Chitta

The tongue tastes, the eye sees, the ear hears, the skin feels, and the nose smells, each sense acts thus throughout life, is it not? The senses have to be withdrawn from the external objective world and turned toward the internal mental consciousness or intelligence known as chitta. Patanjali [wrote the treatise on grammar, medicine and yoga] calls this process, in his Yoga Sutras, as pratyaharam [withdrawal of the senses]. However, I shall also define it in another manner; the inward activity of the chitta, that is to say the perpetual in-sight of the chitta, the fundamental directive force of all the senses, that is the real meaning of pratyaharam. It is only when the chitta, or the mind realizes that this is all maya [illision]-born and maya-maintained that it will draw back its feelers from the sensory world, and give up its worldly selfish attitude.

The general nature of the chitta is to waver and hesitate and flutter in its search for happiness and peace when it knows that the things it ran after are transitory and meaningless, it grows suddenly ashamed and disillusioned. Then, it begins to illumine the consciousness and to clarify it.

The sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) who has attained this stage will be watching the outer world as a huge pantomime. His inward look will give him such joy and contentment that he will repent for all the time wasted in external activities and pursuit of sensory joy. So, the straight, sharp, single-pointed vision of the chitta toward the atma [soul] within, that is the real pratyaharam.

Patanjali has explained that when the chitta is fixed in one place, it is named dhaarana (meditation). I would say that it means more, the undeviating attitude of the chitta, its unwavering character. When the chitta gives up the attachment to external objects; when it is saturated with repentance for past foolishness; when it is filled with remorse; renunciation and understanding; when it directly fosters the development of progressive qualities of head and heart, then truly it becomes fit to join the ideal. It contemplates only the ideal. Such fixed attention is what is meant by dhaarana.

To whichever place the chitta may wander, instruct it to find only Brahma there. Whatever ideas and pictures it may form, in those creations of the mind, instruct it to find only Brahmam.

Prasanthi Vahini, Pp. 87-89