There is a ‘discriminating voice’ that always says to the mind, “Do not add to your own weight. I will lift you up.” It always warns, “Not that way… not that way.” Generally, the mind does not heed these words and by its own actions brings about its own downfall and total damnation.
If only the mind is available for the intellect, which means, if only the mind would work in unison with, or in obedience to, the discriminating intellect, then the intellect, or the higher in man, can lift the mind, the lower in him. In that case, he soon becomes an evolved personality. This process of self-evolution depends entirely upon one’s own efforts at integrating the mind with the discretion of the intellect. God himself or the Saints or the Gurus cannot do it for you. Your mind must always be kept under the control of your own intellect.
A monkey hops from one branch to another and jumps from one tree to another because it has only instincts, but no intellect to guide. Man has an intellect to control his mind. This intellect in him grows wiser every day with the knowledge it gains as a result of its experiences. If the mind makes itself available for this intellect to educate it, then it grows. Such a person lifts himself by himself.
Worshiping at temples or prayers, offerings, retreats, pilgrimages, etc. are all attempts at self-culture or self-lifting, advocated by all religions. Through these you draw the necessary vitality to lift your own nature to the purity and glow of the higher. You must resist temptations, get your mind tamed and let intellect take charge; then you evolve. On the other hand, if you permit your mind to indulge in its own ways without imposing any checks on it by the intellect, you devolve.
Take any experience in life that brought misery in its trail. “I know my action was not correct…I ought not to have done it.” This is a very familiar way of expressing all our regrets. The boy at school does some mischief in spite of the warning he gets from his inner voice, that of the intellect. The corrupt officer knows from a hundred occasions earlier that he will be caught and punished. The thief sees himself in jail, perhaps years earlier than when he actually finds himself in it. Never had a man fallen because he was not warned in time by the ‘higher’ in him.
A life where the mind drives the senses without the intellect holding the reins, is like driving a car in which the connection between the wheels and the steering has snapped. The car runs into destruction, and the owner has to suffer the consequences from which there is no escape. Similarly, when the driver of our body, the intellect, loses its control over the mind, the car of this body runs everywhere but on the road, and directly dashes into destruction.
Some people, however, seek to discover easy methods to lift themselves up. They want to escape from their weaknesses. They want to believe that somebody will do for them what they must do for themselves. This thinking only results in self-deception and self-corruption, and in a grave failure to realize the truth that we ourselves are the cause of our own upliftment or destruction.
