The Sage or Stable (or Steady) Mind (or Understanding)
The JIVANMUKTA or PSI BEING • The one who gives up all desires (kÄmÄ) originating in the sensory mind (manas) and is content in himself by himself—he is said to be of steady understanding (prajñÄ). • The one whose mind is not agitated by miseries, freed from greed for pleasure, with passion, fear, and anger gone—he is called a sage of steady understanding. • The one who is without attachment to anything, who when he encounters this or that whether pleasant or unpleasant neither rejoices nor dislikes—his understanding stands firm. • And when, as a tortoise completely draws in its limbs, he withdraws his senses from the objects of sense—his understanding stands firm. • The objects of sense turn away from the abstemious dweller in the body, but the taste for them remains; even the taste turns away from the one who has seen the Supreme.
• The agitating senses of even a striving wise person forcibly carry away his mind. • Restraining all these senses, he should sit unified (yukta); centered on me, in control of his senses—his understanding stands firm. • A person, dwelling on the objects of sense, conceives an attachment to them; from attachment, desire is produced; from desire, anger is generated. • From anger arises delusion; from delusion, a wandering memory; from a wandering memory, destruction of intelligence (buddhi); from destruction of intelligence, he is lost. • But passion and hatred eliminated, even though he moves among the objects of sense, with self-restraints, controlled by the Self, he attains peace. • In that peace, all sorrows cease for him; for him whose mind is peaceful, the intelligence becomes steady. • There is no intelligence in the disunified person, nor is there any concentration in the disunified person, and for the one without concentration there is no peace, and for the unpeaceful person where would happiness come from? • When the mind is guided by the wandering senses, then it carries away the understanding, as the wind drives a ship on the water.
• Therefore, the one whose senses are completely withdrawn from the objects of sense, his understanding stands firm. • In that which is the night of all other beings, the person who is restrained is wakeful; in those things in which they are wakeful, that is night for the sage who sees. • As the waters flow into the ocean, which even while being filled is unmoving, standing steady, so he whom all desires flow into attains peace, not the desirer of desires. • The person who abandons all desires acts free from yearning; free from the sense of “mine,” free from the sense of “I,” he attains peace. • This is the state pertaining to ultimate Reality; the one who has attained this is not deluded; standing firm in it even at the hour of death, he reaches the Liberation of ultimate Reality.
The JIVANMUKTA tells us what sort of person the sage of stable mind or steady understanding is. Such a person has given up all the desires that spring from the personality, the lower mind, and has become centered—that is, he knows who he is and is content to be that. Such a person has an unwavering understanding of himself and of the world around him.
The miseries that the Buddha said are the common experience of life in this world do not agitate him, which is not to say that he does not experience them, but rather that he does not respond to them. Put another way: ​pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional​. He experiences pain and pleasure, but is not attached to them. Krishna uses a metaphor to help us visualize what he is talking about. The Sage of Steady Understanding is like a tortoise that draws all of its legs within its shell, away from contact with the world around. Don’t misunderstand the metaphor. It does not mean that a wise person is a hermit. It is rather a graphic illustration of one of the eight “limbs” or practices, which include four preliminary bodily practices (abstaining from wrong conduct, observing right conduct, posture, and breath control). They are followed by four other limbs, the last three of which are spiritual practices: concentration, meditation, and unification.
Between the four preliminary bodily practices and the three final spiritual practices is a transitional practice that helps us turn from the outer world to the inner one. It is called in Sanskrit pratyÄhÄra, literally “gather toward oneself.” It is the practice of withdrawing sensory awareness from the objects of sense, turning from sensory input to our own inward awareness,​ becoming aware, not of what’s out there, but of what’s in here.
We can put the objects of sensory desire out of our minds, so that they appear to turn away from us, but the desire itself is another matter, not so easily disposed of. As long as we are immersed in this world, we will experience desire. But once we become aware of the Supreme Reality, that which is really Real, even the desire for unreal worldly objects fades away. Until that time, however, we must expect to contend with desire. However hard we strive, the unruly senses can erupt and overpower us.
But if we work at controlling the effect of our senses on our mind, if we practice yoga or Psi Qi (whose aim is to unify our nature), and center ourselves on the Supreme Reality within ourselves, then we can control our senses and become a ​Sage of Steady Understanding.
Here we diagnose the cause of your problem, which is also everyman’s problem. You, you may recall, are confused about your duty in life. You don’t know what to do. You are unable to discriminate between the conflicting duties you knows about.
