IV. Kaivalya Pāda · Powers and constructed minds (4.1–4.6)
4.4 · The Made Minds
Constructed minds arise from I-am-ness alone.
Word by word
- nirmāṇa-cittāni
- constructed minds, made minds
- asmitā-mātrāt
- from I-am-ness alone
Where it fits
Vyāsa opens with a question: when a yogi creates many bodies, do they share one mind or have several? The sūtra answers that each gets a constructed mind, made from I-am-ness alone. That raises the problem 4.5 solves: how can many minds act with one purpose?
Reading
Patañjali now says an advanced yogi can construct minds, and Vyāsa gives the setting: when a yogi makes several bodies, each needs a mind of its own, and these are made from I-am-ness alone, the bare sense of 'I' (asmitā here is the principle the mind grows from, not the affliction of 2.6). Some readers take this literally. Others also hear in it a description of how we all work. Each role we play, parent, worker, critic, is a small mind built on the sense of 'I'. Seeing that they are made makes them easier to hold lightly.
Vyāsa
“But when a yogi creates many bodies, do they have one mind between them, or many minds? … Taking I-am-ness alone as the stuff from which mind is made, the yogi makes constructed minds.”
Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 303.
Practice
Name three selves you put on in an ordinary day: the one at work, the one at home, the one alone. For each, notice the 'I' it starts from. Which one feels most like you, and why?
A question to sit with
Which of your made minds have you mistaken for the whole of you?