What is the Mind: It is your thinking tool that is possessing you in today’s world; this is called the mind. It is the very images that pass through your head every moment—the images of your parents, your child, your house, your car, your city, your country. These are just the images produced, and they are the mind itself. You are communicating with those images on a daily basis as if they are reality. It is every emotional thought that passes through your head, and it makes you think in a certain way, which is most of the time defying logical thinking. There is nothing in the world to conquer except your own mind. One who has conquered the mind has conquered the world.

But you will not even say this after you wake up. Because it sounds egoic to me to conquer the mind. When You, as you know yourself, find itself in reality, then you cannot claim that it has conquered the mind. Because the mind will come again disguised as a conqueror.

You are free to take my words wrong though and misinterpret them as you like. Or you may ask some follow-up questions, like: “Is the mind not important to survive in this world?” or “How can one give up the mind?” and so on. But remember, these questions are also the mind. You are listening to these questions, and these questions are making sense to you because you have such tremendous confidence in the thinking tool. Unless you realise that thinking is not everything, and thinking has some limitations, thinking is the barrier between You and Yourself. You cannot drop it. You will listen to your mind more than what I say. You have more confidence in your thinking than you have in the master. But in today’s world, the fact is that the mind has conquered the man. Man moves, talks, fights with neighbours because the mind tells him so; he does not have enough awareness to see what is operating through him. You have become one with the mind.

What is Self-Observation: You can use the self-observation technique to understand what I am pointing out, self-observation as advocated by George Gurdjieff. You can keep 80 to 90 percent of your attention on the world outside and keep the remaining 20 to 10 percent on yourself. Imagine as though a camera is always watching you and recording your reactions all the time. You often complain about others, and how bad others are, how irresponsible others are, how mechanical others are. You are to observe your own actions and reactions, and the way you treat others, and the way you complain about others, weather, and so on. This way you will invite self-observation into your life. I don't know what you are going to discover through self-observation. But it is certainly going to reveal your blind spots. But remember, you have to give up self-observation too at some point. Self-observation is not self-judgement; it is more like witnessing yourself and your thoughts without judgement of good or bad. At some time, a "why" and "how" should arise in you, like after recording your own actions and reactions, you may ask, "Why am I behaving this way, and is there another way to live?" If these questions don't arise in you, it means you are not honest with yourself.