Now we go deeper still. Is there such a thing as wooden pulp? It is nothing but a heap
of chemical substances. The wooden pulp is nothing but a chemical value, assessable
and measurable in a laboratory. Perhaps we will be able to manufacture, chemically,
certain substances which are equivalent to wooden pulp. We can chemically
manufacture paper without wood. The essence of the wooden pulp is nothing but a
chemical substance—so much of carbon, so much of this, so much of that. They have
been mixed in a particular proportion, in permutation and combination, and what we
call the wooden pulp is nothing but a chemical substance. So we have gone from
currency note to paper, from paper to wooden pulp, and from wooden pulp we have
gone to the chemical substance. What is the chemical substance made of?
We go deeper still. The physicist will see the chemical substance in a different way
altogether. His angle of vision is different. The physicist’s observation will reveal
certain atomic forces which have been arranged in a particular manner to form that
chemical substance called the wooden pulp. The velocity and the arrangement of the
electrons around a nucleus determine the structure of the chemical substance. It may
be hydrogen, it may be carbon, it may be nitrogen—whatever it is. These chemical
substances are really not independent, indivisible physical matter. They are only
certain arrangements of electrical particles to which everything is reducible, says the
physicist.
See where we have gone now—from a currency note we have gone to the electric
energy. This so-called currency note of so many dollars, pounds or rupees is nothing
but electric energy which has been compounded into grosser substances, and we
have given an appellation to each stage of the development of this object in its
grossified forms. In the subtlest form we call it electrical energy; when it grossifies we
call it chemical substance; when it grossifies further we call it wooden pulp; still
grosser we call it paper; then further we invest it with some imaginary value called
money. This is what has happened to all the objects in the world. The Yoga Sutras tell
us that this is not the way of looking at things. We cannot have samyama on an
object, we cannot enter into the nature of an object, we cannot commune with the
object, we cannot become the object, unless we know what the object is. We have
ultimately found out that the so-called currency note is something quite different
from what we are conceiving in our mind at the present moment. The stages, or the
bhumis, which the sutra refers to here are the stages of the development of the
manifestation of the object.
To refresh our memory, we can go back to one or two definitions of Patanjali given in
the Samadhi Pada, which we studied long ago. The gross form of the object is a
compound of several factors, says Patanjali: tatra śabda artha jñāna vikalpaiḥ saṅkīrṇā
savitarkā samāpattiḥ (I.42). This was told to us in the Samadhi Pada. When we look at
an object, we have three ideas jumbled together—the object as such, the name that
we have given to it, and the idea that we have about it. These three go together. Our
idea about the object is reinforced by the name that we have given to it. The idea and
the name jointly prevent our proper evaluation of the nature of the object as it is. “It
is my daughter.” This idea, ‘my daughter, my son’, prevents us from knowing the
nature of that person independently. We know very well what is the difference
between our son and somebody else’s son. There is a tremendous difference, though
the substances behind these two persons are identical in every respect. The object
that is the base of this concept called ‘son’ is of the same nature in either case, but a