Commentary on the Panchadasi

by Swami Krishnananda

Ahantām mamatām dehe gehādau ca karoti yaḥ, kāmādya vasthayā bhrānto nāsā vātmā manomayaḥ (6). Mind is internal to the vital sheath. What does the mind do? Full of desires is the mind; fickle is the mind. It is never stable at any time. And the mind will not rest in a single condition continuously even for a moment. It is deluded, mostly. The mind of a person does not perceive things correctly. It requires a lot of deliberation to understand our perceptions, whether they are valid or not.

Attachment is the nature of the mind. It clings to properties, like house, wealth, family, etc. I-ness and my-ness are the essential features of the mental body. It always feels “I am. I am coming, I am doing, I am this and I am that.” It also feels, “This is mine. This is not mine.” The sense of ‘I’, which is egoism, and the sense of ‘mine’ in respect of things which it considers as its property, are the features of the mental body. But the mind is unconscious in the state of deep sleep; therefore, it cannot be identified with consciousness.

There are conditions when the mind is not working at all. In utter delusion, in coma, in swoon, in sleep, even in death itself, the mind does not function – but the person continues. Therefore, even as the physical body and the vital sheath are not to be identified with Pure Consciousness, the mind also has to be distinguished from our essential nature, which is Pure Consciousness. Consciousness is not the body, not the vital breath, also not the mind.

Līnā suptau vapurbodhe vyāpnuyād ānakhā gragā, cicchāyo peta dhīr-nātmā vijñāna maya śabda bhāk (7). There is a sheath internal to the mind, which is called the intellectual sheath. While the mind just thinks, the intellect can understand, decide and judge. It is the ratiocinating faculty in us. This also is not the Atman, because it has a beginning and an end. It is not perpetually operating in us.

In deep sleep, the intellect also is dissolved, as is the case with the mind. Only in the waking condition do the mind and the intellect pervade the whole body. We seem to be feeling that this body is me; right from head to foot, we identify ourselves with this visible sheath on account of the pervasion of the mind and the intellect continuously in the waking condition. But in deep sleep, the intellect also does not work. It ceases, but we do not cease.

If in the deep sleep state we cease, we would not wake up the next morning. So even when the body ceases, the vital sheath ceases, the mind ceases and the intellect ceases to operate and ceases to be a content of our consciousness, we exist nevertheless in the state of deep sleep. Therefore, the intellectual sheath also is not the Atman; it is not consciousness. So we have eliminated four sheaths – the physical, the vital, the mental, and the intellectual. All these sheaths, these enclosures of the body which we hug as very dear and consider as identical with our own true nature – really speaking, they are not identical with us. They are external coverings like a shirt or a coat that we put on, which cannot be identified with our own selves.

Kartṛtva-karaṇatvā-ghyāṁ vikriye-tāntarin driyam, vijñāna-manasī antar-bahiś-caite parasparam (8). The mind and the intellect have the similar characteristic of fickleness. We do not always go on thinking anything definitely; nor are we always judging things rationally. There is torpidity of thought. There is mostly absence of the function of the mind and the intellect when we are woolgathering and thinking of nothing particular. That is to show that we are existing even without the active operation of these mental and intellectual sheaths.

Instrumental is the mind; and the agent of action is the intellect. The mind is external to the intellect; the intellect is internal to the mind. They act as internal operator and external instrument. that is the only difference between the intellect and the mind. But actually, as far as the non-conscious nature is concerned, they are identical. They are, finally, a product of matter only.

Kāci-dantar-mukhā vṛttir-ānanda-prati-bimba-bhāk, puṇya-bhoge bhoga-śantau nidrā-rūpeṇa līyate (9). Now comes the last one, the causal sheath. In this condition, where the causal sheath predominantly operates, as in the case of deep sleep, the vrittis or the psychosis – that is, the operations of the psyche – get internalised completely, and externalisation of these mental operations ceases. In the waking and the dreaming conditions, the mind operates in an external fashion through the sense organs. But in the state of deep sleep, there is an inwardising activity of the mind and the intellect taking place. That is, these activities of the mind and the intellect cease completely. They get dissolved, as it were, into their cause, and the rajas and the sattva aspects also are buried in a complete oblivion of everything – tamas – a darkness and absence of any kind of awareness, which is what we experience in the state of deep sleep. We feel very happy.

The reason why we are so happy in the state of deep sleep has been a very intriguing question in psychology because any amount of empirical answer will not suffice in accounting for the reason why we feel so energised, fresh and relieved when we wake up in the morning. Even a sick person feels a little better early in the morning. A tired person wakes up with energy which was not there earlier. We would like to sleep and would not like to wake up so easily.

