Jagad Guru Chris Butler | Quotes | Controlling the mind

Controlling the mind

Gaze intently at some nearby image in your immediate environment. Now close your eyes and look at the picture of that image in your mind. Try to hold the image in your mind and look at it for quite some time. If it begins to move around, try to steady it; if it begins to fade away, bring it back. This exercise should make it quite clear how hard it is to control the mind—to keep something in your mind that you want to keep in your mind. If you can think thoughts you do not want to think, this further illustrates that you are different from your mind.


Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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If the mind is to be controlled, who is to control it? Who is trying to control the mind? It is the self. You, the self, try to control your mind. The mind is your possession. It is not you.


Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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What about the seer? What about you? This is the crux of the matter. Even if scientists can determine how electrochemical impulses translate into such varying forms as a golden sunset, a red truck, or a flower, the main question still remains: Where is the self who is looking at those forms and images? What is this self made of? In what part of the body or brain is it? In other words: What is your essence, and where are you?


Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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So sensory experiences determine the content of your mind, and you are the viewer of that content. It’s just like going to a movie. You are the viewer of the content of the movie. You, the self, are in the “theater” of the body, watching the movie that is appearing on your mind. You’re like a person in a theater viewing a film that is appearing on the screen. Your eyes, ears, and other organs of perception are like cameras, recorders, and so on. Your mind is like the film or tape that the information is recorded on. You, the self, are like the moviegoer who perceives all the information (forms, colors, sounds, feelings, and so on).


Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

Jagad Guru Chris Butler | Quotes | There is Not Enough to Satisfy Greed

There is enough in the world to fulfill everyone’s needs, but not enough to fulfill everyone’s greed. In some parts of the world, people are dying from severe undernourishment, while in other parts of the world people are dying from obesity.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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There is more than enough food, water, fuel and so on to satisfy the actual needs of everyone on the planet. But there is not enough to satisfy everyone's greed. Even if it were physically possible for you to consume all the food, water, and fuel in the world, you still would not be satisfied. “Material food” cannot satisfy spiritual craving. Since the materialist is never satisfied, he never feels that he has had enough.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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This is why people in modern Western societies are still not satisfied, even though they are so economically advanced and thus have so much facility for sense enjoyment. They always want more. As the late British economist E. F. Schumacher points out:

Is there enough to go round? Immediately we encounter a serious difficulty: What is “enough”? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues “economic growth” as the highest of all values and therefore has no concept of “enough.” There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: “Halt! We have enough”? There is none.*

What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness. A society that has great material prosperity but lacks spiritual purpose is really a poor society. A body without the soul is a dead body—even if it is nicely decorated with fancy ornaments.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation

*E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 25.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler | Quotes | Materialism: The Root Cause of Crime

You can eat so much food that your belly aches—yet you still want more! Even though your belly is filled to the point of physical pain, you, the self, are not full; you still desire to consume more. The fact that the body can be full or satisfied while you still feel empty is evidence that the body is not you.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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Since no amount of sense gratification is ever enough to satisfy us, we always feel we need “more.” From the poorest person to the richest person, from the slum-dweller to the person who lives in a mansion, everyone wants more sense gratification and thus more material wealth. If you are poor, you feel you need a color TV to be happy; if you’re rich, you feel you need a new yacht. No amount of material wealth is ever enough.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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Criminologists and social scientists have almost completely overlooked the fact that materialism is the root cause of crime. False identification of the body as the self leads people to believe that sense enjoyment will make them happy and satisfied; and most crimes are directly or indirectly connected with the attempt to find satisfaction in sense enjoyment.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation


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Because our materialistic society considers the acquisition of wealth and power to be the goal of life, the more wealth and power you possess, the more “successful” you are considered to be. If you are materially poor, you are considered a failure in life, whereas if you are wealthy and powerful (regardless of how you acquired such wealth and power), you are considered a great success. So obtaining material wealth is not only essential for your direct sense gratification, but also for your feelings of self-worth. In other words, you feel only as valuable as the things that you possess and control. Lacking appreciation of your real value as an eternal, blissful spark of the Original Cause -- falsely identifying the temporary body as yourself—you try to achieve feelings of self-worth by acquisition and control of material things. To achieve such economic development, you may end up engaging in illegal activity—in other words, you might become a crook.

Jagad Guru Chris Butler - Science of Identity Foundation