Composition of States of the Mind

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.