Pantanjali sought to understand the mind by identifying it various states:
- Wandering (ksipta): This is lowest state of mind, the person is highly agitated and unable to think, listen, or keep quiet. The term “monkey-mind” is often used to character this state and the person is trapped in addictive cycles of pain and suffering.
- Dull (mudha): In this state of mind the person is forgetful and lacks awareness of their own thoughts and experiences. Their mind is in a state of somnambulism in which habit dominates.
- Restless (vikspita): The mind has become more aware but is in a constant state of confusion and the individual has difficulty deciding what to do.
- Focused (ekagra): The mind is both relaxed and aware. The internal chatter has subsided and the person is able to maintain their awareness of the present moment.
- Mastered (nirodha): The mind is able to concentrate on a single focus for extended periods of time. The person is fully engaged in something and remains undistributed by the situations and circumstances of life.
The essence of yoga lies is the contemplation of the nature of our mind.
What is Mind?
Diane Ackerman provides a vibrant description of the mind:
… that fantasia of self-regard we call “the mind.” The brain is not the mind, the mind inhabits the brain. Like a ghost in a machine… Mind is the comforting mirage of the physical brain. An experience, not an entity… an emanation that’s not located in one place, or one form, but exists throughout the universe. An essence, not a substance. And, of course, the mind reflects what the body senses and feels, it’s influenced by a caravan of hormones and enzymes. each mind inhabits a private universe of its own devising that changes daily, depending on the vagaries of medication, intense emotions, pollution, genes, or countless other personal-size cataclysms.
(Dianne Ackerman, An Alchemy of Mind)
The brain and mind are reflections of each other. Our state of mind determines the physiology of the brain. If our state of mind is characterized by wandering, then our thoughts, feelings and emotions churn chaotically. Further, the plasticity of the brain, as a reflection of the activities of the mind, physiologically mirrors the perpetuation of wandering. What we think and how we feel therefore has biological repercussions throughout our entire body. Our state of mind has a direct effect on the physiological structure of our brain and the distribution of chemicals that are the basis for feeling and emotion. In this way, the energetic realm of the mind literally becomes matter within the body.
The mind cannot be separated from the body, nor can the body be separated from the mind. They are part of a unified system and are completely interdependent.
Contemplation of the Five States of Mind
Understanding the five states of the mind and the interdependence of mind and body is the basis for contemplation. The five states are really dynamic realities to be explored within, not merely concepts committed to memory and habit. Yoga encourages us to perceive the truth of the wandering, dull, restless, focused, and mastered mind within our own being.
The path of yoga leads us into an personal journey of mind, body and spirit. Learning yoga means that we turn our attention inward and train our concentration on the inner workings of our own mind. Yoga does not ask us to develop our conceptual understanding; yoga critically engages us in finding these states of mind within ourselves.
This inward concentration is perhaps one of the most foreign elements of yoga. We are used to seeking gratification from external sources. The underlying assumption of learning to the Western mind is the concept of the prerequisite, that is, that information has been predetermined and prepared for us – and we receive it. In traditional education we focus on the acquisition of abstract concepts; the yogi learns to perceive the operation of the mind and seeks to acquire the truth of experience.
The five states of mind are a strategy for developing awareness and perception. They offer a framework for contemplating the mind, its effects on our body, and our interpretation of experience. To enter yoga technique deeply, we must first build the psychological foundation for a practice.
