Introduction to the Upanishads - 3. Swami Krishnananda

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Saturday 11, May 2024 07:15.

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Scriptures

Post-3.

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The other defect of the mind is known as Vikshepa, that is fickleness, inability to concentrate on anything for a long time, instability is the basic nature of the mind. It will think twenty things in one minute and will not be able to fix its attention on one thing even for a few seconds. These are the superficial aspects of the defects of the mind.

But there is a deeper defect known as Avarana. It is like a thick veil over the mind, a black curtain, as it were, which prohibits the entry of the rays of light into itself totally. The Atman being pure subjectivity, the impulsion of the mind to move outward in the direction of sense objects, is an anti-Atman activity taking place in the mind, a movement towards the not-Self. Any psychic operation, any modification of the mind in the direction of other than what the Self is, is to be considered as impelled by some dirt in the mind.

Sometimes the mind operates like a prism which deflects rays of light in various forms and in various hues. It is up to each person to consider for one's own self what are the thoughts that generally arise in the mind from the morning to the evening. You may be doing anything, but what are you thinking in the mind? This is what is important. The thoughts which take you wholly in the direction of what you are not, and engaging your psychic attention on things which are not the Self – these things should be considered as a serious infection in the mind itself.

When basically everybody is what one is, and even when you are operating in the direction of a sense-object so-called, through the perceptive activity of the senses, what is actually happening is that one location of this Universal Self (it is universal because it is present in all beings), one particular psycho-physical location of this Universal Self tries to impinge itself upon another such location in the form of an object outside. It considers another thing as an object wrongly because of the movement of the Atman-consciousness through the eyes, through the various sense-organs.

There is a tendency inherent in the human mind by which the pure subjectivity which is the consciousness of the Atman is pulled, as it were, in the direction of what it is not, and is compelled to be aware of what it is not in the form of sense-perception. Not only that, it cannot be conscious continuously of one particular object – now it is aware of this, now it is aware of another thing. It moves from object to object. 

The tendency to move in the direction of what the Atman is not, the impulsion towards externality of objects, is the dirt or Mala as it is called. The impossibility of fixing the mind on anything continuously is the distraction or the Vikshepa. The reason why such an impulse has arisen at all is the Avarana or the veil. These three defects have to be removed gradually by protracted self-discipline coupled with proper instruction. It takes its own time.

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