Understanding the Mind

The mind indeed is mysterious. Nobody has seen it, but we know it exists. We have thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, and we know all this happens in the mind. So, it does exist, but where does it exist, how does it function, and how and why was it created? 

This episode is based on the understanding and analysis of the Mind as taught by Vedanta. We will cover the following aspects of the Mind:

1.      Source of the Mind

2.      Evolution of the Mind

3.      Structure of the Mind

4.      Functioning of the Mind

5.      States of the Mind

6.      Qualities or Gunas of the Mind

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Science Meets Vedanta - a space where we explore the fundamental principles of Vedanta and unravel the profound intersections between scientific inquiry and ancient wisdom. I'm Jayant Kapatker, the author of the book - Science Meets Vedanta.

Drawing from the insights in this book, each week we’ll explore a variety of topics designed to help you understand the essential teachings of - Vedanta. Along the way, we’ll highlight valuable lessons that science can gain from Vedantic wisdom, so stay tuned!

Based on the teaching of Vedanta, in today’s episode, we’ll be discussing the different aspects of the mind. 

The mind indeed is mysterious. Nobody has seen it, but we know it exists. We have thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, and we know all this happens in the mind. So, it does exist, but where does it exist, how does it function, and how and why was it created? These are indeed key questions, and if you investigate you will not find many good answers.

Fortunately, sages in ancient India showed us the correct path. They closed their eyes, looked inward, and analyzed their experiences and thoughts. They meditated on and contemplated these issues. They used their minds to understand the Mind! They learned a lot, they understood a lot, and they documented their findings in the ancient scriptures.

This episode is based on the understanding and analysis of the Mind as taught in the ancient scriptures. We will cover the following different aspects of the Mind:

1.      Source of the Mind

2.      Evolution of the Mind

3.      Structure of the Mind

4.      Functioning of the Mind

5.      States of the Mind

6.      Qualities or Gunas of the Mind

1. Source of the Mind

To learn about the source of the Mind, it is important to know your innermost core - your Real Self. Vedanta teaches us that our inner core is Saat Chit Ananda or Self-Awareness.

Self-Awareness is like a bulb within us, shining Awareness. It does nothing except radiate Awareness. For a detailed analysis of Self-Awareness, please listen to an early episode “Understanding Self-Awareness.” Here we will give a quick overview.

Awareness is the most powerful force in the universe, and it is the underlying reality of the universe. It has the power to connect with a form present in the mind and create an experience of which we are aware. Awareness is made of three things: Subject, Object, and Intelligence. If any one of them is missing, there will be no Awareness.

1. There must be a subject, who is aware of the experience. The Subject is the knower part of Awareness.

2. There must be an object, which must be experienced. This Object is the known part of Awareness.

3. There must be Intelligence, by which the Subject gets to know the Object. This is the knowing part of Awareness.

Awareness is made of Subject, Object, and Intelligence, and it has three powers. Subject has the Power of the Knower, Object has the Power of the Known, and Intelligence has the Power of Knowing.

It must be understood that Subject, Object, Intelligence, and the three powers are not something outside in the world—they are within Awareness and make up Awareness. Wherever there is awareness, Subject, Object, and Intelligence are present with all three powers. Right now, you are aware of listening to this episode, therefore Subject, Object, and Intelligence are present within your awareness.

What is Self-Awareness?

There must be a Self who is Aware. The nature of Self is Awareness. Self is our inner core, which is full, complete, and self-sufficient. 

Self-Awareness means that - Self is Aware of the Self. Self is aware of itself.  

Here you will notice - Self is the Subject, Self is the Object, and Self is the Intelligence. This is not easy to grasp, but you can imagine that both Subject and Object are the same. This complete, independent Self is our inner core. It is both Subject and Object. Self-Awareness is non-dual and homogenous. It is Self-Shining.

This Self shines Awareness. It is like a bulb radiating Awareness. This is our inner core. It is not dependent on anything else, and it generates its own light of Awareness.

