Yoga: The Five States of Mind

[Explor­ing Life] The Yoga Sutras writ­ten by Patan­jali in the 2nd cen­tury B.C. is con­sider to be one of the pri­mary texts of yoga. The word Yoga is derived from San­skrit root yujir mean­ing to join or to unite. Another impor­tant trans­la­tion comes from the root yuj mean­ing to con­tem­plate. A sutra is an apho­rism, or a brief state­ment designed to con­tain a deep insight, pow­er­ful obser­va­tion or an impor­tant truth about life. The Yoga Sutras are there­fore insights and obser­va­tions into the nature of unity and con­tem­pla­tion of life. Chap­ter one of the Yoga Sutras is fre­quently trans­lated as “Con­cen­tra­tion” and reveal that Yoga is pri­mar­ily a dis­ci­pline of the mind. Patan­jali imme­di­ately intro­duces five basic states of mind that com­prise the men­tal land­scape of yoga.

The Five States of Mind

Although we may asso­ciate yoga with the prac­tice of phys­i­cal pos­tures (asanas), the root of a yoga prac­tice lies within the devel­op­ment of the mind. It is inter­est­ing to note that Pan­tan­jali does not men­tion asanas until the sec­ond chap­ter and posi­tions them as one of the eight limbs of yoga. Fur­ther, there is no descrip­tion or rec­om­men­da­tion of spe­cific asanas to prac­tice. This runs con­trary to a great deal of mod­ern yoga method­ol­ogy that ori­ents yoga more toward a form of phys­i­cal exer­cise. Patanjali’s focus is pre­dom­i­nantly on the devel­op­ment of the mind.

Patan­jali iden­ti­fied five states of mind[1] :

1. Wan­der­ing (ksipta): This is low­est state of mind and the per­son is highly agi­tated and unable to think, lis­ten, or keep quiet.
2. Dull (mudha): In this state of mind the per­son is for­get­ful and lacks aware­ness of their own thoughts and experiences.
3. Rest­less (vikspita): The mind has become more aware but is in a con­stant state of con­fu­sion and the indi­vid­ual has dif­fi­culty decid­ing what to do.
4. Focused (eka­gra): The mind is both calm, aware and focused on the present moment.
5. Mas­tered (nirodha): The mind is able to con­cen­trate on a sin­gle focus for extended peri­ods of time and remains undis­trib­uted by the sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances of life.

A wan­der­ing mind seems sim­i­lar to a dis­or­der known as ADD (Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der) or ADHD (Atten­tion Deficit Hyper­ac­tive Dis­or­der). Though Pan­tan­jali does not describe wan­der­ing of the mind as a dis­or­der, there is a clear con­nec­tion to impul­sive behav­ior, an inabil­ity to main­tain atten­tion, and the addi­tional com­pli­ca­tion of hyper­ac­tiv­ity. A per­son does not need to have ADD or ADHD to exhibit the char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­ated with a wan­der­ing mind. Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion prac­tices some­times make ref­er­ence to “mon­key mind,” which seems to par­al­lel the idea of a wan­der­ing mind. A wan­der­ing mind is clearly a source of suf­fer­ing and the per­son is a vic­tim of their own inter­nal thought processes.

A dull mind is not in a highly agi­tated state. When the mind is dull is lacks aware­ness of its sur­round­ings. Thought processes are lethar­gic and incon­sis­tent. Rather than being hyper­ac­tive it is hypoac­tive, or abnor­mally under­ac­tive. A dull mind is also incon­sis­tent, lacks con­ti­nu­ity, and gaps in mem­ory are com­mon. These qual­i­ties are often reflected in the body as lazi­ness and a gen­eral lack of vital­ity. A dull mind lacks curios­ity about the world around it and prefers remain­ing pas­sive and reactive.

