What is Knowledge : Ch-6-15.

Chapter- 6:- Being in Balance with the World-15.

You must know what is inside your body before you can go further. This physical body is made up of the five elements. Then there is the prana which performs various functions, and it assumes various names on account of the performance of these functions. Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana are certain Sanskrit terms used to describe the functions of the prana. We are not very much concerned with these functional differentiations now.

Suffice it to say that there is a vibrating force within us which is vitality, energy, prana, which expresses itself as the breathing process through the nostrils. But you have also a mind which thinks. You are not merely the physical body, the physiological system and the prana. You know that when you are fast asleep, the body is there, and the prana also is there. You are breathing, no doubt, but the mind does not think, so you do not know that you are existing. Hence, whatever you know is an act of the mental faculty. The mind is a general term we use to describe everything that is called ‘psychic function’.


In the Sanskrit language there are special names for these operations of the psyche. In western psychological parlance, the word ‘mind’ generally includes everything that is called the psyche. In a general way, we call everything that is psychical as ‘mind’ or ‘mental’. Well, that is all right for all practical purposes, but in the system of Indian psychological analysis, what is called ‘mind’ in the English language may be regarded as that particular faculty which indeterminately thinks. ‘Indeterminate thinking’ means just being conscious that there is something, without actually knowing what it is.

This is general perception. When you just look at something, you know that something is there. This especially happens when you are just getting up from your bed and not fully awake. You wipe your eyes, and then begin to see what is around. There is something, and you know that there is something. This knowledge that there is something around you is an indeterminate cognition of the mind, called manas in Sanskrit. Then you become awake more acutely, and get up from the bed and begin to see things and people standing in front of you. It is not just ‘something’. This is determinate understanding, where the intellect begins to operate.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  .....