2. Evolution of the Mind

If Self-Awareness is our reality, why don’t we know it, why don’t we feel it? The simple answer is that we are Ignorant, we are not aware of our true nature. This Ignorance has a tremendous impact on our true nature of Self-Awareness. Due to Ignorance, we no longer know that we are both the Subject and Object. If we have forgotten this fact, it means that the subject and object are no longer a single entity but separate and independent entities. 

This separation of Subject and Object is the basis of the Mind. Mind has duality with the separation of Subject and Object. Self-Awareness is the source, and the mind is created due to the ignorance of our true nature. With the separation of subject and object, the three powers of Awareness—power of the knower, power of the known, and power of knowing—also become active in the Mind.

The mind has duality, therefore has a feeling of the subject being “in here” and the object being “out there.” This is the experience for most of us.

3. Structure of the Mind

We have seen that Ignorance creates the Mind. Earlier, we saw that Self-Awareness is made up of four parts - Self, the Subject, the Object, and the Intelligence. 

Due to ignorance, these four parts of Self-Awareness separate to become independent functions in the Mind. Just like a prism refracts lights and breaks it into seven different colors, in the presence of ignorance Self-Awareness breaks into four parts. The Subject becomes the Sakshi or witness in the mind, the Intelligence becomes the Buddhi, the power of the objects becomes the Manas, and the Self becomes the ego. If there was no Ignorance, these parts would be one in Self-Awareness.

1.      Sakshi—the home of the Subject

2.      Manas—the home of the Object

3.      Buddhi—the home of the Intelligence

4.      Ahamkara—the home of the Ego (self)

5.      Chitta—the home of the Memory

All the activity in the Mind is in the form of mental waveforms. In Vedanta these waveforms are called vrittis. Let us try and understand this structure of the mind.

Sakshi—The Home of the Subject

Sakshi means “witness.” Power of the Knower, which is within Awareness, now resides in the mind as the Subject or Sakshi. This Sakshi witnesses everything which goes on in the mind. It is the seer, hearer, feeler, taster, and the witness of all other activities in the mind. If there is any activity in the mind, Sakshi is the one who witnesses it. It is important not to confuse ego with Sakshi. Sakshi has no ego; its only function is to witness what is going on in the mind. There are no desires, no “I-ness” or feelings within Sakshi.

If you see a tree outside, it is Sakshi within your mind which perceives this tree. Power of the Knower within the mind allows the perception of the tree. This power is like a gift which has been given to the mind by Awareness. If this Power of the Knower was unavailable, you would not be able to perceive anything.

Manas—The Home of the Object

Manas is the home of the Object. Power of the Known resides within Manas. Power of the Known is a power within Awareness. It is the power which deals with objects, the power to become any object. This power does not create any objects but becomes the object which is superimposed on it. A good metaphor to explain this is that it is like a lump of Play-Doh. You can manipulate the Play-Doh into any shape. You can make a tree, car, house, or a person with the Play-Doh. In the same way, Power of the Known can be manipulated to become any object in this universe. 

Buddhi—The Home of the Intelligence

Buddhi means “intelligence.” Power of Knowing resides within Buddhi. It provides intelligence to the mind. Awareness is the repository of all possible knowledge and intelligence. It is as if there is a complete digital library within Awareness. No possible knowledge or intelligence is missing. Power of Knowing is the power which allows us to tap into the unlimited knowledge and intelligence which is present within Awareness.

Awareness is the storage of all possible knowledge and all possible intelligence. All this knowledge and intelligence is present right within us. If you think about it, our knowledge is very limited, a small iota of all possible knowledge. All the remaining knowledge is present within Awareness, but it is covered by our individual ignorance. If the right effort is made, Buddhi helps in removing this ignorance and exposes the required knowledge. 

