bs”d

chapter thirteen

Mind
Control

It is very convenient to have control over one’s

mind. Even though thoughts are abstract realities they
impact everything we do and feel, and not always the
way we want them to. They can drive a person to
great heights or cause him to descend to great depths.
Mind control is crucial for accomplishing the former
and avoiding the latter.
Mind control does mean that a person can al-
ways keep away improper thoughts, which can merely
be good ideas at the wrong time. Planning breakfast is
a good thing, but not in the middle of the Shemonah
Esrai.1 Dreaming of a vacation may be uplifting, inap-
propriately though on Yom Kippur. Baseless scary
thoughts are debilitating and counterproductive.
Sometimes the mind seems to have, well, a mind

1The Chazon Ish made the shidduch between his sister Miriam and Rabbi
Ya’akov Yisroel Kanievsky, his only regret being that he thought of it one
day during his Shemonah Esrai.

Mind Control!1
of its own. Ideas just seem to pop into a person’s head,
sometimes because of association, other times for
unknown reasons. It’s as if something inside a person,
the yetzer hara more than likely, randomly dumps
undesired and irritating thoughts into a person’s mind.
Fighting such thoughts can actually intensify
them, and all a person can do is sit out the unwelcome
thought and wait until it passes. The problem is that it
can later return, important time is consumed in the
meantime, and frustration can result. It can even in re-
duce self-esteem.
What it really results in is an incredible oppor-
tunity to develop one’s mind control. Though the brain
is not a muscle, it works like one sometimes. Muscles
only become stronger and more fit because of resist-
ance. The more resistance a muscle has to overcome,
the stronger it becomes.
Meditation, which is all about mind control, tells
a person to empty his mind of all extraneous thoughts
by focussing on a single word or idea. Anyone who has
tried this knows that it is not a skill that one develops
overnight. It can take a lot of effort and time because it
is only once a person tries to gain such mastery over
his mind that he learns just how much he lacks it.
In fact, the average person is bombarded by all
kinds of extraneous thoughts all day long. Most of the
time he doesn’t notice it or even care. If it doesn’t
seem to make a difference to his life he just goes with
a flow about which he may not even be aware.
It’s like vision. It is not a coincidence that many
people who do a lot of reading require glasses while
those who do not think they are perfectly fine without
them. The implication would be that reading weakens
a person’s eyes and requires them to wear spectacles
to see well.
In truth, reading can actually strengthen one’s
eyes. It is also demands that a person focus his eyes on
small text often, which tends to reveal any weakness
their eyes may have.
Non-readers on the other hand just don’t notice

2!CLARITY OR ELSE
their eyes are weaker because they don’t use them
enough in a way that reveals this. They can require
glasses for years, only noticing once their eyes weaken
significantly enough even for everyday use.
Likewise it is the people that spend a lot of time
concentrating who notice just how active their minds
are on a regular basis. They are the ones who are
forced to hone their mental skills and learn how to
deal with unwanted thoughts.
From a Torah perspective, there are two other
important elements to add to this discussion: the
yetzer hara and Hashgochah Pratis—the evil inclination
and Divine Providence. Regarding the yetzer hara, the
Talmud warns:

Shimon ben Levi said: Every day the yetzer hara

of a person strengthens itself to kill him . . . If The
Holy One, Blessed is He, did not help him, he
would not prevail. (Kiddushin 30b)

What? We live “side-by-side” with a murderer,

inside of us?
Apparently, yes.
If so, then why aren’t we dead yet?
For a similar reason as to why everyday bacteria
doesn’t kill us. Just as there is an automatic immune
system defending our health 24/7, there is also a
spiritual immune system, called the “yetzer tov,” our
“good inclination,” defending our spiritual health
every conscious moment of the day:

Rav Alexandri on concluding his prayer used to

add the following: Master of the Universe, it is
known full well to You that our will is to perform
Your will. What prevents us? The yeast in the
dough and subjection to the foreign powers.
(Brochos 17a)

The “yeast in the dough” to which he refers is

the yetzer hara. In other words, Rebi Alexandri is

Mind Control!3
saying that we are hardwired to do be good. It’s just
that the yetzer hara gets in our way of being so all the
time.
The comparison between the two systems does
not end there. Just as the immune system has to be
triggered by an invading germ likewise the yetzer tov is
only triggered by the antics of the yetzer hara. Furthe-
rmore, just as we must be vigilant in maintaining our
physical health to strengthen our physical immune
system, so must we be vigilant in maintaining our
spiritual health in order to strengthen our spiritual im-
mune system.
Another aspect of the immune system strength-
ening process is actually becoming exposed to bac-
teria, then fighting against and overcoming it. Similarly
we need the yetzer hara at this stage of history to
strengthen the yetzer tov. This is why it says:

Rebi Nachman bar Shmuel said: “And behold, it

was very good” (Bereishis 1:31); “And behold,”
refers to the yetzer tov; “very good” refers to the
yetzer hara, for the yetzer hara is very good.
(Bereishis Rabbah 9:7)

Very good? Didn’t the Talmud just say that the

yetzer hara tries to kill its host? Yes, but only in order to
force a person to access his free will and become a
better person, something that becomes a lot more
likely with help from God:

If The Holy One, Blessed is He, did not help him,

he would not prevail. (Kiddushin 30b)

One way that Heaven helps in the battle against

the yetzer hara is through Torah itself:

