mind- thing of its own

Everyone should be very humble. No one should be proud. No one should think they are great. Because as soon as you think that way you are already in the clutches of maya and all the rest will follow subsequently. So if someone like Lord Shiva or Lord Brahma or Vishwamitra muni or Saubhari muni, if they were bewildered due to inattentiveness if their minds drag them down into such embarrassing conditions then what is our position? Our position is very humble. Srila Prabhupad explains the remedy of not falling into Maya’s control...How does maya work..essentially through the mind?. Maya can create so many external phantasmagoria that is trying to either create attraction or aversion, but essentially, it is only successful if it affects our mind.....a great soul can be like a lotus flower in a very very muddy place of material world where there is distractions everywhere. By Maya’s potency there is distractions from the path of truth within & without, but maya can only be successful when maya diverts our mind. Emerson has said that mind is such a thing that it can make hell into heaven or it can make heaven into hell. What is this mind? You cannot touch it, you cannot taste it you cannot feel it, you cannot see it. Its so subtle subtler than air, subtler than space. But yet it is all powerful within this world. It is due to the mind alone that the conditioned soul is trapped within the repetition of birth and death. Where a head of state can take birth as a dog. Where a demigod can take birth as an insect. That is the power of the mind where a person with all facilities could take their next birth as a worm in the stool of a hog. That’s the power of the mind. And who are we to compete? Its very difficult. Vishwamitra muni lived in the Satya yuga and Treta yuga. He was a real yogi who can perform severe tapasya and who was able to control the mind.. If you cannot control the mind you cannot control the senses. That illustration in our Bhagavad Gita that body is like our chariot and the senses are like five wild horses that just want to taste, want to touch, want to see, want to smell, want to hear and what is the mind? The mind is the reigns and intelligence is the chariot driver. If we have good intelligence & we are listening, listening to the need of the soul, listening to Krishna, then the intelligence that comes through Guru, Sadhu, & Shastra....and through the mind we can control the senses and then our human form actually goes in the right direction. Otherwise there are 84,00,000(8million 400) species and the soul can end up in one of those chariots. So it is very critical to control the mind. But the problem is it is very difficult I don’t think anyone needs too many analogies or examples to know how difficult it is to control the mind. Does anyone needs to be convinced and anyone attempting to do so is already convinced. All day everyday mind is very difficult to control. Maya is all powerful in this world.--

HH Radhanath Swami