Integrating the Harmony of Mind and Heart

Integrating the Harmony of Mind and Heart
[Vinod Anand]

For most of us the mind and heart are at —“loggerheads, and the conflict between L the two creates confusion. The mind, in its objective handling of the material world, is saturated with experiences of multiplicity and separateness, and it therefore feeds egocentric tendencies which divide one person from another and make some selfish and possessive.

But the heart, which feels the glow of love, gets the glimpse of unity of spirit; it therefore seeks expression through self- giving tendencies which unite two or more persons and makes one selfless and generous.

When the mind encroaches upon the province of the heart, it does so by seeking assurance or conviction as a conditional precedent which must be fulfilled before there is release of love.

But love is nothing if it is not spontaneous. It cannot be the conclusion of reasoning. It is not fruit of the spirit of bargain. If you want to be certain about the object of love before giving your love, it is only a form of calculated selfishness.

If the mind is a treasure house of learning, the heart is a treasure house of spiritual wisdom. Mind cannot tell you which things are worth having; it can only tell you how to achieve the ends accepted from non- intellectual sources.

In most persons the mind accepts ends from the promptings of wants, but this means denial of the life of spirit. Like the shuttle of the weaver’s loom, the human mind moves within two extremes, developing the Warf and woof of the cloth of experience.

Development of the psychic life is best represented not as a straight line but as a zigzag course. The opposites of experience are like two banks of a river: were there to be no banks to river, the water would disperse, making it impossible for the river to reach the destination.

In the same way, the life force would dissipate itself were it not for being confined between opposites. But these banks of the river of life are not two parallel lines; they are two converging lines which meet at the point of liberation.

The amount of oscillation becomes less and less as the individual approaches the goal and it subsides when he has done so. In cosmic evolution the subsiding of the alternation between opposites means mahapralaya, and in the spiritual evolution of the individual, it is liberation.

It is only when the mind accepts its ends and values from the deepest promptings of the heart that it contributes to the life of spirit. Spiritual understanding is born of the harmony between the mind and heart. This harmony of mind and heart does not require the mixing-up of their functions.

It does not imply cross functioning but cooperative functioning. Their functions are neither identical nor coordinated. The mind and heart must of course be ‘balanced’. But this balance cannot be secured by pitching the mind against the heart or by pitching the heart against the mind.

It can be attained not through mechanical tension but through intelligent adjustment. The mind and heart might be said to be balanced when they perform their respective functions without erring this way or that.

It happens only when they are so balanced that there can be true harmony between them. Such harmony of mind and heart is the most important condition for the integral undivided life of spiritual understanding.