Ahamkara—The Home of the Ego

Aham means “I” and kara means “maker”, so Ahamkara means “I-Maker.” This is what we usually refer to as ego. Self in Self-Awareness, in the presence of Ignorance, becomes the Ahamkara or ego in the individual mind. Ego is not the Self, but it behaves as if it is the Self. Ego adds the “I-ness” and “My-ness” to the mind.

Chitta—The Home of the Memory

The literal meaning of Chitta is “mind stuff”. In Vedanta, the subconscious mind is termed Chitta. Much of the subconscious mind consists of submerged experiences which are stored in Chitta. Chitta is like a calm mind lake with vrittis or thought waves on the surface and experiences stored below the surface.

Whenever Sakshi encounters Manas, an experience or thought wave is created on the surface of Chitta. The technical word for this experience in Vedanta is samskara or impression. When this thought wave, experience, or samskara completes its presence on the surface, it sinks below the surface into Chitta and creates an impression of that experience. A specific experience creates a specific impression. This impression is stored in Chitta. No experiences are lost in Chitta. Even the smallest experiences are available in the subconscious mind as impressions in Chitta.

When you perceive an orange and taste it for the first time, you get an experience of the orange. You know the taste and you know the object orange. The samskara of this knowledge is stored in Chitta. The next time you think of an orange, this knowledge will instantly move from the subconscious mind to the surface of your mind to complete the experience.

4. Functioning of the Mind

Due to Ignorance, these four components (ego, subject, object, and intelligence) are sitting in different departments in the mind. Intelligence is sitting in Buddhi, the Object part is sitting in Manas, the Subject part is sitting in Sakshi, and the Self or “I-ness” is sitting in Ahamkara. These four parts are separated, but there is a natural tendency for them to combine to create Self-Awareness. There is a mutual attraction to come together so that they can achieve the original status of being Self-Aware. When the Subject, Object, and Intelligence are separated, the self feels incomplete; it feels inadequate, and it wants to feel full and complete. The only way the self can feel complete is when the Subject, Object and Intelligence combine into one entity.

We will now undertake a step-by-step analysis of how a typical experience is created in the mind.

Step 1: Activity in Manas

Step 2: Buddhi Knows

Step 3: Ahamkara Interferes

Step 4: Sakshi Witnesses

Step 1: Activity in Manas

Manas is the home of Objects, and it has Power of the Known (Objects). This power allows it to become any object superimposed on it.

This power has unlimited capacity, but it is limited by the human mind. The human mind is limited by the capacity of the five sense organs—eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin. The sense organs have their own limitation. For example, the human ear can hear sounds up to only 20 kilo hertz frequency. This is limited. We know other animals can manage a much wider spectrum. Our eyes can only see the “light part” of the electromagnetic spectrum. There are species which handle other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. In other words, there is a much bigger universe than we can experience with our five senses.

There is a lot of activity taking place in Manas. All the sense organs and internal organs are continuously sending information into Manas. Manas is a busy place. The objects coming from the external world through the sense organs have a waveform representation. When these object waveforms contact Power of the Known in Manas, this power adds building blocks to the object. It adds the required code for the object. It is like adding the software code for the object. With this addition of the code, the object waveform has the infrastructure to become that object.

It could be vision, sound, touch, smell, and taste—the perception of these objects takes place in Manas. For example, when the input signal is for a tree, Manas adds the code which makes up the tree. This code is in the form of mental waveforms or vrittis. These mental waveforms have the required ingredients to become a tree. If the input is music, it creates a code which makes up the sound for the music. In this way, it handles all the input signals coming from the outside world.

The perception does take place in Manas, but Manas has no clue what these objects are. It creates the code, but it is clueless about what it is. It has no knowledge about the object. Manas needs help, and it therefore passes on the input signals to Buddhi for decoding.

Step 2: Buddhi Knows

Buddhi is the intelligent part of the mind, and it has Power of Knowing. It can know anything and everything in this universe and beyond. It has that decoding power. Power of Knowing is within Buddhi. If any object waveform comes in the presence of Buddhi, Buddhi will add the knowledge to the object waveform.

