In2-MeC
newly discovered entries of In2-DeepFreeze First Generation Animations
29 June, 2003
Essay Two:
A Vedic Schema of the Mind and its
Processes
Part Four:
An Overview of the Psychology of Bhakti-yoga
Therefore Sri Ramanuja Svami, in his book Vedanta-tattva-sara, has described that this merging of the soul means that after separating himself from the material body made of eight elements--earth, water, fire, air, ether, false ego, mind and intelligence--the individual soul engages himself in devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead in His eternal form. . . The material cause of the material elements absorbs the material body, and the spiritual soul assumes its original position.While writing this last part of Essay Two, I referred to Chapter Nine, "Visistadvaita", of Indian Psychology by Raghunatha Safaya (Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1975). Mr. Safaya, whose book covers the doctrines of mind taught by eleven ancient Indian schools of philosophy, gathered his material from original Sanskrit sources. For the "Visistadvaita" chapter he studied the Sri Bhasya of Ramanujacarya, Atmasiddih by Yamunacarya, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Visnu Purana and six other great Vaisnava texts. On page 248 he summarizes a number of theories about consciousness, including the Mayavada of Sankaracarya, Buddhism, and Western absolute idealism. Safaya's conclusion: "Ramanuja holds the most commonsense view. He considers consciousness as an attribute of the Conscious, a reality and not an abstraction. " On page 260 he writes, "While Advaita Vedanta twists the Upanisads' psychology in the direction of Mayavada (which is against the spirit of the Upanisads), Vaisnava Vedanta faithfully carries the Upanisad and Brahma Sutra philosophy and psychology further in the spirit of the Upanisads. " He concludes on page 261, "Ramanuja's Visistadvaita represents all three schools (visistadvaita, dvaita and bhedabheda) of Vaisnava Vedanta as far as psychological principles are concerned. " The foundation of the psychology of devotional service is bhakti, the mood of pure devotion. Bhakti-yoga is the cultivation of this mood. From a psychological point of view it is a cultivation of emotions. Emotions form the "glue" of the mind's attachment. We have seen in Part Two of this essay that liberation or bondage is decided by the quality of attachment. Bhakti-yoga cultivates the mind's attachment to Krsna. In the language of psychology, emotional life is called the affective side of the mind (the word affective means a mental state of aroused emotions, like the state of affection of one person for another). Psychology
recognizes that the mind also has a cognitive (thinking) side and a conative (active) side. Of these three vikaras (transformations) of the mind--thinking, feeling, and willing--Ramanujacarya determines the affective or feeling aspect to be paramount. "Cognition and conation are subservient. " (Safaya, pg. 259). For Sankaracarya, all states of mind are psychotic because the subject (the thinker, feeler and willer) is hallucinating the objects of his thought, which are not real at all. Ramanuja rejects this Mayavadi standpoint. Individual subject and object have their microcosmic realities within the Lord's macrocosmic form. The Lord is the great and original jnata (knower), bhokta (experiencer or enjoyer) and karta (doer). The jiva is a prakara (category) of Brahman (the spiritual substance); he too is jnata, bhokta and karta. Hence his thinking, feeling and willing are not without substance. In its cognitive or thinking function, the mind observes (anubhava) and remembers (smrti). Observation is two-fold. The mind observes by pratyaksa, direct perception, and by anumana, inference. Inferential observation is done by tarka or logic. For example, if I hear a friend's voice through my closed door, I know logically that he is in the hallway outside my room. Thus I "see him in my mind's eye. " Cognition has three bases: subject, object, and the subject-object relation. In other words, that which we call "thinking" is always involved with these three. As already noted, pratyaksa and anumana are levels of cognition. There is yet a third and highest level, divya-pratyaksa or divine perception. "The means of attaining divine perception are divine grace which is invoked by acts of daily worship and meditation bearing the character of devotion. " (Safaya, pg. 261) The mind's conative (willing) side, Ramanuja teaches, is based on free will. Free will is an attribute of the Supreme Lord that the jiva shares to a minute degree. Actions in accordance with the Lord's will are liberating; actions in defiance