Editing Mind in Indian Tradition (section)

==== VEDIC LITERATURE ====
Rigveda, though primarily a collection of ritualistic and inspired hymns devoted to deities like Indra, Varuna, Soma and Agni, is punctuated with poignant philosophical musings. Here, we encounter the embryonic form of subsequent, more articulate insights into the nature of mind and self. The world was viewed as a duality of ‘yat’ and ‘sthtiam’- the moving world of undying forces and the stagnant world of mortal matter. In the early Upanishads this duality was extended to the ‘person’ who was understood as a conglomerate of material form (Rupa) and immaterial name (Nama). This distinction, between name and form, ‘underlines the difference between conception and perception, between the abstraction and sensation’ and the ‘essence of meaning consists in the former, while the latter is a mere instrument.’ It was ‘nama’ that was pursued by the Indian teachers. Rhys David has brought to attention the concept of ‘more’ (bhuyas) within ‘nama’, that preoccupied the authors of Upanishadic verses. In Chhandogya Upanishad, 7,1, Sanat-Kumar, answering his curious disciple Narada, provides a list of things that constitute this ‘more’. Speech is more than nama, mind (manas) more than speech, purpose more than mind, thought than purpose, musing (dhyana) than thought, and ‘awareness-in-surviving’ (‘vijnana’ - elsewhere translated as consciousness) more than musing.  The hierarchy leading from gross material to subtler aspects and ultimately the pure consciousness or ‘true self’ thus developed, where mind was given a position of mediator.

In Rigveda, we also find references to mind as a rational entity invoked to exercise control over heart (hrd) – the psychological faculty responsible for emotions. Role of mind is likened to winnowing of barley through the sieve, suggesting selective reception (Rg Veda, 10.10.6). Ramchandra Rao cites the episode of Pururavas, when his wife Urvasi turns indignantly away from him, he begs her to ‘stay with mind.’ Mind is truthful, unruffled, mature, firm and sharp as against heart which represents the ‘stirred up state of individual.’ The subsequent conceptualization of ‘Viveka’ as a rational plus ethical entity, often invoked in Bhagwat-Gita, has its root in the restraining function ascribed to mind in Rigvedic verses. These verses also, to an extent, anticipate the Yogic theory of ‘vritti’ and ‘Purusha’, explained by Vivekananda through the imagery of ripples in the water and surface of the lake: the former is the unstable, stirred up dimension that clogs or conceals the real self. 

It is however, noteworthy, that in Aitareya Upanishad 1,1,4, we find the precedence of heart and consequent creation of mind- “A heart was separated out; from the heart, mind (manas), from the mind, moon.” Further, “that which is heart and mind”, says verse 3,5,2 of the same, implying that the seat of mind is in the heart. Could it be that heart was being conceived of as the psychic faculty responsible for ‘intuition’ which was now given a higher epistemological status than rational enquiry? S Channakeshavan has adopted a different tangent. According to her, ‘the bodily functions such as movement and sensation are dependent on the working of both heart and mind.’ It is owing to this interdependent relationship that ‘the Upanishads maintain that the heart and the mind are fundamentally one.’