Stages of Mind



The mind has five stages, Patanjali tells us, and Vyasa comments
that "these stages of mind are on every plane". The first stage
is the stage in which the mind is flung about, the Kshipta stage;
it is the butterfly mind, the early stage of humanity, or, in
man, the mind of the child, darting constantly from one object to
another. It corresponds to activity on the physical plane. The
next is the confused stage, Mudha, equivalent to the stage of the
youth, swayed by emotions, bewildered by them; he begins to feel
he is ignorant--a state beyond the fickleness of the child--a
characteristic state, corresponding to activity in the astral
world. Then comes the state of preoccupation, or infatuation,
Vikshipta, the state of the man possessed by an idea--love,
ambition, or what not. He is no longer a confused youth, but a
man with a clear aim, and an idea possesses him. It may be either
the fixed idea of the madman, or the fixed idea which makes the
hero or the saint; but in any case he is possessed by the idea.
The quality of the idea, its truth or falsehood, makes the
difference between the maniac and the martyr.

Maniac or martyr, he is under the spell of a fixed idea. No
reasoning avails against it. If he has assured himself that he is
made of glass, no amount of argument will convince him to the
contrary. He will always regard himself as being as brittle as
glass. That is a fixed idea which is false. But there is a fixed
idea which makes the hero and the martyr. For some great truth