of the Lord's will are subject to judgement under the law of karma. Above all is the affective side of the mind. Ramanujacarya teaches that all the truly healthy emotions culminate in love. Bhakti-yoga redirects the jiva's love from material things to the Supreme Lord. Thus the jiva attains the highest happiness. Because the affective side of the mind holds sway over the cognitive and conative sides, the purifying influence of bhakti upon the affective side is most important. But bhakti-yoga takes command of all mental functions. It is not "just" an affair of the emotions. Bhakti-yoga instills in the affective side of the mind the longing for the Supreme Lord and nothing else. In pursuance of this, other ideal emotional states are brought forth: kalyana or a well-wishing attitude toward other living entities; daya, compassion; ahimsa, nonviolence; and anavasada, joyfulness. To the cognitive side bhakti-yoga brings viveka (right discrimination) and arjavam (integrity). To the conative side it brings right action (kriya), spiritual practice (abhyasa), and welfare work (dana). To all sides of the mind's activities bhakti-yoga brings prapatti, complete surrender to the Lord. That is the overview of the psychology of bhakti-yoga. In addition we can shortly consider Ramanujacarya's insight into consciousness and its conditioning under the modes of material nature. Let us begin by understanding just what the word visistadvaita means. Advaita, of course, means "nondual. " Mayavadi philosophy claims the term advaita for itself. When advaita is combined with visesena (qualifying agent), we get visistadvaita, which means "qualified nondualism. " It is important to understand that the starting point of this philosophy is not a material visesana like the tri-guna prakrti. Visistadvaita does not merely say that the nondual Absolute has taken on the qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas; if that were the case, then there would hardly be a difference between the philosophy of Ramanuja and the philosophy of Sankaracarya. Ramanuja teaches that the original visesana is consciousness, which is not the immutable Absolute that Sankaracarya thinks it is. Consciousness is a quality of the Absolute Godhead, and also a quality of the individual soul. Another way to explain the distinction is to say that for Sankara, consciousness is the subject; for Ramanuja, it is the function of the subject. Hence consciousness is not static. It is dynamic. Consciousness is aprthaksiddharma--it cannot be separated from its subject. In this way the subject and its consciousness are nondual (advaita). But because consciousness is also an active attribute of the subject, it qualifies the subject. For example, a jiva can be exalted by his consciousness or he can be degraded by it. Degredation of consciousness brings the jiva under the control of the three modes of material nature. During jagrata or the waking state (i. e. the sattvic state), the consciousness of the jiva is granted by material nature room of movement on the physical plane. Consciousness flows along the subtle channel of the mind through the senses to the sense objects. In svapna or dream (i. e. the rajasic state), the mental link to the sense objects is shut down. In this condition the mind is active, but it is engaged with the smrti or memory of sense objects. Memory throws up images without coherence or coordination. There is a reality to all dreams, in that the elements of any dream are real experiences held in storage by the memory; but dreaming distorts and confuses that reality. About susupti (deep dreamless sleep, the tamasic state), Sankaracarya argues that the Self becomes the witness of primeval avidya. By this act of witnessing avidya the ahamkara dissolves. For Sankara, susupti is the threshold of pure consciousness, in that the Self is freed from material perceptions and conceptions. Ramanuja holds that it is incorrect to speak of the soul being the witness to anything in the susupti state. There is literally nothing (no-thing) to be seen in susupti. Suppose one dark night a crime is committed stealthily and silently on an unlit city street. The police investigate and learn that a man was waiting for a ride near the scene of the crime. When they interview him, the man informs them he saw and heard nothing. If this is the case, can we refer to this man as "the witness?" No. Yet he was present in the vicinity of the crime when it happened. Similarly Ramanuja acknowledges the presence of the subject (the jivatma) in susupti, but he does not acknowledge that the attribute of the subject, consciousness, is active at this time. We ought not to say, "In susupti, consciousness is