Chapter XV: Matter and Mind

In conclusion it may be worth while saying a few words as to theories of the physical world supplementary to the views that have already been stated above.

Gross matter, as the possibility of sensation, has been divided into five classes, according to their relative grossness, corresponding to the relative grossness of the senses. Some modern investigators have tried to understand the five bhūtas, viz. ākāśa, marut, tejas, ap and kshiti as ether, gaseous heat and light, liquids and solids. But I cannot venture to agree when I reflect that solidity, liquidity and gaseousness represent only an impermanent aspect of matter. The division of matter from the standpoint of the possibility of our sensations, has a firm root in our nature as cognising beings and has therefore a better rational footing than the modern chemical division into elements and compounds, which are being daily threatened by the gradual advance of scientific culture. This carries with it no fixed and consistent rational conception as do the definitions of the ancients, but is a mere makeshift for understanding or representing certain chemical changes of matter and has therefore a merely relative value.

There are five aspects from which gross matter can be viewed. These are (1) sthūla (gross), (2) svarūpa (substantive), (3) sūkshma (subtle), (4) anvaya (conjunction), (5) arthavattva (purpose for use). The sthūla or gross physical characteristics of the bhūtas are described as follows:—

Qualities of Earth—Form, heaviness, roughness, obstruction, stability, manifestation (vṛtti), difference, support, turbidity, hardness and enjoyability.

Ap—Smoothness, subtlety, clearness, whiteness, softness, heaviness, coolness, conservation, purity, cementation.

Tejas—Going upwards, cooking, burning, light, shining, dissipating, energising.

Vāyu—Transverse motion, purity, throwing, pushing, strength, movability, want of shadow.

Ākāśa—Motion in all directions, non-agglomeration, non-obstruction.

These physical characteristics are distinguished from the aspects by which they appeal to the senses, which are called their svarūpas. Earth is characterised by gandha or smell, ap by rasa or taste, tejas by rūpa, etc. Looked at from this point of view, we see that smell arises by the contact of the nasal organ with the hard particles of matter; so this hardness or solidity which can so generate the sensibility of gandha, is said to be the svarūpa of kshiti. Taste can originate only in connection with liquidity, so this liquidity or sneha is the svarūpa or nature of ap. Light—the quality of visibility—manifests itself in connection with heat, so heat is the svarūpa of fire. The sensibility of touch is generated in connection with the vibration of air on the epidermal surface; so this vibratory nature is the svarūpa of air.

The sensibility to sound proceeds from the nature of obstructionlessness, which belongs to ākāśa, so this obstructionlessness is the svarūpa of ākāśa.

The third aspect is the aspect of tanmātras, which are the causes of the atoms or paramāṇus. Their fourth aspect is their aspect of guṇas or qualities of illumination, action, inertia. Their fifth aspect is that by which they are serviceable to purusha, by causing his pleasurable or painful experiences and finally his liberation.

Speaking of aggregation with regard to the structure of matter, we see that this is of two kinds (1) when the parts are in intimate union and fusion, e.g. any vegetable or animal body, the parts of which can never be considered separately. (2) When there are such mechanical aggregates or collocations of distinct and independent parts _yutasiddhāvayava_ as the trees in a forest.

A dravya or substance is an aggregate of the former type, and is the grouping of generic or specific qualities and is not a separate entity—the abode of generic and specific qualities like the dravya of the Vaiśeshika conception. The aspect of an unification of generic and specific qualities seen in parts united in intimate union and fusion is called the dravya aspect. The aggregation of parts is the structural aspect of which the side of appearance is the unification of generic and specific qualities called the dravya.

The other aggregation of yutasiddhāvayava, i.e. the collocation of the distinct and independent parts, is again of two kinds, (1) in which stress may be laid on the distinction of parts, and (2) that in which stress is laid on their unity rather than on their distinctness. Thus in the expression mango-grove, we see that many mangoes make a grove, but the mangoes are not different from the grove. Here stress is laid on the aspect that mangoes are the same as the grove, which, however, is not the case when we say that here is a grove of mangoes, for the expression “grove of mangoes” clearly brings home to our minds the side of the distinct mango-trees which form a grove.

Of the gross elements, ākāśa seems especially to require a word of explanation. There are according to Vijñāna Bhikshu and Nāgeśa two kinds of ākāśa—kāraṇa (or primal) and kārya (atomic). The first or original is the undifferentiated formless tamas, for in that stage it has not the quality of manifesting itself in sounds. This kāraṇa later on develops into the atomic ākāśa, which has the property of sound. According to the conception of the purāṇas, this karyākāśa evolves from the ego as the first envelope of vāyu or air. The kāraṇakāśa or non-atomic ākāśa should not be considered as a mere vacuum, but must be conceived as a positive, all-pervasive entity, something like the ether of modern physicists.

