Comparing a Vacant Mind and a Calm Mind

When one steps back and begins to observe the mind’s action and what Swami Vivekananda calls the ‘mind-stuff’, chitta, a number of different statuses can be seen. The normal human mind is usually constantly active and it jumps from one thing to another in response to impulses, impressions, sensations, vital or physical drives or emotional or mental preoccupations or focus. There are other states as well. Sri Aurobindo describes the difference between a vacant mind, which by definition cannot undertake or carry out any actions requiring mental activity and a calm mind, which is able to respond, even while maintaining a basic poise. There is also a status of a ‘dull’ mind which is cloudy, relatively inert and unable to focus; a mind filled with ambitions and desires that can take on the colour of the vital force acting upon it; and a silent mind, where the mind is alert, receptive, without the normal flow of linear thoughts, words or images that populate the normal mind’s activity. The predominance of one or another of the Gunas, tamas, rajas, sattva, determines which status of mind occurs at any point in time.

The distinguishing characteristics of these mind-states are the activity, the source of the activity and the quality of the chitta, in these situations. The mind stuff is sometimes referred to as a lake with waves or ripples disturbing the surface, until such time as it becomes calm and receptive, at which point the ripples are stilled. In some cases, the ripples are described as taking place on the surface, without disturbing the deep water that maintains its stillness. It is in the calm mind, or the entirely silent (but not ‘vacant’) mind that the seeker can receive and respond to the higher spiritual knowledge and force and put that into action.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this: that when the mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of ete
al and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness — originating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1, Calm — Peace — Equality, pp. 2-3