dvesha go, and then everything goes—all bondage ceases. It is raga and dvesha that
are the causes of the perception of things.
We may wonder how the perception of a stone can be due to attachment. We are not
attached to a stone that is on a hill, or to a tree that is standing in the forest. In what
way are we attached to it? How can it be said that attachment is the cause of
perception? If there is a small pebble on the top of a hill, we are not attached to it;
and yet, we see it. Attachment here does not mean a conscious motivation of
emotion; it is a deeper thing altogether. We may not be consciously aware as to what
is happening. Love for an object philosophically, metaphysically, does not mean an
active movement of the emotion towards the object on the conscious level. The
personality of the individual, as we have been repeating again and again, is not
merely on the conscious level. It is something very, very deep. Hence, whether there
is attachment to an object or not cannot be known merely by studying the conscious
level of the mind. It may be completely clean like a slate and yet it may be turbid at
the bottom. It is this inside structure or the deep-rooted nature of the individual that
is the cause of reactions in the form of perceptions.
We react totally, and not merely in a mentation aspect. It is not merely the thought
that is reacting, or the will that is reacting in an isolated manner, but the whole thing
that we are reacts. Every time the whole thing starts functioning, even when merely
the conscious level is operating, it is urged by the subconscious and unconscious
layers which are at the bottom, and which lie unconscious but yet are very active.
What we call the unconscious or the subconscious level is not really unconscious like
a stone or a dullard—it is a very active principle. It is called unconscious only for the
purpose of psychological analysis because it does not take part in the active
operations of the individual in respect of experience. But it has another kind of
activity altogether.
As we studied in the Samkhya, there are three gunas of prakriti—sattva, rajas and
tamas. When tamas, or even rajas, is predominant, sattva gets submerged.
Therefore, there is no proper consciousness of what is inside, or what is happening
inside. When tamas is predominant, consciousness is obliterated. There is a
complete darkness, as in sleep. In sleep we are aware of nothing, but it does not
mean there is a total absence of things. We are not absent in sleep; we are very
wholly present. Everything is there, and yet we are not conscious. We are wholly
present in sleep, but we are unconscious. It is also a fact that everything that is
worthwhile, everything that is meaningful, everything that will cause pleasure and
pain is also there.
Sleep is not a dead condition; it is a very active one. Therefore, it is also called a vritti
in the Yoga Sutras: pramāṇa viparyaya vikalpa nidrā smṛtayaḥ (I.6). Even nidra is a
vritti; it is an operation of the mind in a particular manner. Even if the army
withdraws itself, it is an action that it is doing; it is not simply a cessation of activity.
Likewise, there are various stages in which the personality manifests itself. Inasmuch
as the very atmosphere into which we are born—the world phenomena of which we
are contents or citizens—is regarded as the necessary field for experience of the
individual, it goes without saying that even a bare perception of an object has a cause
behind it. That cause has come from the deep-seated urges of the individual.