Buddhi is like the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the human being. The signal comes to the CPU to be processed. In the same way, the input signal from Manas comes to Buddhi to be processed. We saw that the input waveforms coming from Manas lack object knowledge. Buddhi adds the object knowledge to the waveform. With this knowledge, the mental waveform knows its identity. The mental waveform knows the object it represents. It knows it is a tree. It knows it is music. The object waveform is now made of knowledge. Knowledge is the substratum of the waveform. Knowledge is the building block of the object waveforms. How this is done is beyond our comprehension, but that is the power present within Awareness. Simply amazing!

Step 3: Ahamkara Interferes

After Buddhi processes the object waveform this intelligent object waveform is now presented to Ahamkara. Ahamkara means “I-Maker”; it is the sense of “I-ness” within each of us. It is not the Self in Self-Awareness, but it just masquerades as the Self. The object vrittis—from the five senses are presented to Ahamkara. Ahamkara now must interact with these vrittis.  

Vritti Modification: Whenever Ahamkara interacts with an object vritti, it will modify the object vritti according to its likes and dislikes. In Vedanta this is called raaga which means like and dvesha which means dislike. Ahamkara cannot remain still, it must interact with the object waveform. When it interacts, the resultant waveform is a vritti modified by raaga and dvesha. If you like something, you will modify the waveform differently than when you dislike something.

The bottom line is that Ahamkara modifies the incoming vritti according to its own disposition. If Ahamkara is feeling angry, it will react to the vritti differently than it will if it is feeling happy and peaceful. Ahamkara or ego adds a personal touch to the interacting object vritti. 

Step 4: Sakshi Witnesses

This is the last step in the process. We have seen that Self-Awareness has Self, Subject, Object, and Intelligence.

We have seen in this step-by-step process that the object waveform in Manas combines with the Intelligence in Buddhi, and the modification of this object vritti by Ahamkara or ego. To have awareness, the only missing element is the Subject with Power of the Knower.

When the modified object vritti from Ahamkara combines with the Sakshi, you have something “magical”—you have awareness of the experience. You have awareness of the experience because all the elements of awareness are now present. Till we reached Step 4, the object was a waveform or vritti. When the last missing element of the subject encounters the object vritti, the waveform collapses to create the experience of gross objects around you. The Sakshi or Subject is the one which witnesses this experience.

The current experience of listening to this audio, or any other experience, must go through this step-by-step process to create Awareness of any experience. This four-step process is how the mind functions for all experiences. 

5. States of the Mind

All experiences happen only in the mind. The following are the three states for having experiences:

·         Waking State

·         Dream State

·         Deep Sleep State

It is not possible to have any experience outside these three states. Let us discuss each one of them in a little detail.

Waking State Experiences

In the waking state, the experience of objects is made up of the external world perceived through the five sense organs. In the waking state, all three bodies are available to generate experiences – the Causal Body, the Subtle Body and the Gross Body

Dream State Experiences

Vedanta teaches us that all the experiences and impressions we have during the waking state are stored in Chitta. As discussed earlier, Chitta is the storage device of the mind. In the dream state, the five sense organs are no longer active because we don’t experience the external world in the dream state. The experiences stored in the Chitta are the source of all the dreams. 

The experiences in the dream state are quite different from the experiences in the waking state. There are no inputs from the sense organs. The Gross Body is missing in the dream state; it is not available to the dreamer. The dreamer has no clue about the Gross Body. What is available is the subtle and causal body. 

Deep Sleep State Experiences

In deep sleep, dreams are not available to the experiencer. Both the five sense organs and the bank of experiences stored in Chitta are inactive in deep sleep. They do not operate in deep sleep. We saw earlier that ignorance is the cause of the Mind. Manas is filled with ignorance. In deep sleep there are no waveforms as the five sense organs and Chitta are inactive. What is left is only ignorance. This ignorance alone is present in Manas in deep sleep.

