"Our two minds .... One is an act of the emotional
mind, the other of the rational mind. In a very real
sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that
feels" (Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence,
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 1996, page 8). This
rational mind is also called the faculty of logic and
reason.
The Upanishads call the emotional component of mind as
Chitta and the rational component of mind as Manas. The
nature of Manas changes with each and every perception
and it's understanding. Manas represents the
intellignce of a person.
The Upanishads say that these two are opposite in
nature. Modern psychologist also have observed it,
but they are not very sure about it:
"At the same time, reason sometimes clearly seems
to come into conflict with some desires (even
while not being in conflict with others) giving us
the impression that reason is separate from
emotion".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason
The irrational aspects of life are handled
by the emotional mind. In some persons, it
works more dominantly than rational mind.
Modern psychologists say that passions have the
same limitations of senses as they tend toward
immediate emotional discharge. Chitta is the quick
acting component of the mind which can be termed
as leftist or negative thinking part. It is called
negative because some psychologists felt that it
separates the received information into pieces,
contains unintentional and contradictory ideas,
and lacks internal organisation, inner
consistency, and concrete solutions. On the
contrary, some philosophers thought that this is
the 'idealistic view' of thinking about a problem.
This center can handle divergent thoughts like a
multi-channel parallel processing hardware in a
super computer. It is the seat of the element
Water. It controls the processing of liquids in
the body and interaction of the body with the
liquids out side the body. Chitta means emotion or
intuition. This center is connected with
instincts, urges, impulses, desires, imagination,
sentiments, passions, caring, pleasure,
exploration, unconventional ideas, moods, insight,
superstitions, immodesty, immorality, analysis of
details, concern about particular features,
capacity to find novel relationships, unrestrained
expressions connected with body or mind, molding
of past experiences into new constellations of
meanings, creation of artistic, poetic and musical
works and the like. Seeing a good work of painting
or listening to music of one's liking will set
waves of emotion in Chitta center. This center
helps us to imagine things in new ways. It is
known that lighter side of life like fun may
contain silly and ridiculous situations. An artist
is said to go to the extremes to divorce himself
from environmental constraints. Such is the way in
which Chitta works. This center has seeds of past
memories and can access Jnaana center for more
details of each memory. It controls the
sensitivity of the sense-organs. If the vitality
of this center gets reduced due to any reason, the
sensitivity of the sense-organs also gets reduced.
For example, the sense-organs feel sleepy after an
ejaculation in man. Even if the man has very high
artistic talents, they also will not respond
normally soon after the ejaculation. It takes
about 40 minutes before some recovery is felt.
This center can be compared to a convex lens - it
provides insight for the subtle. It's working is
similar to Differentiation in mathematics. It
helps to observe all the minor details, and each
minor detail is given very high importance.
http://profvsprasad.blog.com/
