (and behaves) like an external foe. There is no other vessel on this earth to wade the ocean of Samsara than the mastery of the lower instinctive mind.

Your character depends upon the quality of thoughts held in your mind and the mental pictures and ideals entertained by you. If your thoughts are of a base nature, you will have a bad character. If you entertain noble thoughts, sublime ideals and holy pictures, you will have a magnanimous character. You will be a centre of joy, power and peace. If you develop the practice of cultivating sublime divine thoughts, all base thoughts will perish by themselves gradually. Just as darkness cannot stand before the sun, so also evil thoughts cannot stand before the sublime thoughts.