The second mind...

BOOK REVIEW

M. Gautham Machaiah

Have you noticed that you often unconsciously hum a song that is stuck in your mind? Have you wondered why as much as you try to forget somebody, they keep coming back in your thoughts? Is it not true that even when you are engrossed in work you are unable to take your mind away from your lover?

In his international bestseller, The Valkyries, Paulo Coelho introduces an interesting concept of the “second mind” to describe the constant clatter that goes on within our heads, over which we often have no control. The second mind is always at work whether you want it to be or not.

Yes, we all have two minds, functioning at the same time. But in order to penetrate the invisible world and develop your powers, you have to live in the present, the here and now. And to live in the present, you have to control your second mind.

Every time you are ready to make contact with the universal wisdom, the second mind plays spoilsport, barring the entrance with its repetitive ideas, its unimportant problems, its melodies, its financial problems and its unresolved passions.

The trick is to be patient, and listen to everything that your second mind has to say. Do not respond. Do not argue. Just listen and it will get tired. Conquer your second mind and allow the Universe to do what it wants to do with it.

Actually, The Valkyries is not a book on meditation or the power of the mind, but a story of Paulo Coelho who in the search of his own guardian angel is led to the Valkyries—leather-clad warrior women with a high spiritual quotient who roam the Mojave Desert in Mexico on motorbikes. But the concept of the second mind is so powerful and so useful to all students of meditation, that it overrides all other rituals and traditions listed in this philosophically heavy book.

Each one of us has a guardian angel, says the author. Every child has spoken with their guardian angel—until that day when their parents noticed that their ward was talking to people who “did not exist”. They then became intrigued, blamed it on excessive childish imagination and impressed upon their children that their “secret friends” did not exist. The parents had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angels at one time. Or perhaps, they now thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels.

Disenchanted, the angels returned to God, knowing that they could no longer impose their presence. It is not yet too late and all you need to do to have the guidance of your angels is just to call upon them. “And the angels would return gladly,” assures Coelho.

One of the ways of communicating with invisible world is through channelising, where one needs to sit in a quiet place and be attentive to the thoughts that emerge from the bottom of one’s mind. You have to create your spiritual energy to manifest itself and create a bridge between the visible and the invisible.

How do you create such a bridge? Relax, allow the mind to be empty and surprise yourself with the treasure that begins to flow from your soul. There is no ritual needed, no incorporation, nothing. Every human being knows subconsciously that there is a bridge available to the invisible, a bridge one can cross without fear. All you have to do is to create room for God in your soul.

In the end, does Paulo Coelho get to see his guardian angel or does he return disappointed from Mojave?  Whatever be the outcome of his quest, the master blaster of words succeeds in holding your attention right from the start to the end through his enchanting writing. 

The Valkyries, like Coelho’s other works, does not measure up to his masterpiece ‘The Alchemist’, but it is definitively worth a read. 

The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho

Editoria Rocca Ltd Brazil, 1992, Rs 350

Published in India by Harper Collins Publishers India

QUOTES

• Love is the only thing that never fails
• Anything that occurs once can never occur again. But, should it happen twice, it will surely happen a third time
• The great teachings of saints are their lives here on earth. Contained in them are all we need to know, and all we have to do is imitate them
• You will have many problems in your life. But from now on, only God’s hand will be responsible for everything—you will interfere no more
•  God has the right to destroy me. I do not
• Meet your obligations. But obligations never prevented anyone from following their dreams
• We speak of freedom, and we are prisoners to our own guilt
• Make use of our lives, nourish our dreams. If we are made of earth, the earth is also made of us. Everything is one thing.
• Require us to seek out the love of others. Even with the fear of rejection, of severe glances, of the hardness of the heart of some—do not permit us ever to give up our quest for love
• When God wants to drive a person insane, he grants that person’s every wish
• The day will come when the problem of hunger can be solved, when love will be accepted by every heart, when the most terrible of human experiences, solitude--which is worse than hunger -- will be banned from the face of earth