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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 | Previous Next | |
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FOUR STAGES: THE DEFINED, THE UNDEFINED, THE INDICATED, AND THE UNMANIFEST.
These three gunas have four stages. The first, Patanjali calls "the defined." You can call it matter; that is the most defined thing around you. Then, "the undefined" -- you can call it mind; that too is there, felt by you continuously, but is an undefined factor. You cannot define what mind is. You know it, you live it continuously, but you cannot define it. Matter can be defined but not mind. And then "the indicated" -- the indicated is even subtler than the undefined: it is the self. You can only indicate it. You cannot even say it is undefined because to say something is undefined is, in a subtle way, to define it, because that too is a definition. To say that something is undefined... you have already defined it in a negative way; you have said something about it. So, then, there is this subtle layer of existence which is self, that is the indicated. And then beyond it there is again the subtlest which is "the unmanifest" -- unindicated -- that is, no-self.
So: matter, mind, self, no-self -- these are the four stages of all these three gunas.
If you are deeply in lethargy you will be like matter. A man of lethargy is almost matter, vegetates; you don't find him alive. Then there is the second quality, mind. If rajas, activity, is too much, then you become too much of the mind. Then you are very, very active -- mind is continuously active, obsessed with activity, continuously in search of new occupations. Somebody asked Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to reach the Everest peak, "Why? Why did you take such a risk?" He said, "Because the Everest peak was there, man had to go." There is nothing.... Why is man going to the moon? Because the moon is there. How can you avoid it? You have to go. A man of activity is continuously in search of occupation. He cannot remain unoccupied, that is his problem Unoccupied he is hell; occupied he forgets himself.
If tamas, inertia, is too much, you become like matter. If rajas is too much you become mind: mind is activity. That's why mind goes mad. Then, if sattva is too much you become self, you become atma. But that
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