The Nature of Man's Mind: What the Mind is Capable Of

The capacity and nature of man's mind is phenomenal. It has proven to be capable of dissecting the DNA code; capable of looking at birds fly and invent the airplane; capable of hearing an echo and invent radio transmission; and capable of reading about spiritual consciousness and define it in terms of quantum physics.

There is one big reason for the enormous strides made by man's mind: The nature of man's mind.

Man's mind is goal oriented: The mind is capable of taking on a goal, setting up a game-plan and following it through to its logical conclusion. It can be focused and determined. In fact it tends to direct its actions and thinking better when it is purpose oriented.

Man's mind is capable of initiating purposeful activity: The mind is capable of summoning the power of the Will, Intelligence and motor ability to initiate purposeful action. Coordinating all the three and putting it to a meaningful task is key to achievement.

The mind is a questioning mind: The mind looks to find out root causes, scenarios, probabilities etc. Because the mind is essentially exploratory and when it finds a purpose, it will not rest till the search ends. This is because the mind is capable of sorting, categorizing and nailing down every bit of information into a picture of completeness and order.

The mind is orderly and systematic: The mind processes and analyzes information in an orderly manner through observation, repeatability and predictability to draw conclusions. Different minds may have different capacities to observe, analyze and process information depending on the storehouse of knowledge and intelligence.

The mind is capable of orienting and adapting: The mind is a good judge of the results of its own actions. It has a built-in mechanism to spot and correct errors. It is this self-correcting ability that allows the man to orient and adapt himself to different situations depending on the call of the situation.

The mind is capable of making order out of chaos: One of the fundamental characteristics of the human mind is the ability to bring order to chaos. It does this through the mathematical process of systematically sorting, organizing and classifying inputs from the environment into manageable buckets that can be accessed for more productive application later. This process happens only because of the three key aspects of the mind's nature: The ability to observe, the need for accuracy and the need for completeness

The mind is capable of striving for perfection: The mind will not rest till the goal that it has set for itself is reached. It will strive for perfection in its efforts. Sometimes even when the body is not willing, the mind will remain restless, till its standard of perfection is reached. This is because the mind is capable of comparing results with goals to perceive gaps. Gaps make the mind strive harder for perfection.

The mind is capable of abstract thinking: The mind is capable of extremely esoteric and intangible thinking. Spirituality, metaphysics, occult are all areas that the human mind has explored. This is because the mind is capable of forming connections between different pieces of inputs, looking at parallels and patterns and coming up with hypothesis. The strong sense of inner order combined with an exploratory tendency is what gives rise to the abstract thinking ability.

The mind is capable of being trained: If the learning is presented in an ordered form, logically and appropriately, the mind is capable of absorbing the learning like a sponge. From something as straightforward as a tangible skill like sewing to something that is more sophisticated as absorbing cultural nuances, social graces and morality, the human mind is capable of learning all of it. How well it learns depends on how well the subject is "presented", but it is mathematical enough to convert the abstract thinking to a simple linear sequence and assimilate the core learning concepts.

Man's mind might have its limitations, but those limitations are determined by how much the nature of the mind has been leveraged. The nature of the mind determines the altitude of man's success.