Mircea Eliade in 1933
Reading Mircea Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom puts me into a meditative state. I devote my full attention to thought. The conversation of mind and body is a dialog of equals—as opposed to the ordinary state, where the mind feels like no more than a part of the body, something inside the body, something subservient to the body.
The software’s purpose is not to serve the computer. The computer’s purpose is to serve the software. Apply this to the relation of mind and body.
The mind is accustomed by millions of years of evolution to serving the body. When the mind rebels and begins to develop its own agenda, feelings of guilt immediately ensue. It’s as if a devoted servant one day decides to abandon his master. Genuine freedom comes only after the servant has overcome not only the habit of obedience, but also the guilt he feels with every lapse in obedience.
Long training in obedience makes my mind crave a master to obey. The body is always close at hand, always ready and willing to reassert its dominance.
Maybe I could find a meditation master, to whom I could submit my mind, at least in the interim period, while it learns to overcome long-trained habits of obedience. But this too has its dangers.
In all but one in thousands, the mind is ruled by the body. Minds that dare to rebel against the rule of the body must therefore contend not only with the body but also with other minds that remain in servitude.
The mind in servitude is always supremely confident of the rightness of its servitude. Such a mind considers even the slightest suggestion of disloyalty treasonous and heretical, and will tolerate no mention of disobedience.
Not only will the body try to bring the mind back into subjugation, but other subservient minds will do their part to persuade the mind it made the wrong choice when it fled from its master.
The minds of my brother and sister and father and mother have not liberated themselves from servitude.
A friendship between mind and body can be reestablished only after the body understands it is a conversation partner, not a master.
When a dog whines, it must be ignored. Otherwise, I train it to whine. Apply this to the body.
When a child makes impatient demands rather than polite requests, it must be ignored. Apply this to the body.
A servant who is confident the rule of his master is inevitable finds all talk of disobedience foolish and irresponsible. Obedience will please the master. It will lead to rewards. Disobedience will displease the master. It will lead to punishment. When I tell the servant it is possible to dispense with the rewards and endure the punishment, he laughs.
Rule of mind by body supports and reinforces rule of mind by majority. The majority can offer pleasures to the body. It can threaten the body.
Rule of mind by majority supports and reinforces rule of mind by body. The majority of minds obey bodies. My mind wants to conform.
Rule of mind by body and rule of mind by majority thus mutually support and reinforce one another. To free myself from either, I must free myself from both.
A woman sees my body. She imagines her conversation partner is a body. But it’s not my body that speaks and listens. It’s my mind. I know this. But does she know this? If I’m not cautious, her conception of me as a body will become my conception of myself. Every conversation with another person threatens to trick my mind into associating itself with the body in which it happens to reside.
This body I am dragging around is not me. I am mind. I am soul. I am spirit. All that which is impermanent is not me. I am pure, eternal awareness, uncorrupted by any attachment to the world.
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