The Mind Game
It was a random day. I was hanging out with my friends and feeling high in spirits when one of them in an absolute spur of the moment asked, “Why do you think humans exist?”
Now, that was a question that stirred an interesting conversation and a lasting thought in my mind.
His understanding of human existence was something on the lines of the popular dialogue by Shakespeare in his play As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. According to him, whatever higher power is there that exists, it is He who creates us as characters in one of his games he enjoys playing. Just like humans architect and play games like Sims to goof around with characters, in the same way, He plays the game with characters like us, guarding, destroying or manipulating us.
When I came to think of it, it could be the case, but since I do believe in Consciousness and that we all have a conscience of our own, I feel there is an acting force behind the way we think, act, behave the way we do, which is the mind and that we all have a purpose of our own to fulfill in life. Not everyone may be able to identify and work on their purpose but that’s what life is about, working on ourselves, listening to that inner voice and acting upon it. So we may be characters in a game, but we all have a conscience, one that on channeling in the right direction could empower all the right thoughts and actions.
As the conversation moved on, we questioned the science behind it. Scientifically speaking there was no proof of God/the higher power/Him. What we know for definite is that time and light exist and there is space and so if we to find out where we are and who is above us or what is it that there exists beyond us, we’d have to travel to space. Speaking of travelling to space we got talking about time travel. If time travel was a real thing then so were parallel universes. But again, all this did not bring us to any conclusion regarding what actually governs us or who brought us here. As goes the theory of relativity or the idea of parallel universes, it is all something that was a conclusion made by a man on the basis of science and logic. To think of it, science too was created by man, mathematics, logic, everything. Hadn’t it been for someone’s mind, none of these concepts would’ve possibly come up. How unique and incomprehensible is the way the mind works!
The way every thought is generated, thought for a thought, random thoughts, targeted thoughts, some thoughts connecting to past thoughts, some relating to what someone else said, some novel, some duplicate, those that repeat themselves at regular or irregular intervals, some positive, some negative. How indefinite it is the way the mind works. What an absolute marvelous creation.
If it is the mind that gives birth to thoughts and the way we feel about things or do things, doesn’t that equate the mind to be responsible for our situations, or what we are, who we are and how we are? Doesn’t that mean that if we master the mind, we can master ourselves and isn’t that what we are all actually seeking, to find the answer to Who Am I? or What am I doing here?
Going back home and thinking about it I was really intrigued in the working of the mind, how it functions and actually works and most importantly, what was the mind? Was it the brain? Was it consciousness? Was it an organ or just a virtual creation?
Looking into it I found out that mind is different from either consciousness or the brain. It is, like I would like to describe, a voice in our head that guides our actions and thoughts. It could be either positive or negative. It is different from consciousness as it functions even sub-consciously.
So, on another day when I was feeling a little more contemplative, a thought occurred to me. The mind is such a fuzzy entity that it goes on to even imagine what the other person’s mind could be thinking which again could be something completely different compared to reality. The thing is that the mind is so restless, it hardly takes a milliseconds rest unless you’re in shock or are asleep. More so, it occurred to me that the mind is able to imagine what the other person is thinking because it is speaking from an experience point of view, whatever knowledge it may have had from the number of encounters you may have had with the person you’re interacting with. Which led me to realise that our mind is on a constant learning spree as it evaluates, analyses or observes our surroundings, it learns through what we see and what we experience.
But again our vision is only of things outward or external to us. Things outside of our body that we read, watch, hear, touch, perceive. Thus, it really struck me how we never really get to see ourselves from an external point of view, the way we react, act or behave. Noticeably, most times we forget to question ourselves in situations, that is when we tend to point fingers on others. Why the other person said so, or reacted that way or did that? We tend to blame someone else for things we could’ve been the source of, only because we forget to look at ourselves before we look at others. That’s just the way our mind generally works.
This made me realise how important it is to turn inwards. Turn our gaze, our fingers on us and realise how is it that we affect others’ lives, we react to things, we say things out loud to others, how we just be. This is the mind game, putting our eyes on ourselves, which may quite literally be impossible, but practically can be implemented through meditation. And this is why people talk so much about meditating for self-peace. Meditation would be the only time, when we close our eyes to turn our gaze inwards, to see who we are and work on things we would like to change about ourselves.
The conspiracy behind “the mind” has been with me for quite some time now. The whole concept of it really amuses me and I am in a conscious effort to understand and master the mind game.
