A white magician may strive for power.  But when he is striving for power, he seeks it that he may serve humanity and become more useful to mankind, a more effective servant in the helping of the world.  But not so the brother of the dark side.  When he strives for power, he seeks if for himself, so that he may use it against the whole world.  He may be harsh and cruel.  He wants to be isolated; and harshness and cruelty tend to isolate him.  He wants power; and holding that power for himself, he can put himself temporarily, as it were, against the Divine Will in evolution.

The end of the one is Nirvana, where all separation has ceased.  The end of the other is Avichi—­the uttermost isolation—­the kaivalya of the black magician.  Both are yogis, both follow the science of yoga, and each gets the result of the law he has followed:  one the kaivalya of Nirvana, the other the kaivalya of Avichi.

Composition of States of the Mind

Let us pass now to the “states of the mind” as they are called.  The word which is used for the states of the mind by Patanjali is Vritti.  This admirably constructed language Sanskrit gives you in that very word its own meaning.  Vrittis means the “being” of the mind; the ways in which mind can exist; the modes of the mind; the modes of mental existence; the ways of existing.  That is the literal meaning of this word.  A subsidiary meaning is a “turning around,” a “moving in a circle”.  You have to stop, in Yoga, every mode of existing in which the mind manifests itself.  In order to guide you towards the power of stopping them—­for you cannot stop them till you understand them—­you are told that these modes of mind are fivefold in their nature.  They are pentads.  The Sutra, as usually translated, says " the Vrittis are fivefold (panchatayyah),” but pentad is a more accurate rendering of the word pancha-tayyah, in the original, than fivefold.  The word pentad at once recalls to you the way in which the chemist speaks of a monad, triad, heptad, when he deals with elements.  The elements with which the chemist is dealing are related to the unit-element in different ways.  Some elements are related to it in one way only, and are called monads; others are related in two ways, and are called duads, and so on.

Is this applicable to the states of mind also?  Recall the shloka of the Bhagavad-Gita in which it is said that the Jiva goes out into the world, drawing round him the five senses and mind as sixth.  That may throw a little light on the subject.  You have five senses, the five ways of knowing, the five jnanendriyas or organs of knowing.  Only by these five senses can you know the outer world.  Western psychology says that nothing exists in thought that does not exist in sensation.  That is not true universally; it is not true of the abstract mind, nor wholly of the concrete.  But there is a great deal of truth in it.  Every idea is a pentad.