The Creation of Pleasure and Pain :8.

The mind can move by itself, act for itself, without a driver behind it. It is a self-propelled engine, and it is propelled in such a way that it knows its motives and the centre of its fulfilment of desire and satisfaction. For the sake of self-fulfilment, it employs the service of the senses. The senses are only servants of this self-driven intelligent force called the psychological organ.


The antahkarana is this abundant source of energy – not dead energy, but intelligent energy. It goads the senses to activity by connecting itself with them. When the power that is generated in an electrical factory is connected to a machine, the machine starts moving because of the energy that is supplied to it from the powerhouse. These senses are machines of different make. One goes in one direction, one goes in another direction. One may be a motorcar, another may be a tractor, a third may be something else, and so on. But the energy that is the driving force behind these different machines of the senses is the mental structure of our personality, the antahkarana-chatushtaya, the peculiar, unintelligible wheel with which the whole of our reality is identified day in and day out.


So what is the process of suffering? This intelligent force within, called the antakharana, supplies the energy for action to the senses. It orders the senses to move in a particular direction, and the senses run, being driven by this force to their respective targets. These targets seem to be the objects of the senses, but they are really the objects of the mind. It is the mind that wants the objects, not the senses, but the senses appear to be wanting them on account of their being directly connected with the objects. When a policeman comes and arrests someone, it is not the policeman who is interested in the arresting of the person. Some other force is driving the policeman to come in contact with the culprit. The force is not the policeman. He is only an instrument. Some other energy, some other intelligence is operating behind this instrument called the policeman who runs towards the object called the culprit and arrests him.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...