Comparing a Vacant Mind and a Calm Mind

0:01 When one steps back and begins to observe the mind's action and what Swami Vivekananda calls the mind's stuff Chitta, a number of different statuses can be seen. The normal human mind is usually constantly active and it jumps from one thing to another in response to impulses, impressions, sensations, vital or physical drives, or emotional or mental preoccupations or focus. There are other states as well. Sri Ro Binda describes the difference between a vacant mind, which by definition cannot undertake or carry out any actions requiring mental activity, and a calm mind which is able to respond even while maintaining a basic poise.

0:53 There is also a status of a dull mind, which is cloudy, relatively inert and unable to focus. A mind filled with ambitions and desires that can take on the color of the vital force acting upon it. And a silent mind where the mind is alert, receptive, without the flow of linear thoughts, words or images that populate the normal mind's activity. The predominance of one or another of the gunas. Thomas Rajas Satwa determines which status of mind occurs at any point in time. The distinguishing characteristics of these mind states are the activity, the source of the activity, and the quality of the chitta. In these situations, the mind stuff is sometimes referred to as a lake with waves or ripples disturbing the surface until such time as it becomes calm and receptive, at which point the ripples are stilled.

1:56 In some cases, the ripples are described as taking place on the surface without disturbing the deep water that maintains its stillness. It is in the calm mind or the entirely silent but not vacant mind that the seeker can receive and respond to the higher spiritual knowledge and force and put that into action, Sriorbinda writes quote. The difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this, that when the mind is vacant there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind except an essential perception of things without the formed idea.

2:43 But in the calm mind it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind. As the flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air, it passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if 1000 images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains, as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace.

3:25 A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness, originating nothing from itself but receiving from above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the truth and the happy power and light of its passage. End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1. Calm, Peace and Equality. Pages 2:00 to 3:00.