Where Are You Parked?

It may be helpful to think of our consciousness as a car and the different parts of our personality as parking lots. The body is one parking lot, the mind another, the ego yet another, and so on.

It is obvious that my car will be directly impacted with whatever happens at the lot where it is parked. If there is fire at the lot, my car is in danger. If I hear of the fire, I’ll be anxious and rush to get my car out of that place. On the other hand, if there is fire in some other parking lot, I wouldn’t care so much, for I won’t be affected by it.

In exactly the same way, if my consciousness is “parked” in the body, all issues connected with the body become “my” issues and I am directly affected by them. Sometimes—such as when I am intently reading something and enjoying it—my consciousness gets parked in the mind or in the intellect, and for the time being, the anxieties and joys of the body become irrelevant or nonexistent.

Our consciousness gets parked in this way in the course of the day and in the course of our lives: sometimes in the body, other times in the prāṇa, the mind, the agent-ego (kartā), and the experiencer-ego (bhoktā).

When the consciousness gets parked in itself, it is safe and healthy and free from all limitations. The Sanskrit word svastha is a combination of sva (self) and stha (established, standing) and can be roughly translated as “parked in one’s self.” It is customary in many Indian languages to greet each other with “Are you svastha?” meaning, “Are you well?” The words svastha is also routinely used to mean “healthy.”

It is interesting that only when I am parked in my Self I am truly healthy. Parking my consciousness any place else—be it my body, mind, senses, ego—is a sign of illness, the “illness of the world” (bhava-roga).