The Atma Jyoti Blog

Part 4 in the Commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, by Swami Nirmalananda Giri

Sutra 1:5. The modifications [vritti] of the mind are five-fold and are painful [klishta] or not painful [aklishta].

The five types of modification will be listed in the next verse, but right now Patanjali wants us to know that they all can be painful or not painful.

However, there is a whole other way of looking at these modifications, and that is held by both Vyasa and Shankara. It interprets klishta and aklishta as “tainted by the kleshas” and “untainted by the kleshas.” The kleshas are: ignorance, egotism, attractions and repulsions towards objects, and desperate clinging to physical life from the fear of death. They will be considered in detail in verses two through nine of the second section of the Yoga Sutras. So the modifications of the chitta can be either tainted (impure) or untainted (pure). Obviously this is going to determine their effect on us.

Vyasa says this: “The tainted [modifications] are caused by the five kleshas; they become the seed-bed for the growth of the accumulated karma seed-stock. The others are pure and are the field of Knowledge. They oppose involvement in the gunas. They remain pure even if they occur in a stream of tainted ones. In gaps between tainted ones, there are pure ones; in gaps between pure ones, tainted ones. It is only by mental processes that samskaras corresponding to them are produced, and by samskaras are produced new mental processes. Thus the wheel of mental process and samskara revolves. Such is the mind. But when it gives up its involvement, it abides in the likeness of the Self.” Commenting on Vyasa’s comment, Shankara says: “Ignorance and the other taints become the seed-bed for tainted mental processes. When these last appear, the karma seed-stock is near to ripening.”

Shankara relates this situation to yoga practice, saying: “Only by recourse to practice and detachment, which oppose them en bloc, does inhibition succeed; their mere number does not make inhibition impossible, though there is no effective means of inhibiting them one by one.” This is very important, because one of the tricks of the mind is to tell us that we need to “work up” to the right state or tackle our defects only one-by-one. But those who accept this wrong way of going about clearing our lives and consciousness end up failing completely–as was the ego’s intention when it suggested it so “reasonably.” Rather, Shankara tells us that yoga practice assaults the whole bundle of mental illusions at once, just as one army attacks another army en masse, not just soldier by soldier. This is heartening news, for it assures us that yoga acts as a general antidote to the poison of the kleshas, like a wide-spectrum antibiotic attacks all forms of infection at once.

Sutra 1:6. [The five kinds of modifications are] right knowledge [pramana], wrong knowledge [viparyaya], fancy [vikalpa], sleep [nidra], and memory [smritaya].

Each of these merits an individual consideration.

• Pramana includes the means of valid knowledge, logical proof, and the means of right perception. Although logical proof is listed here, it is usually held that pramana also includes experiential proof such as proven intuition or yogic perception that has been investigated and shown to be accurate. Although Taimni and most translators render this “right knowledge,” it is actually the means to right knowledge.
• Viparyaya is erroneous peception, wrong knowledge, illusion, misapprehension, and distraction of mind–the means to wrong knowledge. In Sankhya philosophy, the basis of Yoga, it is said that viparyaya is caused by ignorance (avidya), egoism (asmita), attachment (raga), antipathy (dwesha), and self-love in the sense of clinging to life (abhinivesha).
• Vikalpa is imagination, fantasy, mental construct, abstraction, conceptualization, hallucination, distinction, experience, thought, and oscillation of the mind.
• Nidra is sleep–either dreaming or dreamless–but in the Yoga Sutras it means dreamless sleep alone.
• Smriti is memory and recollection.

All mental phenomena fall into one of these classifications. It is interesting to see that just as there are five senses, so there are five modifications of the mind.

Next: Patanjali looks at each modification in turn.

Previously: Being Established in Our Own Inner Nature–Or Not