consequence of application for the acquisition of
knowledge and of continued reflection and recapitulation, the yogin
remains always awake. Indeed, the yogin can keep himself continually
awake by devoting himself to knowledge. On this topic it has been asked
what is this state in which the embodied creature thinks himself
surrounded by and engaged in objects and acts? True it is that the
embodied being, with its senses really suspended, still thinks itself to
be possessed of body with all the senses of knowledge and of action. As
regards the question started, it is said that that master of yoga, named
Hari, comprehends truly how it happens. The great Rishis say that the
explanation offered by Hari is correct and consistent with reason. The
learned say that it is in consequence of the senses being worn out with
fatigue, dreams are experienced by all creatures. (Though the senses are
suspended) the mind, however, never disappears (or becomes inactive) and
hence arise dreams. This is said by all to be their noted cause. As the
imaginings of a person that is awake and engaged in acts, are due only to
the creative power of the mind, after the same manner the impressions in
a dream appertain only to the mind. A person with desire and attachment
obtains those imaginings (in dreams) based upon the impressions of
countless lives in the past. Nothing that impresses the mind once is ever
lost, and the Soul being cognisant of all those impressions causes them
to come forth from obscurity.[767] Whichever among the three attributes
of Goodness, Passion, and Darkness is brought about by the influence of
past acts and by whichever amongst them the mind is affected for the time
being in whatever way, the elements (in their subtile forms) display or
indicate accordingly (in the way of images).[768] After images have thus
been produced, the particular attribute of Goodness or Passion or
Darkness that may have been brought by past act rises in the mind and
conduces to its last result, viz., happiness or misery. Those images
having wind, bile, and phlegm for their chief causes, which men apprehend
through ignorance and in consequence of propensities fraught with Passion
and Darkness, cannot, it has been said, be easily discarded.[769]
Whatever objects again a person perceives in the mind (while wakeful)
through the senses in a state of perspicuity are apprehended by the mind
in dreams while the senses are obscured in respect of their
functio