Analysis of the Human Mind
As you can see from the above mind Gant picture the following five centres store memories of different types in the subconscious mind.
1. Identification and interpretation centre: This centre identifies and interprets the nature of an impulse.
2. Give-and-take account centre: This centre maintains accounts of all types of give-and-take with others and also tries to settle the score. For example, if Mr. X beats a person, the give-and-take account centre of the person remembers it and tries to make the person beat Mr. X whenever he gets an opportunity or tries to create an opportunity to do it or give proportionate sorrow/unhappiness to Mr. X.
3. Instinct and desire centre: It is a storehouse of all the desires and instincts.
4. Like and dislike centre: This centre sends impulses of likes and dislikes to the conscious mind.
5. Temperamental characteristics centre: It is a collection of the characteristics which comprise the temperament of an individual.
An example of how the give-and-take account centre exerts its influence
To understand how various centres in the mind function, let us take an example of a dog approaching a person wagging its tail.
Step 1: When the dog advances towards the person, the impulse reaches the person’s eyes. From the eyes, it reaches the visual centre in his brain. From the visual centre in the brain, the impulse reaches the subtle sense organ of vision.
Step 2: From the subtle sense organ of vision, the impulse travels to the conscious mind. At this stage, the person is just able to realize that there is something approaching him.
Step 3: From the conscious mind, the impulse travels to the subconscious mind and reaches the identification and interpretation centre, which identifies and interprets the impulse as follows. The object approaching is a dog. The dog seems to be friendly as it is wagging its tail.
From the identification and interpretation centre the impulse reach the give-and-take account centre. If there is any balance in the account, the impulse gets modified, for example, if that particular dog or the subtle body in that dog has troubled the person in any way, at any time in the past (present or previous lifetime), the impulse will be modified so as to trouble the dog in some manner.
From the give-and-take account centre the impulse goes to the instinct and desire centre, where it gets modified according to the person’s desire, for example, the desire to play with the dog.
From the instinct and desire centre the impulse goes to the like and dislike centre. The impulse is liked or disliked depending upon whether it gives pleasure or pain respectively. From the like and dislike centre the impulse goes to the temperamental characteristic centre, where it gets modified according to the temperament.
From the temperamental characteristics centre the impulse goes to the intellect centre. The intellect centre modifies the impulse based on the knowledge stored therein. It also takes into consideration the possible consequences of being influenced by the other centres and other factors such as the availability of time to play with the dog, etc. The nature of the impulse emerging from the intellect centre depends on which centre is able to modify it to a maximum extent. For example, if the ‘desire to play with the dog’ from the like and dislike centre is stronger than ‘there is no time to play with the dog’ from the intellect centre, the impulse going ahead from the intellect centre to the five subtle motor organs, will be ‘to play with the dog’. Thus, the impulse emerging from the intellect centre is the resultant vector operating from all the centres.
Now suppose every centre in the mind gives a positive response to the stimuli of the dog and the give-and-take account centre gives a negative response, then what would the response be?
In this case, the final reaction/action would still be negative. The reason is that the give-and-take account centre has ‘vetoing rights’ over all other centres and exerts a 65% force as compared to the other centres which total just 35%.
This is the reason why sometimes we reflect back on a silly choice that we made in life and say, ‘What was I thinking?’ Well the answer is that it was the give-and-take account doing the thinking for you and despite the best intellect, people sometimes get into trouble.
All choices in the major events in our life such as marriage, serious accidents and being cheated out of a small fortune, have their roots in the give-and-take account centre.
From the five subtle motor organs, the impulse is carried to the various motor and hypothalamic centres in the brain and the conscious mind and the person responds accordingly. In this case, if the person has an innate and inexplicable fear of dogs, that has been impressed on his mind due to an incident in a previous lifetime, he will react adversely to the dog and may even pick up a stone to chase the dog away.
Now we can apply this to all situations in life. Reflecting back on our lives we may have come across people who have been kind or unkind to us for no apparent reason.
This explains why this happens to us.
