the controller of the outer senses, but all the while entirely directed by the soul.
The mind is mechanical.
An enduring metaphor for the senses, due at least to Pras ́astapa ̄da, is as
windows onto the world. In a room with a window on every wall, each one rep-
resents a possibility of sensory contact with some aspect of the world. But only
a possibility: in order to see out, one has to direct one’s attention to one window
rather than another. In the case of the senses, this role is assigned to the mind.
It is a faculty of attention, that by which the soul directs its gaze through one
sense rather than another. Another metaphor is helpful here. Think of the senses
as converging railway tracks, meeting at a point and becoming a single track.
The mind is the set of points at the junction. It is that by which the controller
(the soul, the signalman) channels its attention in one direction rather than
another.
A perception arises in the soul when there is a causal chain: from object to
sense, from sense to mind and from mind to soul.^19 Uddyotakara observes that
if this role of the mind in perception seems to have been forgotten in the
Nya ̄yasu ̄tra definition of perception, it is because a mind–soul link is not some-
thingspecialto perception, while a mind–sense link is impliedby the mention of
the sense–object connection.^20
The existence of the mind as an intersensory switching device follows from
an alleged deficiency in the powers of the conscious soul. This is that the soul
can attend to at most one thing at a time. There is a strict sequence in the tem-
poral order of thought. If the senses are functioning simultaneously, but one can
entertain no more than one thought at a time, then one must have within
oneself a capacity to choose between the deliverances of the senses (NS 1.1.16,
NS 3.2.56). In reply to the obvious objection that we do seem to be able to attend
to more than one thing at once, Va ̄tsya ̄yana claims that this is an error produced
by our inability to discriminate events which happen in very quick succession.
He cites (NS 3.2.58) the illusion of a circling firebrand, appearing as if it were a
continuous hoop, and more interestingly, the way one hears a sentence as a
whole even though the letters and words are uttered in sequence.
This account of the mind is smooth. But a worry now presents itself. If the
conscious soul fails to notice the distinctness in a sequence of perceptions,
it seems to follow that the mind after all has a certain autonomy in operation.
For if the soul is not quick enough to follow the mind’s switchings from one
perception to the next, how can it be controlling them?^21 And yet there is no
question of assigning consciousness (caitanya) to the mind. Nya ̄yasu ̄tra 3.2.38
is explicit:
It [consciousness] is not a property of the mind, for reasons already given, and
because of its being ruled by another, and because [there would then follow an]
acquiring of the benefits of actions not performed.The “reason already given” is simply the definition itself of the soul, as the exclu-
sive abode of thought, will, pleasure and pain (NS 1.1.10). The idea of “benefits
426 jonardon ganeri