Thoughts in enlightenment
- On sutra 1.6 Swami Venkatesananda Saraswati explains in part:
The self can go on thinking, creating thoughts and concepts, and of
course think they are right and logical. (It might even think absurd
thoughts and think that they are also right). It can register
impressions or experiences as memory and occasionally revive that
memory. It can indulge in imagination; and when it doesn't want to do
any of these it can go to sleep. This is the endless activity of the
self. The self or the understander cannot be understood; but when
these five activities are observed, through them one can go right up
to this understander, find the understander. When the understander is
understood in awakened intelligence, then the psychological
disturbance--which is pain or sorrow in life--is removed.
Must the vritti disappear in a state of yoga? Perhaps yes, perhaps no.
One has to approach that a bit cautiously. What was regarded as the
object (whether the knowledge concerning it was valid or not valid,
right or wrong) will continue to exist. You may have good or bad
thoughts about a certain person; when you are spiritually awakened
something happens within you, but he does not disappear.
It is a very tricky game from there. It is not right to say that when
there is enlightenment these vritti will subside. They will not
subside, as such--just as waves, as such, do not subside--but your
perception of the waves as something different, distinct and separate
from the ocean has gone. What it is is inexpressible: a vision of the
totality without the particulars being destroyed, and yet a vision in
which there is no division. That is the state of yoga.