Raman Maharishi, a great sage who was then a young boy, was once caught by a sudden sensation of death, which he feared of course. Then he gathered patience and analysed the situation to face this strange phenomena called death, a name which strikes terror in the heart of all. He reasoned thus "I am dying, this body is dying, it will perish, but what about "me"? What I am?" Questioning thus he experienced that he is a spirit which though living in the body, is beyond it. From that time he left home and proceeded to the feet of the Arunachal Mountain to meditate deeper on the spirit.

Réné Descartes too stated that there is a thing beyond mind, a reality beyond all that can be seen and touched, with the famous statement "I think, therefore I am" - "Cogito ergo Sum". But unfortunately he stopped with the discovery that "I" am thinking. If he had gone deeper into the search of the "I", whom he said is thinking, he could have known that beyond the thinking faculty there is the real Self, of which the "I" is only a reflection. Modern psychology, too, does not go beyond the subconscious mind, the mystics say that beyond the conscious mind, is the hyper or super conscious mind which is the real Self, or the mind in its pure state without any limitations. It is a wonder that man has attained formidable heights in science but yet has remained a mystery to himself. Man forms part of the whole. By knowing that part, the whole can be known. The Vedas says "Know That by knowing Which, all else is known". Scientists observe everything except the observer. The yogis start their search by observing themselves and finally discover the observer and the observed to be essentially one. The real search for truth starts by going deeper in oneself.

In the Bible it is said: "Be still and know that I am". So to be able to find an answer to the above questions, stillness of the mind is of paramount importance. Such stillness is called meditation. The quest of the Self and the training of the mind to achieve such a goal is what religion is all about.

The human body is one of the most sacred and complex object created by the Supreme Being. It is composed of many parts amongst which the senses are the foremost. In fact we have five instruments of actions or actional organs and five instruments of perception or sense organs.

The sense organs are governed by the mind. It is the mind which sees, hears or tastes, but it does all this through the senses. For instance, it sees through the eyes. The eyes may be looking at an object, but if the mind is lost in its own thoughts, one will not perceive it.

Now given that the sense organs are limited and imperfect, the mind interpretes the distorted information and inevitably arrives at wrong conclusions. A piece of wood in water appears to the eyes to be in a slanting position, so the mind will say that the piece of wood in water is in a slanting position. In reality this is not true but the mind has interpreted according to the image given by the eyes. Therefore it is said that the senses are deceptive.

The mind is composed of the cognitive faculty and the discriminative faculty. The discriminative faculty is also called the intellect. The function of the cognitive faculty is to gather information through the senses, which the intellect will reason, doubt, discriminate, etc. For example, through the eyes the mind receives information of a moving object from a distance; now the intellect will try to identify it. It will say "It is a cow", then it will say "No, it may be a dog". Again it will say "Let it come near, then I will see what it is".

Beyond the mind and the intellect is the soul by whose light the mind and intellect are acting, and which is completely independent of both mind and intellect. Of it the sages say: "It sees without the eyes, it hears without ears". In the Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna says: "Higher than the body are the senses, higher than the senses is the mind, higher than the mind is the intellect and still higher than the intellect is He, that is, the Paramatma or the Supreme Self or God." Though the soul pervades the body, senses, mind and intellect, nevertheless it remains simply a witness to their fiunction, being completely detached. This can be compared to space and creation: though the creation is happening in space, the latter pervades it and is completely unaffected by it.