The endeavour in yoga is to properly gain an insight into what has happened, what
sort of involvement has taken place, and what the truth of things is, ultimately. The
present state of awareness—the nature of knowledge that we are endowed with at
present—is not the real nature of the true Seer, the Ultimate Seer, because it is
impossible to condition the Seer in any manner whatsoever. The first mistake is that
there is a false notion of the principle of consciousness as being projected outside, as
if it is an object. Consciousness can never become an object. It cannot be externalised
because to be externalised is to be dissociated from oneself. There is no such thing as
dissociation of consciousness from itself, because the very process of dissociation
requires another factor which is other than itself, and the nature of consciousness is
such that something alien to it cannot exist.
Thus, there is a fundamental mistake involved in the very notion of this dissociation
and the consequent perception of an object outside. Hence, all suffering can be
attributed to a kind of misconception or error that is there in the very experience
through which the individual passes. There is, therefore, a necessity to withdraw
oneself gradually from the effect to the cause by a recession of the effect into the
cause, as was mentioned in an earlier sutra. How the bondage has arisen and what
are the stages of the development of this bondage is to be understood first. Then, the
freedom of the soul can be achieved by a reversal of process: the way in which we got
down, in the very same way we get up—backwards, through the very same process.
Though there are multitudes of causes which have brought about this involvement
and suffering, broadly speaking, as it was mentioned, there is an initial identification
of the pure consciousness, which is infinite, with the limited psychological organ, and
then there is a subsequent identification of consciousness through the medium of the
psychological organ with the object outside.
Thus, the first attempt in yoga would be to dissociate the mind from the objects so
that there may not be attachment. The attachment has arisen on account of not
knowing what has happened. What has happened is very clear now, but this is not
clear to the mind in the process of perception and experience. There is such a
thoroughgoing admixture of qualities between the mind and the object that the mind
never realises that it has undergone an inward change in order to get identified with
the nature or the form of the object. The object has not become the mind, really
speaking. The mind has only transformed itself into the shape of the object, and
contemplated the object in such intensity that it has become practically a part of its
experience.
The prescription which was originally given in a sutra in the first section, the
Samadhi Pada—namely, the practice of vairagya—is the remedy for this mistake that
the mind has committed in its identification with the object. We have noted what this
vairagya means. It is the discovery of the inner constituents of the very experience of
an object, which experience generally is so vehement in its expression that an
analysis of this kind is not possible. In the perception of an object, especially when an
emotion is involved, we cannot go into an analysis of what has taken place, because
the emotion will not allow this analysis. The energy which charges the emotion in
respect of a particular perception ties the consciousness to the object with such force
that an extrication of it from the object is not practicable under ordinary
circumstances. We cannot discover what defect is involved in our perceptions if our
mind is intent upon that perception and wants the perception for its own purposes.