The Four Parts of Mind

The four parts of mind

• Buddhi
• Ahankara
• Manas
• Chitta

In yogic sciences, when we say human mind, there are 16 parts to your mind. These 16 parts can be categorized as fundamentally 4 parts. These 4 parts are Buddhi (Intellect), Ahankara (Identity), Manas (Memory) and Chitta (No English translation available).

Buddhi (Intellect) 

First is the intellect  which is called buddhi in Indian terminology. The next is called as ahankara or the identity, your intellect always functions around your identity. Whatever you are identified with, your intellect functions around that, it may be your individuality, it may be your family, it may be your community, it may your race, religion, nationality, but it functions around that, you live for it, you will die for it. Whatever you are identified with, that is what it will try to protect because intellect is essentially a survival tool, without intellect you cannot survive. Right now we are using intellect as the way of acquiring knowledge, we are using intellect to enhance our life but it will not work like that, intellect is the fantastic survival tool, if your intellect is sharp you will survive well but survival will never satisfy human being. Though you are doing very well, your stomach is full, you are eating and sleeping well, you feel like you are being obsessed because you have raised the bar of survival to an unrealistic place. If you come as an animal then eating, sleeping, reproducing will be highest things in your life. But now when you have come as a human being, these things will never settle you down. You are always looking for something more. This is the nature of human beings. Because of this nature only, human beings have progressed on this planet compared to other species.  Only When you come as a human being there is a possibility to achieve your ultimate nature if you work in the right direction but that will not come through intellect because intellect will only think about survival because it is a survival tool. Intellect is like a knife, you are using a knife to stitch, you know you will end up tearing more and more. You will see, the more intellectual people will get, they look smarter in a society but if you just look at them as a life, they are just stupid, they don’t know simplest things of their life, they are smart compare to somebody else because they are able to do something that somebody cannot do, but how they are, within themselves, they can’t sit in one place, peacefully, this means, you obviously don’t know how to handle your intelligence. The only problem with most human beings is, people do not know how to handle their own intelligence, well they have exotic names for this, they call it stress, they call it anxiety, they call it depression and many varieties of depression and madness but fundamentally you don’t know how to handle your own intelligence. If you do not know how to handle the most vital aspect of who you are which is your intelligence, which sets you apart from every other creatures on this planet, its a disastrous life, how can this be a smart life. If you are smart, you know how to handle your vital assets, one of the greatest assets that we have as a human beings is we have a cerebral capability that no other creature has, but we have not taken charge of it, it works against us. This is like you have a car with four wheels but you want to drive it on one wheel, its very stressful, its bound to be stressful, because the other dimensions are not used.

Ahankara (Identity)

The second is called ahankara which is the identity, this is very important how an identity is set up. People may misunderstand ahankara as ego but it is not ego here, it is identity. The people are identified at different levels right from their body, family, society, race, religion, nationality up to the universe (infinity). Everybody is concerned about well being, it is just that scale and scope varies from person to person.  If a person is just identified with his body, for him well being means just about himself, limited to his body. If a person is identified with another person or family, for him well being means taking care of his/her dear ones or family. For another person well being means about his race, community or religion, for another person well being means about his nation, for another person well being means about the world and for another one it may be every life on this planet.

One thing traditionally in India we set up is which is unfortunately vanishing today because we have taken English education, traditionally when a child has to start education, first alphabet he has to learn means first he is told, your identification is with the entire cosmos – aham bhramasmi is taught, he is made to utter a mantra which means, "I am everything", because the education is seen as an empowerment, you should not empower a human being, who has limited identifications. If you empower somebody with limited identity he will cause damage to everybody else, which who are not in ambit of that identity. This is what as nations we are doing, this is what as a race and religion we are doing to each other. Isn’t it? Everyday this is happening, when somebody else does it, it looks ugly, but when we do it, we are justified because everybody have their own logic. This is a very important requirement if intelligence has to simply expand without limits, it is very very important, children start with the limitless identity that you are identified with everything in the universe, this is very important. Now this identity if we want to use an anology, your intellect is like a knife, the identity is the hand that holds it, the hand that holds decides whether a knife will make life or take life. Isn’t it? Knife doesn’t decide, in the hands of a surgeon it may save a life, in a irresponsible hands it takes life. Knife is not doing this, it is the hand that holds what kind of identity have you taken on, accordingly your intellect becomes fruitful for everybody around you or it becomes a destructive process.

Manas (Memory)

Intellect is a useless instrument unless we fed it with some data, if there is no data, if we wipe out all your memory, suddenly you will look like a dumb person, though you have a sharp intellect, because intellect cannot functions without data, so the third dimension of the mind is called manas, which is a huge sylo of memory. Memory is not just in the brain, it is spreaded throughout your body. We identify 8 different forms of memory, the first form of memory is called as elemental memory, atomic memory, evolutionary memory, karmic memory- in that there are two varieties – one is a huge bank of memory and another is active memory (which is called sanchita and prarabhda), and sensory memory, inarticulate memory and articulate memory. What you are experiencing as conscious memory is the articulate memory, it is not even 1% of the memory that you carry, when I say not even 1% of the memory that you carry, you definitely do not remember how 10 generations ago your great great great great great grandfather looked like, but his nose is sitting on your face, because your body remembers every bit of it, here we call it as a genetic memory.  

Chitta

Memory is a posibility and it is also a boundary, memory means accumulated information, accumulated information means it is a limited possibilty. So the fourth dimension of intelligence is refer to as chitta, this is a dimension of intelligence unsullied by memory, it is pure from the memory. This is the intelligence which is the basis of your making, i.e., today if you eat an apple, there is an intelligence here which turns an apple into human being, because there is an intelligence here which can do miraculous job, if a drop of this intelligence touch your chitta, suddenly your experience of your life will become an ever expanding process. Suddenly your genius will flower in such a way, every human being might have touch this dimension of intelligence, at some point or rather unconciously but the important thing is you should be conciously able to bring forth, this must come into our children. If we are interested that the next generation should be way better than who we are, it's important that they touch a dimension of intelligence that we did not access, otherwise in many ways we have not done we are supposed to do because one of the fundamental purposes why we are here is that the next generation  should be able to do what we could not do, not in terms of freaky things but in terms of doing something well beyond our capacity to do things. This can be possible if we touch this dimension of intelligence otherwise intellect is just a trap. Intellect is good for survival because it only functions from the accumulated memory, beyond that it cannot expand. If you want to make your life truly happy then you should strive to touch this dimension.

Reference - Sadhguru