44. When the mind achieves identity with the name, quality and knowledge of a subtle object it is called savichara samadhi. When the mind achieves identity with a subtle object without its name, quality and knowledge it is called nirvichara samadhi.
If reality is non-dual as Vedanta states, the Self and the mind are understood to be non-different if name and form is subtracted. If I am ignorant that I am the Self and identify with the mind, I think that the mind and myself are different. I say, “I have a mind.” So to attain non-duality on that level I would need to attain nivichara samadhi, which is subtracting the name and the form because the mind stuff and the objects of knowledge are non-different.
But the mind is actually insentient even though dualists think it is sentient and identify with it. The mind is subtle matter, which is not conscious, and gains sentiency only when the Self illumines it, not before. Therefore, the Self is the sentient factor. If the Self is the sentient factor, then non-duality would demand that the mind and the Self are the same, but the verse says the mind and the name and the form are the same. If A equals B, then B equals A.
The mind and the Self are not the same. The mind is the Self in so far as whatever sentiency it enjoys is borrowed from awareness, the Self. But the Self is not the mind because the mind is known to it. The Self, the conscious subject, never becomes what it knows. It can’t become anything other than what it is…existence shining as awareness…because it is immutable. If there was an actual connection (yoga) between the Self and what it knows, liberation would be impossible because experienced objects of knowledge would modify the unborn witness. Dualists do not properly understand the separation of the seer and the seen because they identify with the secondary witness, the Subtle Body, a reflecting medium, also known as the reflected self, which is modified by the vritti gunas playing in it. They think the seer and the seen exist in the same order of reality and try to unify it. Yoga means to join or connect. But they cannot be connected by doing yoga because both are existence shining as consciousness. One can only connect two different things.
In verse two Patanjali says, that removing the vrittis in the mind-stuff, the reflecting medium, causes the seer “to shine in all it’s glory” in verse 3. But the Seer is always shining. It is unborn eternal consciousness. Even if there were a causal connection between the Self and the mind, removing the vrittis from the mind would not remove ignorance, the root of the vrittis. Only knowledge does. Knowledge, as we have seen, is generated by sound…words to be specific…and those words need to appear in consciously designed sequences i.e. logically if they are to remove the vrittis generated by the non-apprehension of the Self. Non-apprehension is not something one does. Something that can be known can also be unknown. Removing vrittis, which are effects of ignorance, does not remove the cause, which Patanjali call “root” ignorance (moolavidya or Maya).