Book Title: Philosophies of India
Author(s): Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd

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Page 311
________________ SANKHYA AND YOGA writings and authorities. It is based on the right understanding of a word or text. It corroborates right perception and inference. 2. Erroneous notions through misconception arise as a conscquence of some defect in either the object or the perceiving organ. 3. Fancy dwells on purely imaginary ideas, unwarranted by perception; mythical monsters, for example, or the notion that the life-monad itself is endowed with the traits of the thinkingprinciple, and hence experiences what happens to be taking place in the mind-stuff. The difference between a fancy and a misconception is that the former is not removable by careful observation of the object. 4. In sleep the spontaneous activity of the mind-stuff continues. This is proven by an experience of pleasure that is normally derived from sleep, and which gives rise to such ideas as “I slept soundly and delightfully." Yoga is concerned with the suppression of sleep, as well as of the activities of the mind awake. 5. Memory is an activity of the mind-stuff that is occasioned by a residuum, or “latent impression” (saīskāra), of some former experience undergone either in the present or in a bygone life. Such impressions tend to become activated. They manifest themselves as propensities to action, i.e., tendencies to behave according to patterns established by reactions in the past. 10 "In case there are invitations from those in high places,” we read in Patañjali's Yoga-sūtras, "these should not arouse attach 10 This review of the spontaneous activities of the mind is based on Vijñānabhikṣu, Yogasīta-sangraha. Vijñānabhikṣu lived in the second half of the sixteenth century A.D. Besides writing the Yogasära-sangraha ("Summary of the Essence of Yoga") and a commentary on the Yoga-sūtras, called the Yoga-värttika, he condensed the Sänkhya doctrine in his Sankhyasära and composed an interpretation of the Sänkhya-sútras, along the lines of Vedanta and popular Brahmanism, in his Sankhyapravacana 290

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