AVG 2.17

Chapter 2 (The Seekers Joy at Self-Cognizance): Verse 17
बोधमात्रोऽहमज्ञानाद् उपाधिः कल्पितो मया ।
एवं विमृशतो नित्यं निर्विकल्पे स्थितिर्मम ॥ २-१७॥

PURPORT:
I am amaranthine awareness.
The impediments imposed on myself
emanate from incomprehension
and are of my imagination.
Perpetually deliberating on this,
within knowledge free of differences,
I abide in disciplined steadiness.

TRANSLITERATION:
बोधमात्रः अहम् अज्ञानात् उपाधिः कल्पितः मया ।
bodhamātraḥ aham ajñānāt upādhiḥ kalpitaḥ mayā ।
एवम् विमृशतः नित्यम् निर्विकल्पे स्थितिः मम ॥ २-१७॥
evam vimṛśataḥ nityam nirvikalpe sthitiḥ mama ॥ 2-17॥

MEANING:
bodhamātraḥ (बोधमात्रः) = possessing as much as and no more knowledge/just intelligence
aham (अहम्) = I
ajñānāt (अज्ञानात्) = from incomprehension/from ignorance
upādhiḥ (उपाधिः) = constraint/limitation/impediment
kalpitaḥ (कल्पितः) = fabricated/conceptual/imagined
mayā (मया) = by me ।
evam (एवम्) = in this way
vimṛśataḥ (विमृशतः) =  deliberate/cogitate/meditate/reflect
nityam (नित्यम्) = constantly dwelling in/perpetually involved with
nirvikalpe (निर्विकल्पे) = within knowledge not depending upon or not derived from the senses/within the undifferentiated/in a place free from differences
sthitiḥ (स्थितिः) = sojourn in/steadiness/maintenance of discipline
mama (मम) = my ॥ 2-17॥

COMMENT:
The impediments that emanate from incomprehension that Janaka is talking about in these verses refer to the virtual worlds of experience that are made manifest and updated on a moment-by-moment basis within our consciousnesses. This happens whether we are dreaming (while sleeping) or when we are awake and alert. The only difference being that in the dream state, there are no constraints within the modes of our thoughts – which means that thoughts arising automatically within the mind are also unconstrained in and of themselves and play out in unrestrained flights of fancy that compose our dreams. On the same token, the awake and alert state allows for the incorporation of sensory stimuli that constrict and inhibit our modes of expressions and behavior. While the dream state as well as the waking state are truly two sides of the same coin, we remain unsophisticated realists about the virtual worlds that our minds create not recognizing that the psychic and cerebral constructs created are just that – constructs of the mind.
Evolution over generations and experience garnered during ones formative years have created and refined various mental representations that are integrated harmoniously into our everyday conscious experience that gives us a seamless flow of reality. The integrated model of the world thus constructed allows for the process of perception to see a representation of the world that is stitched together continually via multiple interconnected cognitive processes. The fact that the constructed world is a representation is itself transparent to the very cognitive systems that creates the representation and makes use of the representation. Thus, experiential phenomena can be considered to be fabricated in the sense that we participate in a reality of mentally constructed objects within a virtual world of experience that seem to be logically independent of their cause (the cause being the continuous world-model building and updating that goes on within our minds). Direct objects of experience are mental constructs that repeatedly and continuously materialize from intrinsic causal processes within our minds that we are not even aware of. Janaka closes these beautiful verses by remarking that he aims to reach a place wherein he can abide within disciplined steadiness with knowledge free of differences by continuously reflecting on these truths.

NOTES:
1. Thomas Metzinger in the book The Ego Tunnel writes: "Millions of years ago, nature’s virtual reality achieved what today’s software engineers still strive for: the phenomenal properties of “presence” and “full immersion.” From an engineering point of view, the problems involved in creating successful virtual environments are problems of advanced interface design. A virtual interface is a system of transducers, signal processors, hardware, and software. It creates an interactive medium that conveys information to the user’s senses while constantly monitoring the user’s behavior and employing it to update and manipulate the virtual environment. Conscious experience, too, is an interface, an invisible, perfect internal medium allowing an organism to interact flexibly with itself. It is a control device. It functions by creating an internal user interface—an “as\if” (that is, virtual) reality. It filters information, has a high bandwidth, is unambiguous and reliable, and generates a sense of presence. More important, it also generates a sense of self. The self-model is much like the mouse pointer on the virtual desktop of your PC—or the little red arrow on the subway map that advises “You are here.” It places you at the center of a behavioral space, of your consciously experienced world-model, your inner virtual reality. The Ego is a special part of this virtual reality. By generating an internal image of the organism as a whole, it allows the organism to appropriate its own hardware. It is evolution’s answer to the need for explaining one’s inner and outer actions to oneself, predicting one’s behavior, and monitoring critical system properties. Finally, it allows the system to depict internally the history of its actions as its own history. (Autobiographical memory, of course, is one of the most important layers of the human self-model, enabling us to appropriate our own history, inside-time and outside-time, the Now and the past.) Consciousness gives you flexibility, and global control gives you the Ego. On the level of conscious experience, this process of functionally appropriating one’s hardware—one’s body—in a holistic fashion is mirrored as the sense of global ownership, or minimal selfhood."

2. Matthew Mackenzie in the paper titled The Yogacara theory of three natures: Internalist and non-dualist interpretation (Comparative Philosophy Volume 9, No. 1 (2018): 18-31) writes:
"People who suffer from persistent musical hallucinations often report that the music is experienced as if it were like any other music playing in their environment. It can be experienced as loud or quiet, as nearby or far away, as clear or muffled, and so on. While some people quickly realize that they are experiencing hallucinations, others remain for extended periods under the impression that their auditory experience is veridical. ... the transition process follows three stages. In the ‘deceptive phase’, the music is experienced as externally produced, spatially located, and public. Here the auditory experience is constructed as an external sound event. Eventually, in the ‘transition phase’ the subject realizes that the auditory experience does not correspond to bodily movements in the right way (moving toward or away from the apparent location of the sound does not change its sensory character) or that others can’t hear it, etc. In the final ‘realization phase’, the subject has come to fully recognize the hallucination as a hallucination. What this involves, is a shift in the way the auditory phenomenon is automatically conceptualized. So, while the subject can still describe the various phenomenal features of the auditory phenomena (volume, pitch, timbre, etc.), she no longer takes it to be an objective sound event. It is important to see that, this is not a merely intellectual change. Rather, because our experience involves an integration of sensory and cognitive aspects, a change in how a sensory phenomenon is automatically conceptualized is a change in the overall phenomenal character of the experience. What was transparently experienced as an objective event is now experienced as an internal merely subjective event."