You are a poor lost child. How does that condition come about? This is what these two verses tell us. They describe a sevenfold causal chain that results in our not knowing what we should do in the world.
(1) That causal chain begins with “dwelling on the objects of sense,” that is, being preoccupied with the things that give us pleasure or pain. And we can be preoccupied with either. You might think that we try to forget about the sources of pain and only dwell on the sources of pleasure, but anyone who has ever had a toothache knows that the impulse is to probe the sore tooth with one’s tongue.
There is an old Hindu parable about two birds in one tree. One of the birds is constantly occupied with eating the berries on the tree. If it eats a sweet berry, it thinks how good that berry tasted and seeks another even sweeter. If it eats a sour berry, it thinks how bad that berry tasted and seeks another berry that may be sweeter. So no matter what or how much the bird eats, it is always looking for more. We are like that bird. Whatever experiences we have in life, we want more. If they are pleasant experiences, we want more like those; if they are unpleasant experiences, we hope for better ones.
It is important to recognize what this first link in the chain is really about. It is not about enjoying life (or finding life painful either, for that matter). It is about “dwelling” on the things that give us pleasure or pain.
The MetaPsychics philosophy is quite realistic; it acknowledges that pleasure is one of the four goals of human life, the psychological goal. The others are wealth (economic), righteousness (moral), and liberation (spiritual).
The PSI WAY is not puritanical; it sees nothing wrong with pleasure. (H. L. Mencken, the Baltimore newspaperman and social critic, once defined a Puritan as one who is afraid that somewhere, somehow, somebody may be having a good time.) Pleasure is fine. But pleasure is transitory, so what is not fine is trying to hold on to pleasure, to make it last. That is not fine because it is impossible, so it is doomed to failure and frustration.
If we experience pleasure (or pain), enjoy the experience (or not), and then let it go, there is no problem. But if we try to sustain the experience or repeat it, we will be disappointed, because it is the nature of pleasure (and pain) to be ephemeral. We
can no more preserve or prolong pleasure than we can catch the wind in our fist. Like the wind, pleasure and pain are processes, not objects. If we forget that and start to treat them like objects, we are “dwelling” on them. We are trying to make them our home. The Catholic tradition in Christianity talks about something similar. It distinguishes between enjoying a thing and using a thing with joy. We should enjoy only what is inherently good. The “good things” of this world are not inherently good, so we should not treat them as though they were. In doing so, we are making idols of them—treating them as though they were worth having in themselves. That is “dwelling” on the objects of sense.
But on the other hand, it is fine to use a thing with joy, provided we are using it for the purpose for which it was intended. Then we are not making an idol out of it, not treating it as though it were an intrinsic good, but using it for what it is worth, and enjoying the use in the process. If the bird in the tree eats berries because it needs them to live, and enjoys their sweetness, that bird would not be led to gorge itself on berry after berry. It would be using the berries with joy, rather than trying to enjoy the berries for their own sake.
This first link(1) in the causal chain is extremely important because it is, in fact, the only link in the chain that we can control. All of the others follow automatically and inevitably. But we can decide whether or not we will “dwell” on the objects of sense. That is a matter of free choice. And that is what the metaphor of the tortoise is about. The tortoise’s drawing in of its legs, is like our withdrawing our attention from the objects of sense—not ignoring the world around us, but not dwelling on it. This is also what Jesus was talking about when he said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven . . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” -Matt. 6.19–21.
Laying up treasures upon earth is the same thing as dwelling on the objects of sense. And the reason for not doing that is the certainty of moths, rust, and thieves. Earthly treasures, like the objects of sense, are transitory. They may be nice, but they don’t last. (2) The second link in the causal chain is that whoever dwells on the objects of sense “conceives
an attachment to them.” Whatever we dwell on, we become attached to. We form an association with it. We are connected to it. It is part of us. Dwelling involves repeated concentration, and that produces close and intimate links between us and whatever we have been dwelling on. (3) The third link is that “from attachment, desire is produced.” Whatever we are attached to, whatever we have decided is part of us, we naturally desire. We want what is ours, and even more we want what is us. It is inevitable that once we have become attached to something, we desire it. The counterpoint to desire is fear; we are attached to unpleasant things by fear of them. (4) The fourth link is “from desire, anger is generated.” We want the objects of sense we have become attached to because we have dwelled on them. But it is the nature of reality that all things are constantly changing. The Buddha said it in India, and Heraclitus said it in Greece at just about the same time. Everything is fluid, flowing, changing. Nothing remains the same. And therefore, our desire to preserve the experience of pleasure cannot be satisfied, and that makes us angry. We are like a little child who, when refused a toy or a candy or whatever it wants, throws a temper tantrum. The frustration of desire generates anger.
