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Two: Aspects of the Path 49
destroying the mind – through the main paths of Action,
Meditation, Knowledge and Love. These have been chalked out
by the Masters for the purpose of destroying the mind while still
retaining consciousness.
Let us consider how, through the Path of Action, the goal
of Man-O-Nash, that annihilation of the mind which transforms
the false “I” into the real “I,” can be attained. Perfect Masters saw
that actions which have false ego and impressionful mind as
their background feed the mind instead of destroying it. They
saw that everyone has to do actions; even the laziest of men has
to eat, drink, etc. These actions, instead of destroying the mind,
only feed it again. Therefore they conceived of “action-less
action.” That means to act but in such a way that the effect is as
if no action were done. In this way, past impressions of actions
get spent up mentally through experience of happiness and
misery, but no new impressions are created.
Suppose you help someone without any thought of selfinterest;
suppose you try to protect a woman and in doing so,
get beaten and the police arrest you and put you in jail. These
happenings spend up some of your past sanskaras, but as you
had no self-interest, no fresh sanskaras are formed. This process
is so long and complicated that one can attain Man-O-Nash
through action only after many Yugas.*
The real goal of life is not the death of the ego but the
death of the mind. So when Mohammed or Zoroaster or Jesus
talked of being born once, or dying once, they meant the death
of the mind. Mind is born from the very beginning – even
before the stone age. This birth takes place only once and the
* Cycles of time.