by Yogi Ananda Viraj (Eugene P, Kelly, Jr.)
We have already discussed1 the apparent predicament of the limitation of the own-form (sva-rupa) of consciousness by the modifications (vrtti-s) of the citta. Yoga has been defined by Patanjali as the resuiction of those modifications so that the seer (purusa) can reside in its own-form. “At other times, it takes the form of the vrtti-s,”(Yoga Sutra I.4, hereafter cited as Y.S.). It was seen how dissatisfaction (duhkha) is the result of this apparent limitation of consciousness and correlatively, the body (prakrti). When the seer “takes the form of the vrtti-s” consciousness appears as an active doer in the form of a reified I-sense (asmita) and the I-sense appears as if conscious. This I-sense is then seen to be an entity or substance pitted against other substances which may include other substantial “persons” and independently existing things. This “language of substances” was seen to be conventionally real but ultimately unsatisfactory and in need of transcendence. The “sattvic” perspective, implying incorporation, total embodiment, or reintegration was seen as a cure to the exclusive “tamasic” perspective of substances. When the reified I-sense is pitted against a world of substances, attraction (raga) and aversion (dvesa), the dwelling on pleasure and the avoidance of a pain, become the adopted modes of conduct. The movement of this ignorance (avidya) has no beginning, i.e., we find ourselves already in it, and is self reinforcing (abhinivela). An enactment of raga or dvesa leaves an action deposit (karma-asaya) which in turn erupts into a vrtti (experience) only to leave another deposit, and so on. The cycle (samsara) continues unabated until Yoga practice (sadhana) intervenes.
One such practice, which is more a perspective or discernment than an effort, is dispassion (vairagyam). Vairagyam (lit. change or loss of color, growing pale, indifference to worldly objects, asceticism, dispassion) is said to be of two kinds, dispassion and higher or superior (param) dispassion. The first is defined as: “… the ‘knowledge of mastery’ of one who does not thirst (vitrsna) for objects (visaya: sphere, dominion, horizon, object,) perceived or revealed” (Y.S. I.15). Some consider this the lower or apara-vairagyam. Vyasa, in his commentary, says that the citta will have a knowledge of mastery (vasikara samjna) if it is rid of the thirst (vitrsna) for 1.) Perceived objects such as the opposite sex, food, drink, or power; 2.) Revealed (anusravika) objects such as the attainment of heaven, the disembodied state, or dissolution into the original cause (prakrti-laya); or if, even when in contact with objects (visaya-samprayoga) either divine or not (divya-adivya), the citta sees the defects (dosa) of objects from the strength of higher knowledge (prasamkhyana), being of the nature of non enjoyment (anabhoga), and empty of rejection and obtainment, this knowledge of mastery is dispassion,” (Yoga Bhasya 1.15). Obviously, thirstlessness (vitrsna) plays a crucial role in dispassion.
Above we mentioned the movement of the afflictions raga and dvesa (attachment and aversion) in connection with objects both pleasant and unpleasant. The tamasic perspective, generated from the reified I-sense, gives rise to independently existing objects upon which the I-sense operates to secure pleasure and avoid pain. In short, if I take myself to be a substantial being this perspective is imputed to the world around me populating my circumstances with other substantial beings and things (visaya). The world becomes a spatio-temporal context for good and bad relations between reified substances. The body is disintegrated into atomic relations. The initial move of dispassion is the cessation of the thirst or craving for these substances and their relations.
This is not to say that we do not live among beings and things but that we cease to regard them as objects for our satisfaction and freedom. All of the substances resulting from the reification of the I-sense (asmita) are defective (dosa) in terms of providing liberation.
To (Krsna) Lord of Earth
(Arjuna) spoke these words:
Cause my chariot to stop in the middle
Between the two armies,
Imperishable One,Until I see these warriors, eager to fight and arrayed.
With whom must I fight in this battle?
I behold those who are about to fight
here come together
Desirous of accomplishing in battle
What is dear to the evil-minded
Son of Dhrtarastra.B.G. I.21-23
These passages, from chapter one of the Bhagavad Gita illustrate the movement of reification. Arjuna asks Krsna to move him (I-sense) to the middle of the two armies which are about to do battle in order that he may see his enemies and friends. Subsequent verses list their names and illustrate the movement of substantiation stemming from the notion of I am-ness. Arjuna “sees” independently existing beings which he must, as a conscious doer, act upon for merit or demerit, good or bad. This process eventually leads Arjuna into crisis, an inability to act, a tamasic inertia.
