Sat-darshana Bhashya (translation)

III OF BONDAGE

Because of the difference in development among human beings who are all alike subject to conditions of space, time and causation, some are stung by a sense of bondage while others are not. The man with a sense of bonds is already on the way to freedom. Such a man is better developed than he who like a brute is unaware of his bonds, and he that has release from bondage is still better developed than one with a mere sense of bondage. The course of all this development through a gradation of stages is all a play of the Conscious Force, cit-sakti. Thus development takes place in the inconscient objective existence as well as in the subtle movement called ’knowledge and action’, vrtti, both being illuminated and thereby acted upon by the illuminating Conscient, the cause of all differentiated existence. Therefore development paripaka refers to both the subtle suksma and the gross sthula, the subtle movement of mind and life vrtti and the gross objective existence visaya.

Now the nature of the bondage bandha is quite clear. The link between the subject and the object, between spirit and matter, is itself the binding element denoted by the term suksma sarira, the subtle body. Though this subtle body presenting the principle of knowledge and action is a composite of both mind and life, yet since the mind with its greater subtlety is closer to and more easily receptive of the light of Consciousness, the mind alone is sometimes called the suksma sarira, the subtle body.

This subtle body is the link between matter and spirit and it binds the soul or self to the body. The self or soul then becomes lost in the bodily consciousness and hence arises the feeling and sense that the body is the self, and conversely the self is thought to have the bodily attributes of birth etc. Now then, let us see who is in bondage. The indwelling consciousness in all (sarvantaryami) which is the support of all existences presides over all that exists, over the universal and the individual, over the great and the small; therefore there is room everywhere for the subtle movement of knowledge and action, covert and overt.’ It must not be forgotten that there is an inexhaustible power inherent in this intra-cosmic spirit that presides over and resides in everything. Shakti and Shakta, the power and the powerful, are inseparable and can be separated only in mind and speech, never in fact or in experience. And this power is of the nature of a Supreme Capacity.

On the smallest as on the biggest, on the collective as on the individual, the presiding and directing consciousness confers by a natural poise the capacity needed for their formation, sustenance and dissolution. It is the wonderful Shakti of the All-Conscious Supreme Lord of creation that by its very nature constitutes the capacity of the presiding veiled Intelligence to enter, hold and direct the formation, endurance and disappearance of countless finite objects. These finite objects are of endless variety, the objects of the material world having an embodiment purely physical, the objects of the vegetable kingdom with an embodiment physical-vital, and the beings of the human kind possessed of an embodiment physical-vital-mental.

But on the ground that the self is limited to the body, or the spirit is bound to matter through the link of what is called the suksma sarira, the subtle movement of mind and life, it should not be mistaken that the presiding spirit is in bondage. The spirit is self-existent and eternally free and can never be in chains. Nor can it be said that because it presides, to that extent it is affected and bound. The presiding poise of the Supreme Self or Spirit is eternal and inherent in its very being, since it relates to its own becomings. The Self or the free Spirit is not fettered, nor is bondage for the body which has no sense or feeling. Who then is it that is bound and feels chained? There must be in the bondage itself, in the suksma sarira, some element that experiences the bondage, something by which the presiding Spirit is signified. That element is called the ego, ahamkara. It is a persistent though impermanent form of atman, the self, formed and centred in the vital-mental subtle body with which it identifies itself. By drawing upon the power of becoming, inherent in the gaze of the self-aware atman, it imposes itself upon thoughts and things and makes them its own; ever dependent for support, it yet poses itself as free and figures as the spirit itself. This apparent self, born in forms ever shifting from form to form, finding its mainstay in forms, itself without form, this is termed jiva or soul, in the sense that it is born and perishable and not the real self, atman. By this identification of the bondage with the bound, of the support with the supported, of the ego with the bondage which it has woven round itself, this apparent self with its central principle of ahamkara is both the bondage and the bound.

This ego, which is the apparent self, a reflection of the Real Self in the vital-mental stuff called the subtle body appropriates the latter to itself, becomes it as it were, and as a consequence the subtle body is subjected to the sanction of the ego which is its immediate centre, so to speak. Like the light of the lamp, the activity of the ego extending out from this centre is imposed primarily on the subtle body which is its main domain. For the reasons thus briefly stated, a number of terms with varying connotations emphasising different aspects are used to denote this ego. It is the subtle body itself, the jiva or soul in the making, the apparent self, the mind, the link between the self and the body. It is clear then that it is this apparent self or soul-formation in the subtle body, that is stung by a sense of bondage and is actually in chains. Therefore liberation and bondage are used with reference to the ego, with its pose as self. In the undeveloped condition, it becomes active in the subtle or the gross and is then absorbed in the world of forms. That is bondage. In a developed state, it gets into a single movement of search for its source, the real self in the depths and thus becomes withdrawn or released from all subjective movements vrtti and all objects visaya which constitute the not-self. This is release. Both the power that binds and the power that releases lie latent in a germinal state in this very subtle body dominated by the ego or the apparent self. The Conscious Force directed to the creative movement brings about in the indivisible infinite Self distinct forces and finite forms, separates them from their root-source so as to produce in consciousness an experience of their distinctness, and throws them into an outgoing movement directed to grosser forms. This differentiating movement proceeding from the creative Conscious Force throws a veil of self-forgetfulness over the innumerable finite forms of Existence-Consciousness (Sat-Cit) for their definite formation. This veil of self-forgetfulness, cast over all that is formed, limited and distinct, is a function of what is called the tirodhaua sakti, the screening power over all formations in the free, eternal and infinite Self. It is this power of veiling that creates the knot between matter and spirit, causes the subtle stuff of mind and life to assume and be absorbed in grosser forms and constitutes itself as the suksma sarire, which is at once the power and property of the ego as well as its bondage.

Again in this subtle body of bondage itself, there is another movement succeeding and superseding the power of self-veiling or tirodhana. This is the self-revealing power anugraha, which is but the reverse of tirodhana. By a covert and close following it holds and educates the ego which covering up the light of the conscious self poses as its figure and impels it to further development. Thus propelled, the apparent self is forced to advance through experience of pain and pleasure, through wandering about in a seemingly unending and apparently ever repeating movement of mind and life or by getting absorbed in grosser forms, only to find at the end the futility of its endless revolution in its own prison-house. Then it is the anugraha sakti that directs the egoidea to a single movement leading to the deeper and real self, and thus cuts asunder the knot of ego and dissolves the bond of the jiva or the apparent self.

Thus there are two movements of the Supreme Conscious Force in creation, the one preceeding and throwing a veil over the finite formations in the infinite self, the other succeeding, with an intimate hold on them for the unfolding of the infinite in them. The self-veiling power tirodhana first envelops the ego with the covering of the subtle movement of mind and life called vrtti, and then develops it to a diffusion and loss in the objective world of forms. The tirodhana sakti, this power for bondage, is reversed and transformed into a power for release by the anugraha, which succeeds and gets a close grip on the ego or the apparent self. Then the outstreaming activity of the subtle body, mind and life’, is relaxed or withdrawn from the external and the gross, all its widespread, diffused and disorderly movement is gathered up and fixed in a single movement on the ego-sense to find its source in the self, thus involving correction or transformation of the ego which is but an impermanent and distorted figure of the eternal Self. Therefore this twofold power in the creative movement of the conscious force is ever active in the ego as well as in the subtle body which is here called the cord binding spirit to matter, the knot linking the self to the body.

Such in brief outline is the true character of bondage and the bound, and of the development leading to release.