From this ākāśa springs the atomic ākāśa or kāryākāśa, which is the cause of the manifestation of sound. All powers of hearing, even though they have their origin in the principle of egoism, reside in the ākāśa placed in the hollow of the ear. When soundness or defect is noticed therein, soundness or defect is also noticed in the power of hearing. Further, when of the sounds working in unison with the power of hearing, the sounds of solids, etc., are to be apprehended, then the power of hearing located in the hollow of the ear requires the capacity of resonance residing in the substratum of the ākāśa of the ear. This sense of hearing, then, operates when it is attracted by the sound originated and located in the mouth of the speaker, which acts as a loadstone. It is this ākāśa which gives penetrability to all bodies; in the absence of this, all bodies would be so compact that it would be difficult to pierce them even with a needle. In the _Sāṃkhya-sūtra_ II. 12, it is said that eternal time and space are of the nature of ākāśa. So this so-called eternal time and space do not differ from the one undifferentiated formless tamas of which we have just spoken. Relative and infinite time arise from the motion of atoms in space—the cause of all change and transformation; and space as relative position cannot be better expressed than in the words of Dr. B. N. Seal, as “totality of positions as an order of co-existent points, and as such it is wholly relative to the understanding like order in time, being constructed on the basis of relations of position intuited by our empirical or relative consciousness. But there is this difference between space order and time order:—there is no unit of space as position (_dik_) though we may conceive time, as the moment (_kshaṇa_) regarded as the unit of change in the causal series. Spatial position (_dik_) results only from the different relations in which the all-pervasive ākāśa stands to the various finite objects. On the other hand, space as extension or locus of a finite body, or deśa, has an ultimate unit, being analysable into the infinitesimal extension quality inherent in the guṇas of prakṛti.”[44]

Citta or mind has two degrees: (1) the form of states such as real cognition, including perception, inference, competent evidence, unreal cognition, imagination, sleep and memory. (2) In the form in which all those states are suppressed. Between the stage of complete outgoing activity of ordinary experience (_vyutthāna_) and complete suppression of all states, there are thousands of states of infinite variety, through which a man’s experiences have to pass, from the vyutthāna state to the nirodha. In addition to the five states spoken of above, there is another kind of real knowledge and intuition, called prajñā, which dawns when by concentration the citta is fixed upon any one state and that alone. This prajñā is superior to all other means of knowledge, whether perception, inference or competent evidence of the Vedas, in this, that it is altogether unerring, unrestricted and unlimited in its scope.

Pramāṇa, we have seen, includes perception, inference and competent evidence. Perception originates when the mind or citta, through the senses (ear, skin, eye, taste and nose) is modified by external objects and passes to them, generating a kind of knowledge about them in which their specific characters become more predominant.

Mind is all-pervasive and can come in touch with the external world, by which we have the perception of the thing. Like light, which emits rays and pervades all, though it remains in one place, the citta by its vṛttis comes in contact with the external world, is changed into the form of the object of perception and thus becomes the cause of perception; as the citta has to pass through the senses, it becomes coloured by them, which explains the fact that perception is impossible without the help of the senses. As it has to pass through the senses, it undergoes the limitations of the senses, which it can avoid, if it can directly concentrate itself upon any object without the help of the senses; from this originates the prajñā, through which dawns absolute real knowledge of the thing; unhampered by the limitations of the senses which can act only within a certain area or distance and cannot cognize subtler objects.

We see that in ordinary perception our minds are drawn towards the object, as iron is attracted by magnets. Thus Bhikshu says in explaining _Vyāsa-bhāshya_ IV. 17:—

“The objects of knowledge, though inactive in themselves, may yet draw the everchanging cittas towards them like a magnet and change them in accordance with their own forms, just as a piece of cloth is turned red by coming into contact with red lac.” So it is that the cittas attain the form of anything with which they come in touch and there is then the perception that that thing is known. Perception (_pratyaksha_) is distinguished from inference, etc., in this, that here the knowledge arrived at is predominantly of the specific and special characters (_viśesha_) of the thing and not of its generic qualities us in inference, etc.

Inference proceeds from inference, and depends upon the fact that certain common qualities are found in all the members of a class, as distinguished from the members of a different class. Thus the qualities affirmed of a class will be found to exist in all the individual members of that class; this attribution of the generic characters of a class to the individual members that come under it is the essence of inference.