Filled with profound sadness,
Despairing, he thus said:
Having seen this, my own relatives Krsna,
Eager to fight,
My limbs sink down
and my mouth dries up
My body trembles
And my hair stands on endB.G. I.28,29
Arjuna, because of his inability to act within the confines of a tamasic world of substances, cannot bring himself to act. Action in such a ‘world’ brings about good or bad results. “If I do this, that happens.” We freeze with an inability to predict what will happen to us. He drops his weapons and asks for help. He sees himself as having nothing to do with the creation and maintenance of such a world. His body is reduced to the flesh in which the I-sense is housed. Sense-objects stand against him or for him (raga-dvesa) and he clings to his right to life (abhinivesa).
Vairagyam is the movement away from this kind of clinging to or thirst for objects (visaya) of sense, the reifying perspective of tamas. Its first movement is the perceiving (darsanah) of the defects by the citta’s cultivation of higher knowledge (prasamkhyana). In the seeing of defects the mind (citta) awakens to the fact that sense objects are not the source of liberation. The limitation of consciousness is perpetuated by such a tamasic vision. Thirst sustains limitation, i.e., reification. We normally think of “thirst” as a craving for objects simply to provide us with pleasure or to fulfill some need. The Yogis, however, have something additional in mind. We thirst for objects as such. Even though there is a subtle pleasure-seeking at the root of this, it is not simply a matter of thirsting for objects for some result, but more subtly, thirsting for objects. The movement of I-formation (ahamkara), once having become reified (asmita) “demands” or unfolds a world in which it is familiar. The I “looks for itself ‘ as it were. It “looks for” the familiar. This is the thirst that must be purged from the citta through knowledge.
Once again, it is not that the world of conventional objects will never arise once knowledge is gained. It is a matter of imputing independent being or reality to the substances that surround us, and are us. As we have noted repeatedly, the degree, to which independent being is granted to the I-sense, is proportionate to the degree we demand it of the world. Once having furnished the world with substances we tend to view them from the point of view of their utility. Aversion and attachment are born.
As noted previously, we have a two-fold movement of the citta. There are afflicted vrtti-s (klista) and unafflicted vrtti-s (aklista). The tamasic perspective is sustained by the afflicted modifications.
Conversely, klista-vrtti-s are sustained by the tamas guna. When the gunas are viewed as the true agents of action, displacing the notion that “I” act, experience, the world, is seen to be a transformation (parinama) of the three gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. It is the interaction of these three which explicate and implicate the world.
The purified sattva, being of the nature of pure illumination (prakasakam) and lightness (laghu), is that perspective which is unified and integral. The I-sense is not operative and purusa abides in its own-form. The body is whole and no substances stand out in a privileged position. Here consciousness pervades the whole body (prakrti) in an ecstatic union from which all manifestation proceeds. This procession or creation (sarga) appears to have always already occurred; “we find ourselves on this side of creation,” through avidya the fundamental error, the primary affliction. Avidya has no beginning, only an end. This manifestation (vyakta) is synonymous with the interaction of the sattvaguna with rajas, the nature of which is stimulating and agitating (calam). Again, correlative with this interaction is the activation of individuation or I-making (ahamkara) which is the first “fall” from wholeness at the heart of which is rajas or agitation, existentially alive as a “having to do.” This movement of the gunas is sedimented or reified through tamas, the nature of which is heavy (Guru) and enclosing or limiting (varana).2 Rajasthen supports the tamasic movement of reification and substantiation through the individuation of the senses and organs of action on down to the gross elements (bhutas) and their embodiment as beings and objects (visaya).
The task of the Yogi is to reverse this process in a return to the whole body-origin (pratiprasava) and realize experience to be a movement of guna-perspectives manifesting and unmanifesting within the purview of the life-granting and indifferent consciousness.
Purusa or consciousness is not in or out of time as the movement of the gunas. Our natural tendency is to reify consciousness and we therefore feel compelled to address such questions as purusa’s relation to time. Purusa is not an entity, a substance, a being. It is the awareness, pure and simple, at the very heart of this ongoing movement of becoming. One cannot qualify awareness as one qualifies substances. Consciousness cannot justifiably be “considered” for such consideration demands reification. It is in its living, its “functioning” within experience that it is “known.” Any step back from this primal or original level of raw living renders consciousness an object and conceals it. Of course, we must speak of consciousness, but always only provisionally.
