Mind-field as ocean and universe

[Prerequisite: read and have some understanding of PYS 1.2 citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ]

The term citta in the PYS is often translated as consciousness. In Samkhya-Yoga philosophy, consciousness or consciousness-force is citi-śakti [1]. A better and more precise translation of citta is the English word or phrase - mind-field [1]. Citta is usually understood as limited to a specific individual, possibly localised to the volume of space that is their body. What if this localisation is natural but unnecessarily limiting?

Imagine an ocean. Imagine a whirlpool near an island in the ocean. The whirlpool comes alive as the waters in the area form a spiral and dies with tides, currents, etc. going down - merging into and becoming indistinguishable from the waters around it. If you further imagine it to be a mindful entity, it might think of itself as localised to the area near the island. If its mind spans its coming alive and dying - or waking up and falling asleep - would it still think itself restricted to that area? Perhaps the mind-field would be that of all the waters around the island and the whirlpool would be one of the funkier parts that bubble up and down in a weird way!

Imagine all the connected water on Earth's surface - the oceans - as a single entity. There may be thousands or even millions of whirlpools, big and small, coming alive and dying every day, or waking up and sleeping daily. Imagine the mind-field of that entity like the motion of all the oceans.

Now imagine the enormity of shutting down or pacifying all the vṛttis, the whirlpools, of the oceans.

Samkhya-Yoga psychology or philosophy goes even further and considers the entire universe to have - or be - a single mind-field. Now consider pacifying or shutting down an entire universe of vṛttis!

(This is what each yogi is striving to do, most unknowingly, and a rare few, knowingly. Since this pacification is probably unnatural, there is another, subtler, interpretation of the word nirodhaḥ. Instead of shutting down, the mind-field vṛttis devolve into their subtler causes, successively, until the completely balanced and unmanifest cause is reached for individual areas of the overall mind-field.)

Science starts from individual bodies, conglomerates of matter, developing consciousness and frantically striving to connect and communicate externally. Vedanta philosophy starts from consciousness inherent in the Absolute - the source of all manifestation - and posits an interface - between that Absolute and the manifested physical bodies - called the mind-field, and the various physical bodies. This mind-field may be restricted to an individual body, or more elegantly, may span the entire manifestation at subtler levels and restrict itself to a single body at grosser levels.

A limited analogy might help. Consider icy water flowing on the ceiling of a cave in a cold climate. As water freezes, stalactites form. Water keeps flowing down stalactites, lengthening them. The ice at the tip of a stalactite is separate from the ice at the tip of the others. But ice at the root of one stalactite can be understood as part of a single ice sheet, and is the same at the roots of all the stalactites. And the subtler cause, the water inflow, from which the ice manifested, is even more obviously the same.

NOTES

[1] Sw. Veda Bharati. 1986. Patanjali Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with the Exposition of Vyasa..., Glossary. pp. 452. Himalayan Institute, India.