Patanjali’s Yoga is centered around mind. But throughout the discussion about Yoga, Patanjali rarely describes this mind nor how it functions. The reason is that Patanjali assumes the model of the mind as put forth by Samkhya. So, it becomes necessary to know what Samkhya says about the mind in order to fully understand Yoga. In this episode, we will be doing exactly that.
Yoga is a sister school of Samkhya. Samkhya is one of the most ancient Indian schools of thought which has an elaborate theory of how the world came into existence. As part of this theory, Samkhya also talks about mind and its evolution. Samkhya focuses more on how the mind evolved and its constituent parts, rather than the details of its working. Patanjali assumes the model of mind, as delineated by Samkhya.
Upanishads too talk about mind, almost on similar lines as the Samkhya. It is not clear whether Samkhya based its theory on ideas borrowed from Upanishads or the other way around. Because of this similarity of ideas, it is easy to extend Yoga to Upanishadic vision, beyond what is talked about by Patanjali. We will be doing that later in our discussions.
What is mind as per the Samkhya?
Samkhya bifurcates the world into insentient and sentient things, into inert and intelligent things, into material and non-material things, into objects and subjects. It calls the former as Prakriti and the latter as Purusha. As per Samkhya, Prakriti evolved from an insentient primordial substance called Pradhana, as a result of combining of three fundamental elements called Satwa, Rajas, and Thamas. Different combination of these three basic elements, in varying proportions, gave rise to various types of material things or Prakriti.
This Prakriti comprises of mainly two types of entities – gross matter or Sthoola Prakriti, and subtle matter or SookShma Prakriti. While the gross matter is perceptible to our senses, the subtle matter is not. Neither of these is sentient. Both of them can go through changes, though they never undergo annihilation.
In contrast, Purusha is sentient, non-perceivable to our senses, not subject to change or annihilation. There are infinitely many Purushas. In common parlance these Purushas are sometimes referred to as souls, though usage of this term can be confusing at times.
Each living being is considered to be a combination of a body and a soul. Body is part of Prakriti. Body provides the mechanisms for the soul to interact with the world. Soul undergoes pleasure and pain as a result of this interaction. The body produces the pleasure and pain, and the soul experiences them through the interface of mind.
Now, what is this mind?
The Mind is a subtle material entity that acts as a bridge between the gross material body and the non-material soul. This mind has 4 different components. At the lowest level there are the Indriyas that interface with various sense and action organs of the gross body. In a way, it is these Indriyas which make sense of the inputs provided by the gross sense organs. They also issue commands to the gross action organs to make them perform physical actions.
Indriyas are coordinated by next higher-level part of the mind called Manas. This Manas is the controller of the senses. It acts as a conduit between the gross body and the further higher-level parts of the mind. In many ways, manas is like the sense and motor processing regions of the brain. Though these regions of the brain are gross material entities, Samkhya views them as a combination of gross and subtle material entities.
There is also a subtle part in the mind called Ahankara. This ahankara maintains a unique identity to this combination of body, mind and soul. It is this Ahankara that gives the identity that “I am this body/mind”, to the soul.
At the upper most level of the mind, there is Buddhi. It holds various aspects of the mind such as will, knowledge, discrimination, past mental impressions or the so called Samskara, and so on. Buddhi gathers the information provided by the Manas and passes it on to the soul. It also conveys the intents of the soul to the Manas. So, it is Buddhi that connects the soul to the external world.
This is roughly the model of the mind as put forth by the Samkhya. Unlike the Buddhist model, the soul has the most prominent part in this combination of body/mind/soul. It is for the sake of soul that the body/mind exist. The body/mind combination enables the soul to enjoy the world. It is the same body/mind that helps the soul to free from the entanglement with the world, if the soul so wishes. In a way, the body/mind is an instrument used by the soul to navigate its worldly journey.
The Upanishads too, implicitly assume this model of body/mind. In one of the Upanishads namely the Kathopanishad, there is a beautiful analogy that describes the coming together of body/mind and the soul. It says that the sense organs are like the horses that carry the chariot used by the soul. These horses move on the path of sense inputs. In other words, they run after objects of sense perception.
These sense horses are controlled by the manas, which acts like the reins. In this chariot, Buddhi is the charioteer who wields the reins, and directs the horses in the right direction. It is the soul that is actually the rider of this chariot. Effectively, the chariot is the body that is inhabited by the soul in its worldly journey.
Samkhya as well as the Upanishads package indriyas, manas, ahankara, and the Buddhi as components of a subtle body in which the soul resides. And this subtle body resides in the gross material body. On the event of death of an individual, the subtle body along with the soul leaves the dead body, and migrates to another body in the womb of the would be mother. That is how the rebirth takes place.
The soul is always associated with a subtle body until it attains liberation. Patanjali calls this liberation as Kaivalya. We will talk about Kaivalya later.
Now, where does brain fit in this model of mind put forth by the Samkhya? The Samkhya does not talk explicitly about the connection between the mind and the brain. It only says that the mind interfaces with the gross body.
But we see many parallels between the role of indriyas and sense processing and motor regions of the brain. We also see the role of certain parts of the brain as a coordinator between these regions, in the same way the manas is the coordinator of indriyas. We also see some parts of the brain working as centers of self-identity as well as repositories of knowledge.
Further, Yoga as well as Upanishads strongly believe in re-birth. They also say that when rebirth happens, the soul along with its subtle body moves from the dying body to the new body. Also, the mind is supposed to carry memories, impressions of past actions and so on, across rebirth. This is not possible if the mind were just brain since the brain perishes with the body.
One way to resolve this, is to view mind as an extension of the brain. To give a crude analogy, the brain could be acting like the cache in the memory hierarchy of a computer. Contents of the cache is a subset of the contents of the main memory. Also, the cache holds only that part of the memory that are immediately needed by the processor. The mind is like the main memory. But this caching in the context of the brain includes all the states of the mind and not just the memory part of it.
With this model of the mind, in the next episode let us see how Yoga moves on to states beyond the Samprajnyata samadhi.
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