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Does the Mind Make the Body?
by Younousse Tamkeloe
- Monday, June 29, 2020
I have recently read the saying that the mind makes the body. I would like to explain why this saying is not completely true.
Imagine a couple who decided to have a child. They may think, “We should have a boy”, or “We should have a girl”. Or one partner may have a wish “I want a boy”, while the other partner may have another wish “I want a girl”. Or they may wish to have twins. This is what their mind wants. Their mind wants to have a child of a particular sex.
When they conceive the child, they don’t know exactly whether it will be a boy, a girl, or twins. Their mind wishes to have a child of a particular sex, but when the child is born, the child may have the sex they wish or a different sex, or they may get twins.
If the mind really makes the body, then the mind would make it 100% that when parents wish to have a child of a particular sex, then it would happen 100%. Of course, the mind makes the body but in a limited way. We need to explain the reality to 100%, and not 50%, 70%, or 80%. Because we are humans, we are connected with the Five Elements, and we are a complete creature. So, we need to teach everything 100%. The mind cannot make the body 100%. The mind decides to make a child and they may have a child but they cannot define what kind of child they will have: a girl, a boy, or twins. So, the mind doesn’t make the body 100%.
Spirituality with the mind together make the body. A spiritual person, who meditates and asks for a girl, a boy, or twins, will have the girl, the boy, or the twins. Because knowing about the soul and the spirit, through meditation you can program and allow a female soul or a male soul to be born in the physical life form. So, your child will be born as a female, or a male, or twins as you wish it. Because everything that the human wishes happens spiritually before it happens physically. When you reach the stage of being connected with yourself physically and spiritually, all your wishes will realize 100%. So, it is very important not to neglect spirituality, meditation.
And then again, some people think that having a strong mind will make you have a strong body. But it is not true because there are those disabled people who have a very strong mind, but they are disabled physically. What keeps them mentally strong? It is not the mind anymore, it is faith and the strength of the beliefs and feelings that they have from their meditation (prayer) in this or previous lives, which make them happy, alive, and mentally strong, even though they are not strong physically.
For example, Stephen Hawking was a famous scientist, physician and mathematician, and he was a disabled person. If the mind makes the body, why was he nevertheless disabled? Why his strong mind didn’t help him to become strong physically and to stand up on his feet? Because it is not the mind that makes the body.
The mind is like a memory card for the physical body. The mind functions according to what the physical vision sees and according to what the spiritual vision transmits. The mind is just a memory card to save everything that happens physically and spiritually and to give this information to the physical body. This is all. The mind does not make the body. The mind is just a memory card, which saves information until it can be used physically. The mind is like science (physics, chemistry, etc.), which gives a physical result.
In my book, I used the analogy of the smartphone to explain about the three bodies of the human: the physical body is like the corpus, the soul is like the battery, the spirit is the connection (GPRS, WLAN, etc.), and meditation is the charger. The mind is just a part of the physical body. It is physical. And life inside the mind, or the two spiritual bodies, is what gives us energy to think positively.
If you take a smartphone, the mind is the memory card in the smartphone, having all kinds of data, etc. But before you can send your data worldwide you need internet connection. Internet can connect everyone, like spirituality and meditation.
So, the mind can think of everything. The telephone can write every message, how the mind wishes. The mind (the physical body) thinks, “I want to eat rice”. And you write it in your smartphone. But your smartphone cannot show you the image of rice. What will give you this information is internet. Internet will let your smartphone find this information; it will allow every type of rice to appear on the screen. The smartphone itself doesn’t include Google; it is internet connection that lets Google function.
So, spirituality with meditation is also like this. Spirituality through meditation gives a concrete result, which is life, which will allow us to see what we need. The smartphone shows me my message, “I want to eat rice”. With internet, I may select whether I want to eat long rice, black rice, red rice, or risotto. Internet lets the rice appear physically on the screen, how I want it. I will select the type of rice I need, and they will deliver it to my doorstep. It is simple like that. Internet, which is like spirituality, allows it. And meditation is the key to charge the energy in the soul and bring the spirit closer to the physical body, making the connection strong.
Thank you very much for revealing the interesting aspect on the function of mind in the physical body! As I understood, mind like a memory card, saves all information experienced by the physical and spiritual bodies. However, some of the information (including memories, thoughts and even wishes) saved in mind might be useless, even harmful for spiritual advancement. In case of smartphones, we have easy tools to determine what data is useful and what is harmful, and we have easy tools to clean the memory card; however, in case of humans, some of the thoughts and wishes kept in mind as a data are hard to erase and remain there for a long time. Thinking on the later issue raised the question to me, whether it is achievable only the data (wishes, thoughts) which are good for soul and good for spiritual advancement to be preserved in a human mind or not. Could, you, please, elaborate your standpoint on this issue?
The human mind is different from a memory card. I gave this analogy comparing the mind to the memory card based on the physical side. The human is a living creature. But a memory card is an object, which is created by the human and which has a limited period of use. A memory card can be destroyed because it is an object. But the human cannot be destroyed because he or she is a living creature, the human can only transform to another life form.
To answer your question, We, humans, don’t like freedom. I would like to give two examples based on what is happening close to us nowadays. First, we have air, which is free to breathe, but we created different types of viruses so that now we need to wear protection and take a lot of precaution before breathing. Second, we have meditation, which is free and which is there to clean our bad karma, bring us happiness and health, help us love ourselves and others, and make us enlightened. But we prefer to spend a lot of resources trying to go to a charlatan or a fake guru who pretend to be spiritual saviours but who cannot even save themselves first. And all this while we have the meditation of the moment, which is Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo and which came from the last Buddha Nichiren Daishonin, who is the Buddha of the moment. But we, humans, prefer something that is more complicated for us or that may harm us before realising that it is bad.
So, in contrast to a memory card, the human is a living creature, complete, perfect, and eternal. Everything that is a part of the human is also eternal and spiritual. So, humans can never erase a thought, but they can forget a thought, which may then come back again. But humans can also transform a thought. A negative thought can become a positive thought through meditating while being connected from the heart with the mind. Not just the mind. Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo is not the mind of the Lotus Sutra, it is the heart of the Lotus Sutra. And the mind is the Lotus Sutra itself. And other sutras are the body of the Lotus Sutra.
I would invite you to try to visit a Nichiren Shoshu temple to become Buddhist and start meditating to see and have a positive answer to all your next spiritual experiences.