Throughout the movement of time as the interaction of gunas, purusa remains consciously indifferent. It is the distinct nature of consciousness which prompted the Yogis to consider it kevala or “isolated.” This realization of consciousness as isolated is termed kaivalyam. Vyasa says the highest vairagyam is not different (nantariyakam) from kaivalyam. The higher vairagyam is defined as “thirstlessness for the gunas” through purusa-khyati (knowledge of the purusa, Y.S. I,16). Vyasa adds “that by way of practicing the perceiving (darsana) of the purusa, because the Yogi’s intellect (buddhi) becomes filled with perfect discrimination (praviveka) from the purity [of this knowledge],” there results dispassion toward the gunas, whether manifest or unmanifest. In perceiving that consciousness is other than the movements of the gunas, whether in their interacting or non-interacting modes, there results a discernment of the restfulness or conscious constancy at the heart of all experience.
“He who is seated as if indifferent
Who is not disturbed by the gunas
[thinking] ‘only the gunas are operating,’
And who stands firm without wavering…[To whom] pleasure and dissatisfaction are the same,
Who is self-contained,
[To whom] a lump of earth, a stone and gold are the same,
[To whom] the pleasant and the unpleasant are the same, who is steadfast,
[To whom] praise and blame of himself are the same,
[To whom] honor and dishonor are the same,
friend and enemy are the same, Renouncing all undertakings,
He is said to have gone beyond the gunas.”B.G. XIV.23-25
In these verses Krsna tells Arjuna about the vision of one who has “seen.” The intellect is joined to consciousness and the movements of experience are perceived to be the movements of the body-worlds manifesting and unmanifesting in conformity with the transformations (paranama) of the gunas. The Yogi, however, does not thirst for the dominance of sattva or reject the appearance of tamas:
“Krsna spoke:
He neither hates nor desires The comings or goings
Of illumination, or activity or delusion ….”B.G. XIV.22
Having taken his or her stand in the knowledge (khyati) of purusa, through practice and dispassion, the risings and failings of gunas are not a source of disturbance. Consciousness has always been indifferent.
“Like the ocean, which becomes filled
yet remains unmoved and still
As the waters enter it,
He whom all desires enter into
and who remains unmoved
attains peace, not one who desires
[or clings to] desire.”B.G. II.70
Even though the movements of the gunas, which reciprocally give rise to desires, are occurring there is no denial of life. Yet, there is detachment. The Yogi lives with desires like anyone else. But the Yogi does not compulsively cling to them. If a desire is to be fulfilled, it is a responsible decision to fulfill it. The Yogi realizes the beginning and end of desire. Normally we are simply led by desire and the tamasic viewpoint opens up a world in and with which we can fulfill it. However, for the Yogi, who also inhabits the three worlds of guna-activity, there is dispassion even in the midst of fulfillment. Given that the purusa remains isolated or distinct from the guna-parinama, and the Yogi has secured the vision of the purusa, dispassion is a structural disposition of experience. With regard to this Vyasa states that the higher dispassion is “simply the clarity of knowledge,” (jnana-prasadamatram). The word “prasada” also implies tranquility and therefore we can render Vyasa’s statement as “the calm of knowledge.” As far as being a structural disposition of experience, recall that dispassion is said to be “not different than kaivalyam.”
To return to the beginning of our discussion, we can now observe that dispassion is more of a perspective within experience than a quality that the Yogi attempts to cultivate. Even though dispassion is at the very heart of experience, we must still begin at the level of our attachments and aversions and take note of our compulsive clinging to sense objects, lusts, the need for power and recognition, and the like. It is this clinging, embodied in afflicted citta-vrtti-s, that confines consciousness and generates so much sorrow. Our afflictions, supported by many lifetimes of reinforcement, history, are crying out for a chance at incarnation. They need a rajasic-tamasic perspective with which to fulfill themselves. That is, the klesas require the use of our intellect, I-sense, reflective capacity, organs of action, sense organs, sensations, and elements in order to live.
Dispassion denies them life. Dispassion renders us tranquil. Our bodily constitution does not require us to incarnate affliction, only to incarnate consciousness. How shall the body (prakrti) be put to use?
1. See Moksha Journal , Volume VI, Number 1↩
2. See Samkhya Karika XIII↩