Let us pass now to the “states of the mind” as they are called. The
word which is used for the states of the mind by Patanjali is Vritti.
This admirably constructed language Sanskrit gives you in that very
word its own meaning. Vrittis means the “being” of the mind; the ways
in which mind can exist; the modes of the mind; the modes of mental
existence; the ways of existing. That is the literal meaning of this
word. A subsidiary meaning is a “turning around,” a “moving in a
circle”. You have to stop, in Yoga, every mode of existing in which the
mind manifests itself. In order to guide you towards the power of
stopping them—for you cannot stop them till you understand them—you are
told that these modes of mind are fivefold in their nature. They are
pentads. The Sutra, as usually translated, says “the Vrittis are
fivefold (panchatayyah),” but pentad is a more accurate rendering of
the word pancha-tayyah, in the original, than fivefold. The word pentad
at once recalls to you the way in which the chemist speaks of a monad,
triad, heptad, when he deals with elements. The elements with which the
chemist is dealing are related to the unit-element in different ways.
Some elements are related to it in one way only, and are called monads;
others are related in two ways, and are called duads, and so on.
Is this applicable to the states of mind also? Recall the shloka of the
Bhagavad-Gita in which it is said that the Jiva goes out into the
world, drawing round him the five senses and mind as sixth. That may
throw a little light on the subject. You have five senses, the five
ways of knowing, the five jnanendriyas or organs of knowing. Only by
these five senses can you know the outer world. Western psychology says
that nothing exists in thought that does not exist in sensation. That
is not true universally; it is not true of the abstract mind, nor
wholly of the concrete. But there is a great deal of truth in it. Every
idea is a pentad. It is made up of five elements. Each element making
up the idea comes from one of the senses, and of these there are at
present five. Later on every idea will be a heptad, made up of seven
elements. For the present, each has five qualities, which build up the
idea. The mind unites the whole together into a single thought,
synthesises the five sensations. If you think of an orange and analyse
your thought of an orange, you will find in it: colour, which comes
through the eye; fragrance, which comes through the nose; taste, which
comes through the tongue; roughness or smoothness, which comes through
the sense of touch; and you would hear musical notes made by the
vibrations of the molecules, coming through the sense of hearing, were
it keener. If you had a perfect sense of hearing. you would hear the
sound of the orange also, for wherever there is vibration there is
sound. All this, synthesised by the mind into one idea, is an orange.
That is the root reason for the “association of ideas”. It is not only
that a fragrance recalls the scene and the circumstances under which
the fragrance was observed, but because every impression is made
through all the five senses and, therefore, when one is stimulated, the
others are recalled. The mind is like a prism. If you put a prism in
the path of a ray of white light, it will break it up into its seven
constituent rays and seven colours will appear. Put another prism in
the path of these seven rays, and as they pass through the prism, the
process is reversed and the seven become one white light. The mind is
like the second prism. It takes in the five sensations that enter
through the senses, and combines them into a single precept. As at the
present stage of evolution the senses are five only, it unites the five
sensations into one idea. What the white ray is to the seven- coloured
light, that a thought or idea is to the fivefold sensation. That is the
meaning of the much controverted Sutra: “Vrittayah panchatayych,” “the
vrittis, or modes of the mind, are pentads.” If you look at it in that
way, the later teachings will be more clearly understood.
As I have already said, that sentence, that nothing exists in thought
which is not in sensation, is not the whole truth. Manas, the sixth
sense, adds to the sensations its own pure elemental nature. What is
that nature that you find thus added? It is the establishment of a
relation, that is really what the mind adds. All thinking is the
“establishment of relations,” and the more closely you look into that
phrase, the more you will realise how it covers all the varied
processes of the mind. The very first process of the mind is to become
aware of an outside world. However dimly at first, we become aware of
something outside ourselves—a process generally called perception. I
use the more general term “establishing a relation,” because that runs
through the whole of the mental processes, whereas perception is only a
single thing. To use a well-known simile, when a little baby feels a
pin pricking it, it is conscious of pain, but not at first conscious of
the pin, nor yet conscious of where exactly the pin is. It does not
recognise the part of the body in which the pin is. There is no
perception, for perception is defined as relating a sensation to the
object which causes the sensation. You only, technically speaking,
“perceive” when you make a relation between the object and yourself.
That is the very first of these mental processes, following on the
heels of sensation. Of course, from the Eastern standpoint, sensation
is a mental function also, for the senses are part of the cognitive
faculty, but they are unfortunately classed with feelings in Western
psychology. Now having established that relation between yourself and
objects outside, what is the next process of the mind? Reasoning: that
is, the establishing of relations between different objects, as
perception is the establishment of your relation with a single object.
When you have perceived many objects, then you begin to reason in order
to establish relations between them. Reasoning is the establishment of
a new relation, which comes out from the comparison of the different
objects that by perception you have established in relation with
yourself, and the result is a concept. This one phrase, “establishment
of relations,” is true all round. The whole process of thinking is the
establishment of relations, and it is natural that it should be so,
because the Supreme Thinker, by establishing a relation, brought matter
into existence. Just as He, by establishing that primary relation
between Himself and the Not-Self, makes a universe possible, so do we
reflect His powers in ourselves, thinking by the same method,
establishing relations, and thus carrying out every intellectual
process.