Experience of ignorance means you do not experience anything. In the waking and dream states, the experience or thoughts keep changing, and the bliss is momentary—it lasts for the duration of the experience. In deep sleep there are no changing thoughts, there is only one continuous experience of ignorance. This means that during deep sleep we have one continuous experience of bliss. When we wake up or return to the dream state, this continuous bliss is gone. 

In the deep sleep state, there is no Subtle body nor Gross Body nor physical body. There exists only the Causal Body which is made up of ignorance.

6. Gunas or Qualities of the Mind

Guna means “quality” or “characteristic” of the mind. Vedanta teaches that the mind has three types of gunas - Rajas Guna, Tamas Guna, and Sattva Guna.  

The mind is a combination of these three gunas. Sometimes one of the gunas dominates, while at other times another guna will take over. Whenever we act, one of the gunas is used to complete the action. It is not wrong to say that the gunas are the driving force for action.

The gunas comes into play when Ahamkara interacts with the object vrittis. We saw that Ahamkara either likes or dislikes the object vritti. This like and dislike by Ahamkara will depend on the disposition of Ahamkara at that moment. If Ahamkara is filled with tamas guna at that moment, it will show signs of laziness and lethargy. If Ahamkara has rajas guna, it will show activity by wanting new and a variety of sensations. This will drive action or inaction.

All the three gunas are there for everyone, but the amount of each guna varies. The rajas guna will be dominant for an extrovert or go-getter. The tamas guna will be stronger for a depressed person. The sattva guna will be stronger for a spiritual person. These personality traits will be applicable to Ahamkara of a person.

Let us briefly examine how the gunas apply when Ahamkara interacts with the object vrittis.

Rajas Guna: This guna will not allow Ahamkara to sit still; it always wants action; it wants new objects with which to interact. It drives the Ahamkara to act. It is restless; when one action is complete, it will choose another action to complete. This person will not sit idle. A person with rajas guna has many desires and wants to satisfy all the desires which come up. This requires Ahamkara to interact with object vrittis on a continuous basis. When rajas guna is dominant, a lot of activity takes place in the mind. There is nothing wrong with having the trait of rajas, but the question is that all this continuous action does not guarantee happiness and peace. If this is the case, then many actions would be a waste of time and effort.

Tamas Guna: This is the other side of the scale as compared to rajas guna. Here Ahamkara is inactive or lazy; it does not undertake action. A range of object vrittis are presented to Ahamkara by Buddhi, but Ahamkara does not want to interact with any of them. Ahamkara is lazy and lethargic and maybe depressed. This leads to inactivity, which is a characteristic of tamas.

In such situations, it is possible that some of the dominant object vrittis can force Ahamkara to undertake an action to satisfy the object vrittis own agenda. This action could be wrong and against Dharma. Over time, this Ahamkara would be at the complete mercy of these dominant object vrittis.

Ahamkara in tamas guna is very weak and is prone to inactivity and wrong actions.

Sattva Guna: In rajas we saw that the focus of Ahamkara is on the object vrittis. Instead, if you focus Ahamkara on Saat Chit Ananda within you, this approach can bring about a radical change. Compassion, goodness, forgiveness, and other positive qualities will come forward. Interaction with the object vrittis will continue, but you will follow Dharma or do the right thing in any action you take. Everyone has this sattva guna within them, but the question is, how dominant is this in our day-to-day activity. The profile of the sattva guna can be improved if you can train your mind adequately. 

We hope today’s episode has sparked your curiosity and offered valuable insights about the mind. If you’d like to dive deeper, visit our blog at Vedanta and science.com or find my book, Science Meets Vedanta, on Amazon. Be sure to subscribe so you won’t miss upcoming episodes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your family and friends. Thanks for joining us—see you again soon!