The illusory mind

Does the mind really exist? Is it not just an illusion? An advaitin will emphatically answer "yes", but that's not the point of view from which this question is being asked. According to Advaita Vedanta, everything except Brahman is an illusion. However, as long as one is aware of the existence of the body, it is hard to say that the material world is an illusion. After all, are we not perceiving the beautiful colors of the rainbow, the soft murmur of the winds and the music of the water as it flows down the valley? The body exists and so does everything else in the material world. It is also not hard to accept that there is something called consciousness that exists and differentiates the living and the non-living. And this consciousness is also most certainly not the same as matter. It is something beyond this material world. But what about the mind? Where does it reside? Does it have any definitive existence or is it just a figment of our imagination?

Whenever the great sage, Ramana Maharshi, was asked about the means to attain enlightenment, he used to always ask his disciples to look for the source of all thoughts, for the source of the "I". He said that if we search hard enough and deep enough, we will realize that there is no such thing as a separate mind and all the thoughts truly emerge from the depths of consciousness. Many other saints of India have also proclaimed that the pure mind and pure consciousness are one and the same. The mind has also been defined as a reflection of the pure consciousness in the individual.

One thing that can certainly be inferred from the above is that the mind does not share the same "level of reality" as the material body and consciousness. It is more of a function of the consciousness on the individual body. In other words, it is the limited perception of consciousness that the brain of the individual is able to grasp. As this perception increases, the mind also grows and eventually merges into the same infinite consciousness. This is what is known as enlightenment or samadhi.

If the mind is illusory and is just a function of the consciousness, then it must also die when the body dies. What then is the basis of re-birth? Is it the memories and experiences that a person had in his/her life, which survives the death of the body? Even if this is true, it still remains to be deciphered how these memories get transferred from one body to the next. May be in some subtle form in higher dimensions!