pure," like Sankaracarya says. After all, when we come out of deep sleep we return to the wakeful engagements of trying to satisfy our material desires. Rather we may say, "Consciousness is disengaged while in susupti. " It does not operate between subject, object and the relation of subject and object which are the three bases of cognition. Now, we need to carefully consider what Ramanujacarya is describing here and not misunderstand him. Consciousness is inactive during susupti, yet consciousness is never separate from the subject. Thus when the soul returns to the waking state he remembers that he was asleep. Moreover, he remembers that his deep sleep was a pleasant experience. Thus he says, "I slept well. " On this point Ramanuja and Sankaracarya agree: the jiva experiences a kind of happiness in susupti. The experience of pleasure in deep sleep demonstrates that the affective side of consciousness does not shut down even when the cognitive and conative sides are disengaged. The plain conclusion is that the
affective side is superior. Jnana-yoga, which focuses on cognition, and karma-yoga, which focuses on conation, cannot keep pace with bhakti-yoga, which focuses on affective consciousness as well as fully engaging the cognitive and conative sides. From the above information, we get insight into the karana-deha, the finest material embodiment of the spirit soul. Those jivas who dwell in the muni-loka, whose only embodiment is the karana-deha, are disengaged from physical and mental activities. They exist in a state of trance. But that does not mean that the karana-deha is pure like the siddha-deha, the transcendental body that is manifest in the spiritual world for loving service to the Lord. Material desires are spread like seeds throughout the karana-deha. For the seeds to sprout and grow, the linga- and sthula-sariras are needed. During creation, Lord Brahma brings forth the seeds of the jivas and their karmic desires from his own causal body and sows them within the regions of the universe where the linga- and sthula-sariras are active. In those regions the jivas are able to act out their desires subtlely and/or grossly. In the Janaloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka, contact with gross sense objects, whether by means of mind or by senses, does not take place. In our own individual embodiment as human beings, desires are released from the karana-deha to take subtle shape in the mind and to be acted upon in the gross body. Because the residents of the three uppermost regions of the universe are sealed off from lower strata of consciousness by their karana-deha embodiment, they always experience the happiness called anandamaya. On this platform they may merge their bodies into primal nescience and then ascend to higher levels. Ramanujacarya speaks of two levels of consciousness beyond the causal state of embodiment. These are yogi-pratyaksa and nirupadhika-jnana. The first is the mystical perception of accomplished yogis. The second is the turiya state proper. Regarding the second, upadhi means designation (i. e. the subtle and gross body). Nirupadhi is the negation of those designations. Jnana means knowledge. In the turiya state the soul attains transcendental knowledge unrestricted by the material coverings of consciousness. This is the state of clear ksetrajna explained in Part Two above by a quotation from Srila Prabhupada. As Safaya writes on page 253 of his book, "Through this the individual perceives the entire reality [of the Universal Form in the mahat-tattva], as Arjuna perceived when the divine eye was granted to him by Krsna. " In conclusion, Ramanuja uses the word manas (mind) to cover the whole subtle body. Manas reveals to the soul the inner condition of pleasure and pain and the outer realm of sense perception. As a whole, the function of manas is threefold: adyavasaya or decision, abhimana or self-love, and cinta or reflection. The first is the specific function of the intelligence, the second of the false ego, and the last of the mind proper. End of Essay 2--more essays on the way! Want to know more about Visistadvaita? Go to: www.hinduweb.org/home/dharma_and_philosophy/vvh/vvhperson.html This hyperlink brings you to an article written by a Western, university-educated follower of Visistadvaita. He compares the conception of the self taught by Ramanuja to that taught in the Aristotelian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Modern Western notions of the self find their beginning in Thomist philosophy. This article is a scholarly piece of writing, not the easiest to digest. At this site you can find a number of other
interesting pieces about the doctrine of Sripad Ramanujacarya.