Duties according to individual nature - not birth

The following is from the Bhagavad Gita:

“Brahmanas, ksatriyas, vaisyas and sudras are distinguished by the qualities born of their own natures in accordance with the material modes, O chastiser of the enemy.

“Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, honesty, knowledge, wisdom and religiousness–these are the natural qualities by which the brahmanas work.

“Heroism, power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity and leadership are the natural qualities of work for the ksatriyas.

“Farming, cow protection and business are the natural work for the vaisyas, and for thesudras there is labor and service to others.

“By following his qualities of work, every man can become perfect. Now please hear from Me how this can be done.

“By worship of the Lord, who is the source of all beings and who is all-pervading, a man can attain perfection through performing his own work.

“It is better to engage in one’s own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another’s occupation and perform it perfectly. Duties prescribed according to one’s nature are never affected by sinful reactions.

Control the subconscious

The key aspect to controlling the mind and senses is to control the subconscious mind. The conscious mind can be controlled by the exercise of willpower temporarily. However the subconscious mind is more subtle and carries impressions from the past, which can manifest at any time under certain circumstances. The subconscious mind responds most to thoughts that have a strong emotion attached to them. The emotion can be a positive one, such as faith or love, or a negative one such as anger or fear. In the absence of dominant positive thoughts, our subconscious mind will pick up any random impulse and act on it. For example, a song or jingle playing on the television can get fixed in the subconscious unknowingly, such that we may be humming it without even being aware that we are doing so. The way to consciously embed positive thoughts into our subconscious mind is by the process of autosuggestion. Mantra repetition is one example of autosuggestion.

The mantra is internalized in five stages:

• Likhita - through writing
• Vaikhari - through speaking
• Upamshu - through whispering
• Manasa - through thinking
• Ajapa - through uninterrupted inner repetition

You are your best friend...and also your worst enemy

The Bhagavad Gita says 'He should raise the self by the Self; let him not suffer the Self to be lowered; for Self is the friend of self, and, in like manner, self is its own enemy. Self is the friend of the man who is self-conquered; so self like a foe hath enmity to him who is not self-conquered.

The subconscious mind may be likened to the storage room of everything that is currently not in your conscious mind; it stores all your life experiences, your belief system, your memories, you skills, all situations you've been through, and all images you've ever seen. The best way to understand the subconscious mind is through the example of someone who's just started to learn how to drive. At the beginning, he wouldn't be able to hold a conversation with anyone while driving as he would be focusing on the different moves involved; that's because he's still using his conscious mind to drive.A few weeks later, the driving process comes to him automatically, without having to do any thinking; he'd even start using his cell phone or talk to his friends as he drives. This on account of the fact that the driving information or process has been transferred to his subconscious mind and so the conscious mind is free to function on something else, like talking or using his cell phone.

Realization occurs when awareness during experience leads to learning or acquisition of knowledge that is directly written into the subconscious mind. This is internalized further when this knowledge is automatically applied and leads to a desired outcome. The subconscious mind can be programmed using the process of autosuggestion. Autosuggestion is a process by which an individual trains the subconscious mind to believe something, or systematically schematizes the person's own mental associations, usually for a given purpose. Autosuggestion is most commonly accomplished by presenting (either through caressing or bombarding) one's mind with repetitive thoughts (negative or positive), until those thoughts become internalized. If one uses autosuggestion to program the subconscious mind with positive thoughts, the mind acts as a best friend, however if the repetitive thoughts are negative, the mind acts as one's worst enemy.

The fire of Self-knowledge reduces all bonds of Karma to ashes, like the blazing fire reduces wood to ashes. Our impressions or samskaras (bonds of karma) are stored in the subconscious mind and play themselves out automatically under certain situations that trigger these impressions. This leads to us performing actions that we would otherwise consciously avoid, thus affecting our free will. However man can erase all these bonds of karma from his subconscious mind by simply acquiring true knowledge or the self by realization or experience with awareness. Once self-knowledge is programmed into the subconscious mind, it is formatted and there is no room for bonds of previous karmas.