Page 469 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

arrive at purification of the individual mind (Manas) or the adhara (organic body) through mere mentation or mentational repetitions. Recitations, strenuous fasts and exercises or reasoning processes lead no where. Further the moral or ethical aids for the purification of the body and mind seem to be disciplines that hardly lead to the purification of the manas. All are effortful exercises imposed from without, gross in nature and never go deep into the psychic being so to speak. All these artificial modes to bring about cultural change in man have failed sooner or later and man reverts to his gross nature-of the infra mind, the nimal mind. To those who hold that the Manas has not reached the lowest or greatest amount of degradation or grossness or its final potentiality of being non mind or ajiva, one can point out the grosser levels of being below the human and the animal.
Manas in one of its earlier meanings also meant prana or life breath and in fact these two attributes of thought and life coincide at the highest level. Prana or life even like Manas has its levels by which the Manas at that level lives and moves and has its being. The man who has come to a state of meaninglessness and therefore feels life itself to be a boredom and a punishment needs meaning to be given to him or life open itself to him or both. Perhaps many think that philosophies could give meaning to some who seek the consolations of philosophy, others think that if needs are catered to, man will regain confidence in himself and seek to live a more meaningful life. However neither wealth nor position and power nor even the pomp of pleasure give this zest for life for it is constantly moving downgrade or degradation. Energy dissipation and degradation seem to be the law of life at the level of its encounter with Reality in any one of its planes and grades. Neither food, nor pleasure, nor mental imaginations are the real things or principles of life. Our Manas is not quenched; by these.
The supreme upward lifting force of life (pranasya pranah) by which all begin to feel alive and expand has been designated as Prana-Brahman, (yad pranasya na praniti yena pranah praniyate tad eva brahma tvam viddhi neidam tad idam upasate) as the kenopanisad seer has put it. It is the force - that which sustains the entire process - the primal Manas - that has to be introduced into the system as the life of life, breath of breath, mind of mind, vision of vision, speech of speech, as the same seer says. It is this life force of the Ultimate nature that is sought within one's own mind, secret in the