Write a short note on thc theory of Causation.
Ans. Patanjali defined yoga as the partial and complete or temporary and permanent arrest or cessation of mental states.The theory that mental states can be arrested by our efforts is an extremely original one and uptil now we know of no country other than India, where such a possibility was ever conceived. Dr.Sigmund Freud has expressed great surprise, that such a thing should be conceived possible but he admits that this experiment had always been made and that therefore it would be hazardous to deny its possibility. In India the yoga has always been practised from earliest dawn of her civilization and carries with it the testimony of many decades and centuries.
Underlying the possibility of the fact of yoga, there is a concept of mind and a theory of psychology. In spite of many differences in the attempts at the exposition of this psychology among the different thinkers of the school of Patanjali, there is a general agreement regarding the main position of the Yoga psychology.
THE THEORY OF CAUSATION
This theory is based upon a metaphysical Theory of Causation namely, that like causes produce like effects. A cause is regarded as a potential effect. Even before the causal operation, the effects exist in identity with the cause. The function of the causal operation is not to produce anything new, but to actualize the cause as the effect or to exhibit manifestly in the effect what was already contained in the cause.
There can thus be no interaction between unlikes, for in that case the interaction would have to be supposed to bring into being effects which were not contained in either of the two causal elements or in the interaction itself. Again, if interaction is supposed to be an extraneous relation, then being a relation it would be outside the causal entities and whatever is outside the causal entities would be in capable of entering into them so the relations will have to be con- ceived as having no relation at their two ends and this would baffle the very nature of relations. Thus relations cannot,a have any separate existence from the related. It is the different aspects and manifesta- tions of the related that are interpreted as relation. Relations are thus certain constructions that are made by us by which the related are held apart and connected in a certain manner which is called relation. This analytico-sythetic function of the mind which manifests the mere related, and all relations states of the mind are technically vikalpa. Since the concept of relations is abolished the problem. of the relation of substance (Dravya), attributes (Gunas) and motion (Karma) does not also arise.
Attributes (the Gunas) are but modes of the substance and substance is also a mode of the attributes.
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