Table of Contents
1. Introduction to the spiritual aspect of the mind
The spiritual side to one’s mind is an aspect that is all important to fully understand why different people may react to the same situation in a different way. How people react to situations may sometimes be contrary to their personality. This is a concept unknown to modern day psychiatry, which limits its effectiveness to really help a person.
2. Past lives influence the sub-conscious mind and personality
So how is the mind affected by the spiritual dimension?
We have given a detailed explanation of how our mind works in other tutorials. To understand the mind in more detail, we recommend viewing the following tutorials:
Functional nature of the mind
Destiny
Why we do the things we do
A person is comprised of many aspects. They are the physical body, the vital energy, the mind, the intellect, the subtle body and the soul. The soul is the God Principle that is present in each and every person. The mind is the seat of our feelings, emotions and desires and is one of the most powerful influencers of our personality. A person’s mind is made up of two parts:
The conscious mind: It is that part of our thoughts and feelings that we are aware of. However this is only 10% of our mind. The conscious mind is completely controlled by our sub-conscious mind. It is something like a shop-front for the sub-conscious mind.
The sub-conscious mind: The sub-conscious mind carries in it a countless number of impressions created and or modified by incidents in this life and past lives. For example, a person may have a revengeful nature due to deep rooted thoughts of revenge, which in turn have been created and strengthened by significant past events in this lifetime or in some past life.
Unknown to most of us, we have all lived many lives on Earth. We keep getting born again and again (reincarnated) in order to settle our give and take account. According to how we have lived in our past lives, and how we have used our wilful action in each of them, our personality has been shaped. The personality traits stored as impressions in our sub-conscious mind continuously get moulded/reinforced by our actions and thoughts in any given lifetime. If we were to look at an average person’s past lives and their influence on his or her personality defects, the following would be the proportion of impact.
| Past lives as a contributor to one’s personality defects | Weightage as a percentage |
|---|---|
| Past 1000 lives | 30% |
| Past 7 lives | 61% |
| Current life | 9% |
| Total | 100% |
Let’s take an example of a person’s defect of anger in his or her current lifetime. As a toddler itself, he or she may display anger in the form of temper tantrums. It is important to note that the personality defect of anger did not suddenly start in this lifetime itself. In fact, it is an impression that has been strengthened and shaped over lifetimes.
- 30% of the nature of one’s anger would have been due to how one cultivated the personality defect by responding in anger to various situations over the last 1000 lives. By not actively working on reducing anger, it would have been allowed to increase unchecked over lifetimes.
- The past 7 lives would have contributed to another 61% of how the personality trait of anger got further consolidated in the sub-conscious mind.
- Therefore, at the time of birth in the current life, the personality defect of anger in that person would have already been deep-rooted. As one lives through his or her current life, there would be a number of situations that one would come across that could trigger an angry response in one, thus moulding and strengthening the nature of the personality defect. However, all such reactions of anger would only attribute to 9% of how the personality defect of anger developed in that person. On average, 91% of the nature of any one’s personality defects would be due to past lives.
Thoughts due to impressions in the sub-conscious mind constantly bombard the conscious mind either in response to some external stimulus or even in the absence of it. The stronger one’s negative impressions are such as anger, hate, and jealousy, the more one’s conscious mind is bombarded with negative thoughts, which leaves a person in a constant state of negativity and unhappiness.
The sub-conscious mind also contains all the impressions required to complete our destiny in our current lifetime. Such impressions are tied to the Give-and-Take account centre, which has in it a record of all the destined events in one’s life (due to past lives). Based on one’s give-and-take account or destiny, the Give-and-Take account centre in the mind defines how one responds or reacts to life events and situations. Destiny is that part of one’s life that is beyond one’s control. Destiny controls the happiness or unhappiness we have to undergo due to merits and demerits (sins) accrued in this lifetime or past lifetimes. Through spiritual research we have found that on average 65% of our lives are destined in the current era. The destiny that we are born with is therefore the major influence behind whether we experience happiness or pain. One of the main sources of mental pain in our lives (that allows our negative destiny to play out) is due to our personality defects.
Even if we do not have a give and take account with a person, personality defects can trigger incorrect actions giving others pain thus creating new negative karma or negative give-and-take accounts. If we give unhappiness to others then as per the Law of Karma, we too have to undergo the same amount of unhappiness either in the current life time or in a future life.
3. Negative energies take advantage of personality defects that remain with us from past lives
Very often negative energies from the spiritual dimension use our personality defects to their advantage. This is especially so for people who are possessed by negative energies. Suppose one’s anger is usually 5 units in a particular situation, negative energies can increase it to 9 or 10 units thus making one’s reaction disproportionate to the situation and making matters far worse than they should be. For example in a heated argument between husband and wife, negative energies may take advantage of both of their personality defects, and make them say unnecessary things out of anger causing lasting damage to their relationship. Personality defects are vulnerabilities of the mind (that may be cultivated over many past lives) by which negative energies can affect and strengthen their hold over us.
The key point to be understood here is that it is mainly due to our personality defects such as anger and expectations, that we experience the full measure of pain that we are destined to undergo. This is due to demerits or sins incurred either in past lives or in our current life. We can also create new negative accounts because of our personality defects.