An object perceived or inferred by a competent man is described by him in words with the intention of transferring his knowledge to another; and the mental modification, which has for its sphere the meaning of such words, is the verbal cognition of the hearer. When the speaker has neither perceived nor inferred the object, and speaks of things which cannot be believed, the authority of verbal cognition fails. But it does not fail in the original speaker, God or Īśvara, and his dictates the Śāstras with reference either to the object of perception or of inference.

Viparyyaya or unreal cognition is the knowledge of the unreal as in doubt—a knowledge which possesses a form that does not tally with the real nature of the thing either as doubt or as false knowledge. Doubt may be illustrated by taking the case of a man who sees something in dim light and doubts its nature. “Is it a wooden post or a man?” In nature there is either the wooden post or the man, but there is no such fact or entity which corresponds with doubt: “Is it a wooden post or a man?” Knowledge as doubt is not cognition of a fact or entity. The illusion of seeing all things yellow through a defect of the eye (as in jaundice) can only be corrected when the objects are seen in their true colours. In doubt, however, their defective nature is at once manifest. Thus when we cannot be sure whether a certain thing is a post or a man, we know that our knowledge is not definite. So we have not to wait till the illusoriness of the previous knowledge is demonstrated by the advent of right knowledge. The evil nature of viparyyaya is exemplified in avidyā nescience, asmitā, rāga, etc.[45]

Viparyyaya is distinguished from vikalpa—imagination—in this, that though the latter is also unreal knowledge its nature as such is not demonstrated by any knowledge that follows, but is on the contrary admitted on all sides by the common consent of mankind. But it is only the learned who can demonstrate by arguments the illusoriness of vikalpa or imagination.

All class notions and concepts are formed by taking note only of the general characters of things and associating them with a symbol called “name.” Things themselves, however, do not exist in the nature of these symbols or names or concepts; it is only an aspect of them that is diagrammatically represented by the intellect in the form of concepts. When concepts are united or separated in our thought and language, they consequently represent only an imaginary plane of knowledge, for the things are not as the concepts represent them. Thus when we say “Caitra’s cow,” it is only an imaginary relation for, strictly speaking, no such thing exists as the cow of Caitra. Caitra has no connection in reality with the cow. When we say purusha is of the nature of consciousness, there is the same illusory relation. Now what is here predicated of what? Purusha is consciousness itself, but in predication there must always be a statement of the relation of one to another. Thus it sometimes breaks a concept into two parts and predicates the one of the other, and sometimes predicates the unity of two concepts which are different. Thus its sphere has a wide latitude in all thought-process conducted through language and involves an element of abstraction and construction which is called vikalpa. This represents the faculty by which our concepts are arranged in an analytical or synthetical proposition. It is said to be _śabdajñānānupāti vastuśūnyo vikalpaḥ_, i.e. the knowledge that springs from relating concepts or names, which relating does not actually exist in the objective world as it is represented in propositional forms.

Sleep is that mental state which has for its objective substratum the feeling of emptiness. It is called a state or notion of mind, for it is called back on awakening; when we feel that we have slept well our minds are clear, when we have slept badly our minds are listless, wandering and unsteady. For a person who seeks to attain communion or samādhi, these desires of sleep are to be suppressed, like all other desires. Memory is the retaining in the mind of objects perceived when perception occurs by the union of the cittas with external objects, according to the forms of which the cittas are transformed; it retains these perceptions, as impressions or saṃskāras by means of its inherent tamas. These saṃskāras generate memory, when such events occur as can manifest them by virtue of associations.

Thus memory comes when the percepts already known and acquired are kept in the mind in the form of impressions and are manifested by the udbodhakas or associative manifestors. It differs from perceptions in this that the latter are of the nature of perceiving the unknown and unperceived, whereas the former serves to bring before the mind percepts that have already been acquired. Memory is therefore of percepts already acquired by real cognition, unreal cognition, imagination, sleep and memory. It manifests itself in dreams as well as in waking states.

The relation between these states of mind and the saṃskāras is this that their frequency and repetition strengthens the saṃskāras and thus ensures the revival of these states.

They are all endowed with sukha (pleasure), duḥkha (pain) and moha (ignorance). These feelings cannot be treated separately from the states themselves, for their manifestations are not different from the manifestation of the states themselves. Knowledge and feeling are but two different aspects of the modifications of cittas derived from prakṛti; hence neither can be thought separately from the other. The fusion of feeling with knowledge is therefore here more fundamental than in the modern tripartite division of mind.

