itself limited by them now becomes aware of the limitless consciousness of the soul that isthe source of its empowerment. In this thoughtless state, the soul can reflect its limitlesspotentialities in the mind and thus empower the mind.

Desires
An average mind is full of all sorts of desires. Modern culture is creating more and moredesires. Our economy is based on creating new desires. When a desire is satisfied the happinessis very short lived and very soon a new desire comes up. When a desire is not fulfilled it leadsto frustration and unhappiness. So yoga says keep your desires less. The less the desires thehappy the mind. If this is not immediately possible then slowly transform the lower materialdesires into higher spiritual ones. Desires are insatiable.

Emotions
Emotions are both positive and negative. Positive emotions like love, compassion, sympathy,charitability should be consciously cultivated. Negative emotions like anger and fear havetheir need. They are sometimes a survival need. When the emotions start eating into us thenit becomes decidedly bad. We have to learn to express them without suppressing, experiencethem to see what lesson can be learnt and also transform them into positive emotions
through wisdom or meditation.

Sanskaras
Sanskaras are seeds or impressions of all activities that remain in the mind after the activityhas been done. These seeds then create an urge within to repeat the same activities. We carryin our mind seeds which we produced in past lives and also the seeds that we produced inthis life as well. These seeds create our inner nature, our habit patterns, our likes and dislikesour impulsive behavior pattern. When these seeds are positive they help us. When they arenegative they create difficulty in inter-personal relationship and creates much pain within.Yoga teaches us how to fry these seeds in the fire of wisdom or meditation so that theseseeds lose their power over us and we can act naturally out of free choice. At this momentwe do not have this free choice as these seeds compel us to do some activities which we nolonger want to do. We are at this moment slaves of these sanskaras. Yoga and meditationteaches us how not to get affected by them.

Functions of the mind

Manas
This is our sense mind. It coordinates all sensory activities. It is located at the pons varolii inthe brain. It collects all the data from the senses and transfers it to buddhi for discernmentand judgement.

Buddhi
This aspect of the mind sorts the data coming from manas compares it with previous datastored in chitta and makes the decision about what has been perceived. Buddhi functionsfrom the eye-brow center.