The Double Activity in Mental Cognition :4.

What is the outcome of this analysis? The outcome is that the objects have a status of their own. As I mentioned, in our Indian technical Vedanta phraseology this existence of the object in its own status is referred to as what is called Ishvara sristhi – God’s creation. God creates the world, and the world that is created by God, or Ishvara, is the real nature of the world. But the way in which it is presented to the minds is a little different. That manner in which the object of the world, Ishvara sristhi, is presented to the minds of individuals is called jiva sristhi, or the individual’s creation. It is not that we perceive the world in the same way as God perceives things. I perceive a table, and God also perceives it. But there is a difference in the conception and the perception on account of the position of the perceiver. The Supreme Perceiver, who is God, is cosmical and, therefore, his reaction to things is quite different from the individualistic reactions of persons like us, who are placed outside the realm of the objects.


The existence of an object is to be distinguished from the value that is attached to it. What is called Ishvara sristhi is the existence of the object, and the value that is recognised is the jiva sristhi. Gold – a lump of gold, for instance – is Ishvara sristhi, we may say. It exists by itself. But that it has a value – the value that we attach to gold, the meaning that is seen or significance that is there – is a manufacture, or product, of the individual’s mind. Every other relationship is of that nature. A human being, as he or she is there independently, may be said to be Ishvara sristhi. But the way in which there is reaction among individuals, and the relationship that is there as an outcome of this individual reaction, is jiva sristhi.


Thus, there is a confused perception of an object when the mind starts operating in respect of an object. Neither is it a perception in a vacuum based on nothing, so that we can say the mind is simply imagining something there, nor is it true that the object is as it is perceived. We are in a very difficult situation. We do not know what we are seeing. We are seeing something, and by the perception thereof we recognise, or anticipate, or infer the existence of something behind this perception. Yoga, in samyama, wants to break through this complex which is there between the perceiving subject and the object as it is. This complex, when it is broken, results in identity. That identity is the object of the practice of samyama.


Now we come back to the sutra of Patanjali where he makes out that the object is not created by the mind. It has a status of its own, and what status it has, we have already tried to see. Again he repeats, in the subsequent sutra, that the impression made by the object upon the mind is the cause of the mental cognition of the object. And, inasmuch as the mind is not able to function independent of the vrittis or its psychoses, it cannot have a uniform perception of objects. The perception is always variegated. The mind is a subject of perception from the point of view of all individuals, but it is also an object from the point of view of a higher level of vision.

To be continued  ...