In connection with this we are to consider the senses whose action on the external world is known as “perceiving,” “grahaṇa,” which is distinguished from “pratyaksha,” which means the effect of “perceiving,” viz. perception. Each sense has got its special sphere of work, e.g. sight is of the eye, and this is called their second aspect, viz. svarūpa. Their third aspect is of “asmitā” or ego, which manifests itself through the senses. Their fourth aspect is their characteristic of guṇas, viz. that of manifestation (_prakāśa_), action (_kriyā_) and retention (_sthiti_). Their fifth aspect is that they are set in motion for purusha, his experiences and liberation.

It is indeed difficult to find the relation of manas with the senses and the cittas. In more than one place manas is identified with cittas, and, on the other hand, it is described as a sense organ. There is another aspect in which manas is said to be the king of the cognitive and motor senses. Looked at in this aspect, manas is possibly the directive side of the ego by which it guides the cognitive and conative senses in the external world and is the cause of their harmonious activity for the experience of purusha. As a necessary attribute of this directive character of manas, the power of concentration, which is developed by prāṇāyāma, is said to belong to manas. This is the rajas side of manas.

There is another aspect of manas which is called the anuvyavasāya or reflection, by which the sensations (ālocana) are associated, differentiated, integrated, assimilated into percepts and concepts. This is possibly the sāttvika side of manas.

There is another aspect by which the percepts and concepts are retained (_dhāraṇa_) in the mind as saṃskāras, to be repeated or revealed again in the mind as actual states. This is the tamas side of manas.

In connection with this we may mention ūha (positive argumentation), apoha (negative argumentation) and tattvajñāna (logical conclusion) which are the modes of different anuvyavasāyas of the manas. Will, etc., are to be included with these (_Yoga-varttikā_, II. 18). Looked at from the point of view of cittas, these may equally be regarded as the modifications of cittas.

The motives which sustain this process of outgoing activity are false knowledge, and such other emotional elements as egoism, attachment, aversion, and love of life. These emotional elements remain in the mind in the germinal state as power alone; or they exist in a fully operative state when a man is under the influence of any one of them; or they alternate with others, such as attachment or aversion; or they may become attenuated by meditation upon opposites. Accordingly they are called respectively prasupta, udāra, vicchinna or tanu. Man’s minds or cittas may follow these outgoing states or experiences, or gradually remove those emotions which are commonly called afflictions, thus narrowing their sphere and proceeding towards final release.

All the psychic states described above, viz. pramāṇa, viparyyaya, etc., are called either afflicted or unafflicted according as they are moved towards outgoing activity or are actuated by the higher motive of emancipation by narrowing the field of experiences gradually to a smaller and smaller sphere and afterwards to suppress them altogether. These two kinds of motives, one of afflictions that lead towards external objects of attachment and aversion or love of life, and the other which leads to striving for kaivalya, are the sole motives which guide all human actions and psychic states.

They influence us whenever suitable opportunities occur, so that by the study of the Vedas, self-criticism or right argumentation, or from the instruction of good men, abhyāsa and vairāgya may be roused by vidyā. Right knowledge and a tendency towards kaivalya may appear in the mind even when a man is immersed in the afflicted states of outgoing activity. So also afflicted states may appear when a man is bent upon or far advanced in those actions which are roused by vidyā or the tendency towards kaivalya.

It seems that the Yoga view of actions, or karma, does not deprive man of his freedom of will. The habit of performing particular types of action only strengthens the corresponding subconscious impressions or saṃskāras of those actual states, and thus makes it more and more difficult to overcome their propensity to generate their corresponding actual states, and thus obstructs the adoption of an unhampered and free course of action. The other limitation to the scope of the activity of his free will is the vāsanā aspect of the saṃskāras by which he naturally feels himself attached by pleasurable ties to certain experiences and by painful ones to others. But these only represent the difficulties and impediments which come to a man, when he has to adopt the Yoga course of life, the contrary of which he might have been practising for a very long period, extending over many life-states.

The free will is not curbed in any way, for it follows directly from the teleological purpose of prakṛti, which moves for the experience and liberation of purusha. So this motive of liberation, which is the basis of all good conduct, can never be subordinated to the other impulse, which goads man towards outgoing experiences. But, on the other hand, this original impulse which attracts man towards these ordinary experiences, as it is due to the false knowledge which identifies prakṛti with purusha, becomes itself subordinate and loses its influence and power, when such events occur, which nullify false knowledge by tending to produce a vision of the true knowledge of the relation of prakṛti with purusha. Thus, for example, if by the grace of God false knowledge (avidyā) is removed, true knowledge at once dawns upon the mind and all the afflictions lose their power.

Free will and responsibility for action cease in those life-states which are intended for suffering from actions only, e.g. life-states of insects, etc.