Composition of States of the Mind
Let us pass now to the "states of the mind" as they are called. The
word which is used for the states of the mind by Patanjali is Vritti.
This admirably constructed language Sanskrit gives you in that very
word its own meaning. Vrittis means the "being" of the mind; the ways
in which mind can exist; the modes of the mind; the modes of mental
existence; the ways of existing. That is the literal meaning of this
word. A subsidiary meaning is a "turning around," a "moving in a
circle". You have to stop, in Yoga, every mode of existing in which
the mind manifests itself. In order to guide you towards the power of
stopping them--for you cannot stop them till you understand them--you
are told that these modes of mind are fivefold in their nature. They
are pentads. The Sutra, as usually translated, says " the Vrittis are
fivefold (panchatayyah)," but pentad is a more accurate rendering of
the word pancha-tayyah, in the original, than fivefold. The word
pentad at once recalls to you the way in which the chemist speaks of a
monad, triad, heptad, when he deals with elements. The elements with
which the chemist is dealing are related to the unit-element in
different ways. Some elements are related to it in one way only, and
are called monads; others are related in two ways, and are called
duads, and so on.
Is this applicable to the states of mind also? Recall the shloka of
the Bhagavad-Gita in which it is said that the Jiva goes out into the
world, drawing round him the five senses and mind as sixth. That may
throw a little light on the subject. You have five senses, the five
ways of knowing, the five jnanendriyas or organs of knowing. Only by
these five senses can you know the outer world. Western psychology
says that nothing exists in thought that does not exist in sensation.
That is not true universally; it is not true of the abstract mind, nor
wholly of the concrete. But there is a great deal of truth in it.
Every idea is a pentad. It is made up of five elements. Each element
making up the idea comes from one of the senses, and of these there
are at present five. Later on every idea will be a heptad, made up of
seven elements. For the present, each has five qualities, which build
up the idea. The mind unites the whole together into a single thought,
synthesises the five sensations. If you think of an orange and analyse
your thought of an orange, you will find in it: colour, which comes
through the eye; fragrance, which comes through the nose; taste, which
comes through the tongue; roughness or smoothness, which comes through
the sense of touch; and you would hear musical notes made by the
vibrations of the molecules, coming through the sense of hearing, were
it keener. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. you would hear the
sound of the orange also, for wherever there is vibration there is
sound. All this, synthesised by the mind into one idea, is an orange.
That is the root reason for the "association of ideas". It is not only
that a fragrance recalls the scene and the circumstances under which
the fragrance was observed, but because every impression is made
through all the five senses and, therefore, when one is stimulated,
the others are recalled. The mind is like a prism. If you put a prism
in the path of a ray of white light, it will break it up into its
seven constituent rays and seven colours will appear. Put another
prism in the path of these seven rays, and as they pass through the
prism, the process is reversed and the seven become one white light.
The mind is like the second prism. It takes in the five sensations
that enter through the senses, and combines them into a single
precept. As at the present stage of evolution the senses are five
only, it unites the five sensations into one idea. What the white ray
is to the seven- coloured light, that a thought or idea is to the
fivefold sensation. That is the meaning of the much controverted
Sutra: "Vrittayah panchatayych," "the vrittis, or modes of the mind,
are pentads." If you look at it in that way, the later teachings will
be more clearly understood.
As I have already said, that sentence, that nothing exists in
thought which is not in sensation, is not the whole truth. Manas, the
sixth sense, adds to the sensations its own pure elemental nature.
What is that nature that you find thus added? It is the establishment
of a relation, that is really what the mind adds. All thinking is the
"establishment of relations," and the more closely you look into that
phrase, the more you will realise how it covers all the varied
processes of the mind. The very first process of the mind is to become
aware of an outside world. However dimly at first, we become aware of
something outside ourselves--a process generally called perception. I
use the more general term "establishing a relation," because that runs
through the whole of the mental processes, whereas perception is only
a single thing. To use a well-known simile, when a little baby feels a
pin pricking it, it is conscious of pain, but not at first conscious
of the pin, nor yet conscious of where exactly the pin is. It does not
recognise the part of the body in which the pin is. There is no
perception, for perception is defined as relating a sensation to the
object which causes the sensation. You only, technically speaking,
"perceive" when you make a relation between the object and yourself.
That is the very first of these mental processes, following on the
heels of sensation. Of course, from the Eastern standpoint, sensation
is a mental function also, for the senses are part of the cognitive
faculty, but they are unfortunately classed with feelings in Western
psychology. Now having established that relation between yourself and
objects outside, what is the next process of the mind? Reasoning: that
is, the establishing of relations between different objects, as
perception is the establishment of your relation with a single object.
When you have perceived many objects, then you begin to reason in
order to establish relations between them. Reasoning is the
establishment of a new relation, which comes out from the comparison
of the different objects that by perception you have established in
relation with yourself, and the result is a concept. This one phrase,
"establishment of relations," is true all round. The whole process of
thinking is the establishment of relations, and it is natural that it
should be so, because the Supreme Thinker, by establishing a relation,
brought matter into existence. Just as He, by establishing that
primary relation between Himself and the Not-Self, makes a universe
possible, so do we reflect His powers in ourselves, thinking by the
same method, establishing relations, and thus carrying out every
intellectual process.
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