(5) The fifth link is “from anger arises delusion.” When we are angry, we cannot see clearly. Our auras, we are told by clairvoyants, are shot through with black clouds and scarlet lightning flashes. We are blinded by the clouds and lightning of our anger. This is obviously true. A person who is angered does not see the world as it really is, but only as the anger permits. And when we do not see the world clearly, we live in a world of delusion. Reality is not what we see; we are deluded by our emotions into seeing what is not there at all. (6) The sixth link is “from delusion arises a wandering memory.” When we do not see present reality as it really is, but only as our emotions have colored it, we cannot remember the past as it really was, but only as it is filtered through the emotional haze around us. Our memory wanders and is confused. Again, that should be quite clear from our own experience. People who live in delusional worlds have delusional pasts as well. But it is not just the events and people of the past that a wandering memory fails to recall. Most of all, what​ we have forgotten is who we are and why we are here.
​ That is the most important bit of knowledge in the world. It is what you has forgotten; you do not know what you should do because you have forgotten who you are. When you remember that bit of knowledge, there is nothing else that you need to know. You are like Svetaketu in the Chandogya Upanishad. You are a young student who has failed to learn from your teachers the one thing, knowing which, nothing else need be known—namely, who you are. That’s the bit of knowledge we have all forgotten. And the forgetting comes from this causal chain we are considering, beginning with dwelling upon the objects of sense. (7) The seventh link is “from a wandering memory arises destruction of intelligence.” This intelligence is buddhi, the faculty of intuition, insight, understanding, and especially discrimination. It is the faculty that allows us to choose rightly, intelligently. But if we do not know who we are, then we cannot make right choices. The Temple at Delphi is said to have had engraved over its entrance the Greek motto Gnothi seauton ​“Know thyself.” ​The Greek philosophers said that we are all in a state of amnesia—we have forgotten who we are. ​Self knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom; and nothing worthwhile can be done without it.​ So without the memory of who we are, we have no way of intelligently deciding what we should be doing here.
And so this is where you are. And it is where we are too. We are lost because our intelligence has been destroyed, because we have forgotten who we are, because we are deluded about reality, because we are wrapped in anger, because our desires are frustrated, because we have become attached to what we cannot have, because we have dwelt upon the objects of sense.
The seven links of this causal chain correspond very neatly to the four worlds or planes on which human evolution is progressing: Buddhic or Spiritual Destruction of Intelligence (buddhi) ​= not choosing rightly ↑​ wandering memory​ = not remembering rightly Mental ↑ ​delusion​ = not perceiving rightly ↑​ anger Emotional ↑ desire ↑ attachment Physical ↑ dwelling on the objects of sense.
The solution to your problem and the world’s is to reverse the process. And doing that produces a different sort of causal chain:
Buddhic or Spiritual viveka​ = discrimination, making intelligent choices ↑​ anamnesis ​= the process of remembering who we are Mental ↑​ illumination​ = the process of seeing things clearly ↑​ love Emotional ↑ acceptance ↑ vairagya ​= dispassion Physical ↑ ​choiceless awareness.
If, instead of dwelling on the objects of sense, we are aware of them without choosing to lay them up as our treasures upon earth, then we will not be attached to them, but will regard them with dispassionate objectivity.
With dispassion, we will not desire or fear things around us, but will accept them as they are. With acceptance, we will not be angry at not possessing things, but will love unconditionally and impersonally. With love we will not be deluded but be illumined.
With illumination, our memories will not wander, but we will re-member our identity in anamnesis. With anamnesis, we will not suffer our intelligence to be destroyed, but will preserve our ability to make intelligent choices.
We will not be lost, but will know who we are and why we are here and be able to act rightly.
{P.E.T.} Therapy:
Tracing Cause Apply this sevenfold causal chain to ordinary experiences in life. You may not be able to see every link clearly, but take any problem or difficult decision in your life and see how far back on the causal chain you can trace it.
At what point did the problem begin, or what made the decision uncertain?
Buddhism talks about “mindfulness” as a quality to cultivate.
Where on the causal chain does “mindfulness” belong?