The Holy One, Blessed is He, says to the Jewish

people: I created the yetzer hara, and I created
Torah as its spice. If you involve yourselves in
Torah, then you will not fall prey to it . . . and if

4!CLARITY OR ELSE
 you don’t involve yourselves with Torah, then
you will fall prey to it. (Kiddushin 30b)
It is Torah that allows a person to understand the
yetzer hara, and how it works. It is the mitzvos that
expose the yetzer hara through its resistance, and
allow a person to develop a strategy against it. More
importantly it is Torah that teaches a person how to
channel the negative energy of the yetzer hara in a
positive direction.
Another way that God helps a person against his
yetzer hara is to spare him from those things that feed
the imagination and stimulate inappropriate or un-
desired thoughts. As it says:

If a person sanctifies himself a little, they will

sanctify him a lot. (Yoma 38b)

This means that if a person acknowledges the

importance of living a holy existence, and takes steps
to do so, Divine Providence will help him succeed. If a
person, however, throws caution to the wind and
allows himself to be exposed to elements of life that
promote unwanted thoughts, then Heaven may use
them to show the person the danger he has created
for himself, to teach him the foolishness of taking such
risks.
On a more technical level, thoughts work very
much like dreams:

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emo-

tions, and sensations that occur usually invol-
untarily in the mind during certain stages of
sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are
not definitively understood, though they have
been a topic of scientific speculation. (Wikipedia)

One thing is clear: sleep is a dumping ground for

thoughts, especially those which the brain was unable
to process during waking hours. Rather than build up

Mind Control!5
to a point of mental explosion, the brain releases them
at night in the form of dreams.
Why shouldn’t this process occur during waking
hours as well, especially if a person does not sleep
enough to sufficiently dream? According to the follow-
ing, it can:

“Clearly, your brain doesn’t work very well when

you’re sleep-deprived,” Feinsilver said. “Even a
low level of sleep deprivation has an impact on
cognitive and emotional function,” he said . . .
“As little as a single night of sleep deprivation can
result in a person having a phenomenon called
‘microsleeps’ the next day,” Feinsilver said. “A
person begins to fall into mini-snooze sessions,
which last up to 30 seconds. Some people’s eyes
remain open during microsleeps, but the
disturbing thing about microsleeps is that during
sleep, the person is essentially blind, even if their
eyes are open,” Feinsilver said. “They’re not
processing information,” he said. “Studies show
that during microsleeps, the brain goes into a
sleep state rapidly and uncontrollably,” Dinges
said. “People can force themselves awake, but
they will soon fall into another microsleep,” he
said. (The Spooky Effects of Sleep Deprivation,
Sara G. Miller, Staff Writer, Live Science; October
27, 2015)

This shows that if a person does not get enough

sleep that the line between consciousness and uncon-
sciousness can become blurred. Even with eyes open a
person can temporarily go into a state of sleep with-
out even noticing.
If this is combined with the suppression of
desires and tendencies, which is known to impact a
person’s psyche in subliminal ways, the attack of ran-
dom thoughts can become quite unruly and unrecog-
nizable at times. As simple-minded as we may think we
are, our minds are not so simple.

6!CLARITY OR ELSE
 There are cures. They range from the technical to
the spiritual, the following being an example of the
latter:

It has therefore been decreed before The Holy

One, Blessed is He, that anyone who daily con-
templates and reads the portions [of the Torah]
regarding the Ketores will be delivered . . . from
all evil occurrences and impure thoughts . . .
(Zohar 2:218b)

In Temple times, the Ketores was the daily

Incense Offering comprised of eleven spices. In
non-Temple times, the verses that detail its com-
position and offering are recited as part of the daily
prayer service. This too apparently has a mystical im-
pact on the person, including the banishing of
unwanted thoughts.
Technical solutions include getting more sleep or
learning how to meditate. Though much of the thin-
king we do is automatic, there is an art to using and
controlling one’s mind. Like every art, the perfection of
mind control is part understanding of what is involved
and a large part practice and honing of skill.
Thinking is one of the most important daily
activities that humans perform. The Kohen Gadol when
he performed the service in the Kodash Kodashim, the
Holy of Holies in the Temple, on Yom Kippur, was not
allowed to have a single illicit thought. To have one
could result in his instant death.
Reaching such a level of mind control has a lot to
do with the emotions. It is a lot easier to control one’s
thoughts when a person is emotionally involved in
what he is intellectually doing.
Very often it is our emotions that cause us to
think things at times that we know, intellectually, is
inappropriate to do. Like a child who is bored with
what his parent is doing, “bored” emotions “go” else-
where when they are unhappy with the here-and-now.
Furthermore, a child distracted from what his

Mind Control!7
parent is doing has no problem interrupting his parent
when he “needs” to, much to the parent’s conster-
nation. Likewise, if a person’s emotions are some-
where else, “their” thoughts can easily interrupt the
intellect’s thoughts on a whim.
This is why when a person is emotionally
engaged in what he is intellectually doing, everything
happens more smoothly. A person is one with the
task, completely focussed on what has to be done,
and it becomes a very satisfying and successful effort.
Just as it is a pleasure to watch an emotionally
engaged child do what is expected of him, it is likewise
pleasurable when a person’s emotions are in synch
with his intellect. Know what has to be done, figure
out something emotionally engaging about it, and
your mind will take care of the rest.

8!CLARITY OR ELSE