The reason for the happiness is the internalisation of the psyche – the inwardness of our activity in the direction of the Atman that is our real nature. Our faculties are nearer to our true nature than they are in the waking and the dreaming states. We are pulled out of our own Self, as it were, in a wrong direction of externality, mostly in the waking state; and we lose our Self-identity in the waking condition, when we are object-conscious. The more are we object-conscious, the less are we Self-conscious. Therefore, we are very much distracted in the waking condition. We run about here and there in search of a little relief and peace, which we cannot find on account of it being not possible to see happiness outside. It is a condition of the Self.

There is a temporary cessation of externalised activity of the senses, the mind and the intellect in the state of deep sleep. The psychosis, or the mental vrittis, seem to be licking the taste of the bliss of the Atman in the state of deep sleep – though unconsciously, as it were. They are dumbfounded. It is as if somebody has given them a blow on the cheek and they have lost their consciousness. Nevertheless, they have fallen on the lap of that Pure Existence, which is the Selfhood of all persons.

This is the reason why we feel happy when we are in a state of sleep. Happiness is the nature of the Self. It cannot be found in anything that is not the Self. All joy is in us; it is not in anything else. So all the activity of the world, externally projected, is to be considered as futile, finally, in the acquisition of happiness in this world. It is just a pursuing of the will-o'-the-wisp as they call it, water in the mirage. The more we run after the world, the more we will be disappointed; and we will get nothing, not even a husk, finally.

The internal settlement of the mind and the intellect in the state of deep sleep identifies our personality, for the time being, with the true Self of ours. We enjoy a bliss that we cannot expect in anything else in this world. This happiness is to be attributed partly to the good deeds that we performed in the previous birth. If we had been a completely bad person, we would not have even one minute's happiness in this world. We would be tearing our hair, but get nothing. But if we feel convinced that there is some happiness in this world – sometimes we feel relieved and there is some internal joy caused by certain things in the world – we should conclude that we have done some good deeds in the previous birth. That is why we come to the Himalayas, to the Ganga and to ashrams and listen to glorious thoughts instead of going to distracting places where we become worse and worse in our psychic functions.

When there is satiety or surfeit of experience – when we have had enough of things – the senses are exhausted and we collapse, as it were, mentally. In that condition also, negatively we go into our own Self. We want nothing at that time; the mind is collapsing due to the fatigue of the activity of the sense organs. That is another aspect of the reason why we feel a little relieved when we go nearer to our own Self, either by force or by some deliberate effect taking place.

Kādācit-katvato na-ātmā syād ānanda mayo’pyayam, bimba-bhūto ya ānanda ātmā’sau sarvadā sthiteḥ (10). But unfortunately, even this causal sheath that we experience in the state of deep sleep is not the true Self because the true Self is directly conscious. It is not merely indirectly happy, as we have it in the state of deep sleep. This happiness of sleep is negative. We are not conscious of it positively, and also we are not always in that condition. The causal sheath does not operate always. There is a fraction of the day when we seem to be falling into that particular state of causality; and it has a beginning and an end. There is a beginning for the event of our entering into that causal body and also there is and end of it when we wake up in the morning. As it has a beginning and an end, it cannot be regarded as eternal; therefore, it is not Atman. It is non-eternal in its nature.

So, what remains afterwards? If not the physical body, not the vital body, not the mental body, not the intellectual body, not the causal body – what remains? Is there anything in us other than these? Practically, we will find that nothing remains. We will feel that when we go on peeling an onion, peels after peels will come out, and inside there is nothing – no pith. It will look as if we have no pith at all; only sheaths are being removed by the analysis of non-identity of consciousness and their externality. If we peel out the causal sheath and the other sheaths, we will find that we do not know what is happening to us. We will be in utter darkness.

“All things have gone. I have found nothing.” This kind of feeling may sometimes temporarily arise in our mind when everything has gone: the body has gone, property has gone, money has gone, house has gone, relatives have died, and nobody wants to look at us. “All things have gone. Then I am nothing.” People sometimes make the statement: “I am nothing; all things have gone. I am nothing. Only the breath is remaining, and that also is about to go.”

Sometimes we begin to wrongly feel that when our possessions are taken away, we become a zero – as if we are the possessions. But we are the possessor; we are not the possessions. So why do we say that we are nothing when the possessions are taken away? It is because of the intense attachment to the possessions that we begin to wrongly feel that we are ourselves the possessions; and when they are taken away, we wrongly feel that we are not there at all, that all things have gone. “All things have gone. I have gone. I am no more.”

But it is not so. We will still remain if everything in the world goes. Even if the entire solar system goes and all the worlds vanish, we will still be there. Let us see what remains.