Making It Up

I finished knitting a sweater this weekend and when I held it up one of the sleeves was longer than the other, even though I had carefully counted rows. I tried to stretch the shorter one and told myself it was just a few rows off. I put it on and just didn’t look at the sleeves and then got mad at my husband when he started to ask what was up with the sleeves. I stormed off and went to bed. When I was more clear-headed in the morning, I sat down to examine the situation and within a few minutes, saw what I had done and that the sleeve was actually sixteen rows shorter than the other, which was probably three inches.

At first I thought, “Oh, more misperception.” But then I realized that this was not misperception, it was imagination or delusion, the third mental activity described by Patanjali in Sutra 1.9. Shabdajnananupati vastushunyo vikalpah says that knowledge through words that doesn’t arise from reality is vikalpa (imagination, delusion, fancy, false notion). Like misperception or misunderstanding, imagination is also not true. But misperception happens when we see something but don’t see it correctly versus imagination, which is when we make something up not based on any actual experience. I decided that the sleeves on my sweater were almost the same without actually looking at them—I just made it up. Now hallucinations and delusions fall into this category too, but for most of us, I think it’s this sort of sleeve incident that is more representative. It’s when we decide something without actually collecting information.

With imagination, it is not so hard to see how it has an upside and a downside. My little knitting moment would be an example of the downside (in this case, not very down). Art, music, creativity and all that good stuff is the upside. As usual, making stuff up is not a problem in and of itself, but it sure can be if we don't know we are doing it.