Pursuit of Pleasure is Invocation of Pain : 3.

Sometimes, in traditional language, we call these groups of tendencies prarabdha karma. We are compelled to move in a particular direction on account of our personality being nothing but an embodied form of this distracting principle. This mind that we are speaking of, through which the Infinite is reflected or refracted, is not an outside medium that we operate as independent individuals. It is not a fountain pen with which we write a book and which is not vitally connected with our body, which we can throw off after some time – not so. What we mean by ‘mind’ is nothing but the totality of what we really are in our individuality – the whole structure of our tendencies, ways of thinking, etc. We will study in the system of Patanjali, in a future sutra, that these so-called tendencies condition the place in which we are born, the time period into which we are born, the society into which we are born, the length of life which we live, and the various types of experiences we have to pass through in life.


All these things are already determined even before birth, so that one can say when the child will die even while it is inside the womb itself. The time is fixed because death, transformation, experience, or any kind of encounter in personal life is an event which automatically follows as a consequence of the seeds that are already sown at the very commencement of these groups of tendencies that are manufactured within – just as we can predict an eclipse even a hundred years hence. Today we can say that there will be an eclipse after a hundred years. How do we know it? We know it because of the collocation of certain movements of planets, mathematically calculated.


Therefore, the individual sense, the asmita tattva, is a complex manufactured product. It is not an indivisible unitary being, as we wrongly take it to be. It is like a fabric constituted of various threads, and each thread is nothing but a proclivity, as I mentioned. This tendency is, to put it precisely, a kind of desire which is the urge to fulfil itself in a particular manner. Therefore, the thinking principle – the mind, the antahkarana – is a medium which cannot be regarded as an external instrument of the individual, but is itself what the individual constitutes. Here in this sutra I cited, d?k dar?ana?aktyo? ek?tmat? iva asmit? (II.6), Patanjali points out that the individual sense, the sense of being separate, the consciousness of personality or bodily individuality, is a product of the union of this distracting medium with the background of the animating principle – namely, consciousness that is infinite. This union is an inseparable union for all practical purposes, so that we can never be aware, even for a moment, that this has taken place, because once we awaken to this fact we will be frightened out of our wits. But it is not allowed to take place. The manner in which this event has taken place is non-temporal, as I mentioned; so any temporal effort will not even touch it. There is a ‘dark iron screen’, if we would like to call it that, which separates this effort of the individual from knowing the cause, and the real cause that is behind it.


To be continued ....