Mental Health - Part 2

Based on feedback, I realize I missed out something core to Mental Health in my yesterday's article.

We all agree that mental health is all about mind. And what is mind? Mind, although it appears to be a noun/object, actually refers to the flow of thoughts. In simple words, mental health is all about how we think. 

I can classify this thinking into three categories, as is so common for Krishna in Bhagavad Gita.

1) Satavik: one thinks in harmony with Universe

2) Rajasik: one thinks for oneself

3) Tamasik: one thinks destructively, for oneself and for others.

I don't wish to get into more details about these categories; it is quite self-explanatory.

We all think we are mentally healthy. Even a serious patient admitted into a mental hospital/psychiatry ward thinks the same for himself, and perhaps wonders why he is there. And that is the crux of the issue: to be able to objectively examine our thinking processes. 

While living in this world, we are continually perceiving the world around with our senses. The entire world around us is Stimuli. And we continually respond to this stimuli. Even if we don't respond, it is our response not to respond.

Between the perception of stimuli and response, there is mind and how the response happens is an indicator of our mental health.

Today, I saw a video of a very senior citizen who is around 85+ years old, who voluntarily picks trash on streets of Chandigarh. Such an admirable act. He can be certified to have great mental health, in spite of his age. Everybody does not have the same level of mental health. Most of us see the trash but our mind/mental health does not permit us to pick it. And some of us, in fact, throw this trash - the other extreme level of negative mental health, although we can function socially and financially quite well.

India has more than a billion people. If even 1/10th of them clean just a little area, the entire country would be cleanest in the world. But our thinking has been programmed by ourselves and our society to ignore the stimuli, and if the stimuli are registered, then we need to think for ourselves socially and financially. This is just nothing but a state of mental sickness.

Next comes another important point about organization of mind. What we generally call as mind is in fact a composite of sub-conscious mind (loosely called as "mind") and conscious-mind (also known as intelligence).  Our responses are 

1) either from the sub-conscious mind, which is programmed by large number of repetitions and is even transferred from this life to next life in form of "vaasanaas". When the 

2) or from the conscious-mind/intelligence, which is a result of deliberate logical thought process. 

The goal should be to use the intelligence and if possible to re-program the subconscious using the intelligence. That is the easiest way of working on the mental health.

If one wants a magic pill for the improvement of mental health, the good news is that there is one simple method in the yogic world called Pranayama, which uses breath as the connection between physical and mental planes and leads to improvement when done over a long period of time.

I hope the points in this article address some important issues left out in yesterday's article.