Yoga as philosophy and religion

by Surendranath Dasgupta

V. The nirodha or restrained mind is that in which all mental states are arrested. This leads to kaivalya.

Ordinarily our minds are engaged only in perception, inference, etc.—those mental states which we all naturally possess. These ordinary mental states are full of rajas and tamas. When these are arrested, the mind flows with an abundance of sattva in the saṃprajñāta samādhi; lastly when even the saṃprajñāta state is arrested, all possible states become arrested.

Another important fact which must be noted is the relation of the actual states of mind called the vṛttis with the latent states called the saṃskāras—the potency. When a particular mental state passes away into another, it is not altogether lost, but is preserved in the mind in a latent form as a saṃskāra, which is always trying to manifest itself in actuality. The vṛttis or actual states are thus both generating the saṃskāras and are also always tending to manifest themselves and actually generating similar vṛttis or actual states. There is a circulation from vṛttis to saṃskāras and from them again to vṛttis (saṃskārāḥ vṛttibhiḥ kriyante, saṃskāraiśca vṛttayaḥ evaṃ vṛttisaṃskāracakramaniśamāvarttate). So the formation of saṃskāras and their conservation are gradually being strengthened by the habit of similar vṛttis or actual states, and their continuity is again guaranteed by the strength and continuity of these saṃskāras. The saṃskāras are like roots striking deep into the soil and growing with the growth of the plant above, but even when the plant above the soil is destroyed, the roots remain undisturbed and may again shoot forth as plants whenever they obtain a favourable season. Thus it is not enough for a Yogin to arrest any particular class of mental states; he must attain such a habit of restraint that the saṃskāra thus generated is able to overcome, weaken and destroy the saṃskāra of those actual states which he has arrested by his contemplation. Unless restrained by such a habit, the saṃskāra of cessation (nirodhaja saṃskāra) which is opposed to the previously acquired mental states become powerful and destroy the latter, these are sure to shoot forth again in favourable season into their corresponding actual states.

The conception of avidyā or nescience is here not negative but has a definite positive aspect. It means that kind of knowledge which is opposed to true knowledge (vidyāviparītaṃ jñānāntaramavidyā). This is of four kinds: (1) The thinking of the non-eternal world, which is merely an effect, as eternal. (2) The thinking of the impure as the pure, as for example the attraction that a woman’s body may have for a man leading him to think the impure body pure. (3) The thinking of vice as virtue, of the undesirable as the desirable, of pain as pleasure. We know that for a Yogin every phenomenal state of existence is painful (II. 15). A Yogin knows that attachment (rāga) to sensual and other objects can only give temporary pleasure, for it is sure to be soon turned into pain. Enjoyment can never bring satisfaction, but only involves a man further and further in sorrows. (4) Considering the non-self, e.g. the body as the self. This causes a feeling of being injured on the injury of the body.

At the moment of enjoyment there is always present suffering from pain in the form of aversion to pain; for the tendency to aversion from pain can only result from the incipient memory of previous sufferings. Of course this is also a case of pleasure turned into pain (pariṇāmaduḥkhatā), but it differs from it in this that in the case of pariṇāmaduḥkha pleasure is turned into pain as a result of change or pariṇāma in the future, whereas in this case the anxiety as to pain is a thing of the present, happening at one and the same time that a man is enjoying pleasure.

Enjoyment of pleasure or suffering from pain causes those impressions called saṃskāra or potencies, and these again when aided by association naturally create their memory and thence comes attachment or aversion, then again action, and again pleasure and pain and hence impressions, memory, attachment or aversion, and again action and so forth.

All states are modifications of the three guṇas; in each one of them the functions of all the three guṇas are seen, contrary to one another. These contraries are observable in their developed forms, for the guṇas are seen to abide in various proportions and compose all our mental states. Thus a Yogin who wishes to be released from pain once for all is very sensitive and anxious to avoid even our so-called pleasures. The wise are like the eye-ball. As a thread of wool thrown into the eye pains by merely touching it, but not when it comes into contact with any other organ, so the Yogin is as tender as the eye-ball, when others are insensible of pain. Ordinary persons, however, who have again and again suffered pains as the consequence of their own karma, and who again seek them after having given them up, are all round pierced through as it were by nescience, their minds become full of afflictions, variegated by the eternal residua of the passions. They follow in the wake of the “I” and the “Mine” in relation to things that should be left apart, pursuing threefold pain in repeated births, due to external and internal causes. The Yogin seeing himself and the world of living beings surrounded by the eternal flow of pain, turns for refuge to right knowledge, cause of the destruction of all pains (Vyāsa-bhāshya, II. 15).

Thinking of the mind and body and the objects of the external world as the true self and feeling affected by their change is avidyā (false knowledge).

The modifications that this avidyā suffers may be summarised under four heads.

I. The ego, which, as described above, springs from the identification of the buddhi with the purusha.