First the mac will freeze up and I'll be left seeing the infernal beach ball of doom, then the cursor/mouse will not show or move at all, then the screen will turn grey and finally I will be sent back to the login screen from where I have no option but to force shut down bc I will get response to nothing else at all

Any ideas as to what might be happening/causing it?
INFO: Mid-2009 MacBook Pro 15" 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 8GB RAM 1TB HD Mac OSX 10.7.4