Mandukya_Upanishad

prāna, apāna, vyāna, udāna and samāna. The five senses ofknowledge, the five organs of action and the five prānasmake the number fifteen. These fifteen functional aspectsmay be regarded as the outer core of individual activity. Butthere is also an inner core of our functions, which isconstituted of the fourfold psychological organ, theantaḥkarana-catushtaya: - mānās, buddhi, ahamkāra andcitta – mānās, or the mind, which thinks and deliberates;buddhi, or the intellect, which ratiocinates, understandsand decides; ahamkāra, or the ego, which arrogates andappropriates things to itself; and the citta which is capableof performing many functions, the main feature of it beingmemory, recollection, retention of past impressions, andthis is what is generally known as the sub-conscious level ofthe psyche. This is the fourfold antaḥkarana-catushtaya, asit is called, and with these four, coupled with the fivejñānendriyas, five karmendriyas and five prānas, we havethe nineteen mouths of the jīva, the individual. It is withthese nineteen mouths that we come in contact with theworld outside, and it is with the help of these that weabsorb the world into ourselves. We communicate ourpersonality to the world through these instruments, and weabsorb qualities and characters of the world into ourselvesthrough these instruments, again. These nineteen mouths,therefore, are the media or link between the individual andthe Universe. How do we know that there is a worldoutside? Through these nineteen mouths do we apprehendall that is external. And it is not that we are merely aware ofthe existence of the world; we are also affected by the world;and samsāra is this process of getting affected by the58