Dear All,
Consciousness - ego = Pure Mind = mind which is beyond the three gunas - tamas, rajas, satvic.
Consciousness + ego = Impure Mind
In the stage of pure devotion or intense contemplation / meditation, a human crosses tamas (inertia) and Rajas (action with ego) and exists as satvic. When this satvic nature ultimately fetches him glimpse of God realization, he crosses satvic mind and exists as pure soul which is termed as sattva.
In other words, mind which is never influenced by Chitta and Ahankara (memory bank and ego with 5 kleshas), which works only with pure intellect, which has no trace of any impressions of past, which does not carry the impact of any actions back to its memory bank is verily Divine.
There was a specific session on mind = consciousness which was taken by the author for few.
The very divine nature of a human, when contaminated with ego, becomes a limited mind.
We learnt earlier - Mind is the single most factor which determines whether a man is free (devoid of ego) or bound (with ego)
So, mind by itself need not be considered as the main obstacle in God realization because mind is required even for realized masters to carry out their mission.
Man has the infinite potential in him to transform his mind to such wonderful extent that the same mind can ultimately exist as Divine/ Pure Consciousness.
Love.