Ways Of The Mind

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

Ways Of The Mind
The mind works in various mysterious ways, and we will analyse some important broad
aspects of this mental process. At a given moment, what is the mind of a person? What is it made up
of? I will try to explain with easy analogies. First of all, let us take two analogies. You take a
gramophone plate. What is it made up of? Ordinarily, you see a plate and you see it is made up of
grooves, full of lines. For an ordinary illiterate person it will mean nothing more than this. A little
more intelligent and educated person will say that it contains lines and these lines are sounds in
silent form. A still more intelligent person will say something else. He will say that each groove has
got a specific sound. It is in the nature of an effect. This sound is identical with the sound that caused
it. A more intelligent and learned man will say under what particular circumstance, it will produce
sound. Another analogy. You take a seed. A child will say it is a very tiny thing, but amore thinking
mind, a poet, will say, “In your hand lies a towering oak, which can shelter a thousand people.” And
a still more discerning person will say, “This seed can produce an oak and produce the same type of
oak out of which it came; and not only that, if that tree can produce further seeds, it means it has got
in it the capacity to restart and fully manifest once again the whole process, which was at the back of

it.” And therefore, it is a living thing. It is a dynamic thing. It contains in itself the whole cycle.
Similarly the mind of each person at a given time contains within it words within words. It is a thing
of the nature of grooves on a gramophone record or of the nature of the seed. What are these seeds,
what are these grooves that are in the mind? The mind is a product of experience, previous
experience. Just in exactly what way is it a product of experience? We shall take just one instance,
and we can multiply it ad infinitum.