A rest­less mind exists in a state of unfo­cused energy. There is an illu­sive sense of need and pur­pose com­bined with an inabil­ity to direct that energy in a pro­duc­tive way. A rest­less mind will opt for the con­densed ver­sion of an expe­ri­ence, rather than embrac­ing the breadth of it. For exam­ple, a rest­less mind is inher­ently unable to focus on a task such as read­ing for extended peri­ods of time and instead opts for short vignettes. Con­fu­sion results in a rest­less mind from the con­stant skim­ming of infor­ma­tion or expe­ri­ences with­out an under­ly­ing pur­pose. There is a sense that sim­ply being busy is enough and an end unto itself.

A focused mind has shed the prob­lems asso­ci­ated with a wan­der­ing, dull, and rest­less mind. In this sense, a focused mind is an impor­tant achieve­ment and point of arrival in a person’s life. Con­cen­tra­tion is con­sis­tent and aware­ness is imme­di­ate. The focused mind has a clear vision of what direc­tions to pur­sue and how to pur­sue them. This is reflected in the body as an air of calm and con­fi­dence. The per­son is com­fort­able in their own skin and in their surroundings.

A mas­tered mind is achieved through con­tem­pla­tion. In this state the mind is com­pletely reg­u­lated and con­trolled. There is a com­plete absence of fear, even the fear of death, in the mas­tered mind. There is also the pres­ence of com­mu­nion with some­thing greater than the indi­vid­ual mind, which may be described as a life force or uni­ver­sal con­scious­ness. A mas­tered mind lives with equa­nim­ity in every­day life while main­tain­ing a con­stant com­mu­nion with the Source.

Devel­op­ing Awareness

The five states of mind are pre­sented in a sequence from the low­est form of mind to the high­est achieve­ment of mind. The first three (wan­der­ing, dull, and rest­less) are obvi­ously unde­sir­able states of mind. The fourth state of mind (focused) is a desir­able state of mind and can be viewed as a crit­i­cal achieve­ment in the devel­op­ment of the mind. The fifth state is trans­for­ma­tive and rep­re­sents the ulti­mate achieve­ment in yoga.

Although the five states of mind are pre­sented in a lin­ear sequence from the least desir­able to the most desir­able, our progress through them is likely to be con­vo­luted. It is pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence the first four states of mind in a sin­gle day, with each day bring­ing a new com­bi­na­tion for us to explore. There will be times when we are focused only to have that focus dis­si­pate into a lower state. The excep­tion to this is the mas­tered mind, since mas­tery means that move­ment in and out of the pre­vi­ous states has been over­come through discipline.

The way we learn to under­stand and evolve our state of mind is through aware­ness. It is self-evident that the first step in learn­ing about our own vary­ing states of mind is to first be able to iden­tify them when they occur. How­ever, this is not some­thing we are used to pay­ing atten­tion to. Often times we may be expe­ri­enc­ing an uncom­fort­able state of mind with­out be aware of it. In this way, the process of the mind is sim­i­lar to the process of breath­ing. Most of the time we do not pay con­scious atten­tion to breath­ing, but we can bring aware­ness to breath if we choose to. The same prin­ci­ple applies to devel­op­ing aware­ness of our own states of mind. Cre­at­ing a kind of inter­rup­tion in our habit­ual rou­tines in order to exam­ine our state of mind is crit­i­cal to devel­op­ing awareness.

We have become largely ori­ented to our exter­nal envi­ron­ment and do not tend to pay a great deal of atten­tion to our inner envi­ron­ment. Grat­i­fi­ca­tion is some­thing we often seek exter­nally. Turn­ing our pow­ers of aware­ness inward can be unset­tling and make us feel as if we have been trans­ported to a strange and unfa­mil­iar ter­rain. That is because we are in the strange and unfa­mil­iar ter­rain of the mind. Learn­ing to inhabit that unfa­mil­iar ter­rain and be will­ing to learn from it is the most impor­tant adven­ture of the mind.

Patanjali’s five states of mind are also a way to begin using lan­guage to give names to unfa­mil­iar expe­ri­ences. Per­haps we may find more than five states of mind within. What­ever the sys­tem of nam­ing we use to describe them, learn­ing to be aware of vary­ing men­tal states and how they present them­selves over time is the ini­tial start­ing point yoga.

Foot­notes

1. Source: Rad­hakr­ish­nan 1973.