Victory Over the Mind

What is Yoga? Yoga is that power which makes the mind disappear for all time. What is Puja? The same. What is meditation? The same. What is religion? The same.

When the mind is not there, you are timeless, spaceless peace and joy. Selfless service, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Gnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, all lead to the same aim: the disappearance of the mind, victory over the mind. Only victory over the mind is true victory, no other victory is really a victory. You may catch a thousand tigers or lions, even ride them, but it won't help you. One day these tigers and lions will tear apart your body and devour it. This is no victory. It is no victory when Napoleon conquers Poland or Russia and its people. One day they will send him to his grave. He commits the most terrible sin of his life killing millions of people. This is no victory. The victory of an emperor, the victory of a rich man, the victory of a hypnotist, a magician, a genius, a scientist - all these are no victories. Great disappointments await them.

Even if you become an emperor, and if you possess all the wealth of the world, you can never be happy. Anxieties and fears arise from within. You need bodyguards. You are afraid of old age, of disease and death. You fear your colleagues - they may be jealous of you, they may try to kill you, or cause damage to you; false imaginations and so on. You have no rest as long as the mind is there in you and you work through the mind. Even if you sit in the lap of God's infinite compassion and try to enjoy timelessness there, you will find no rest as long as your mind is there! Victory over the mind is the only victory one needs. There is no other victory. All other victories only meet with disappointment.

He alone is a true scientist who conquers his own mind. Only he is a good person. As long as the mind is there, one can never trust a person. As long as the mind is there in you, you cannot trust yourself. Mind impairs everything. To experience the world with the Soul of our soul, not with the mind, that is the aim of all spiritual life, all divine life. It does not matter what you do in life, you can never be happy as long as this enemy lurks in you, as long as the mind is responsible for your thoughts, feelings and experiences.

Efforts and disciplines are necessary. Mind is a great devil; it is very difficult, almost impossible, to attain victory over the mind. Try it. Though you are living with the Divine, you have never received God's light, his nature, his vision, his heart. Mind destroys everything. Mind veils the face of the Truth. Mind misguides you. Mind is no true instrument of knowledge and experience.

When there is no mind, there is no more hate, no more jealousy, no more envy, no more folly, no hunting after pleasures. Does the sleeping person hunt after pleasures? Never. He is contented, completely contented. He has timeless Stillness, Peace and Joy. Such is the true lover of the Divine. He enjoys timeless Peace and Joy. He does not run after pleasures. If he has to feed his outer body, he does so without discrimination, without attachment, without whims and moods. Victory over the mind is what is necessary.

In a God-man mind is dead. One is really dead only when the mind is dead. As long as the mind is there, one dies and is born again. When the mind is dead one abides here and now in the boundless perfection of God. Then with the death of the body one is never born again.

Mind is the cause of life and death - life, death and rebirth. A God-man is a dead person, that is to say, in him there is no mind and therefore there is no danger from him for anyone. He is an embodiment of true peace, true goodness. Only a dead person is a good person, in the sense, that a God-man is truly a dead person. That means, a person in whom the mind, the source, the cause of all evil, is dead, conquered. It is not there.

- Swami Omkarananda