Verse 39 — Desires and Emotions Belong to the Mind

The endless desires, the countless attachments, the varieties of pleasure — all these are conditions of the intellect and the causes of samsara that seem to appear in the supreme Self. They belong to the intellect alone, for they are absent in deep sleep when the intellect is inactive; at that time we experience the Self, which is of blissful nature. [Verse 39]

This verse continues the secondary superimposition: how we wrongly stamp the mind's passing states onto the changeless Self.

Every emotion is a thought — and thought belongs to the mind

Trace it carefully:

• Every experience — desire, jealousy, a flash of pleasure, depression — arises as a thought.
• Thought is a property of the mind (the subtle body), not of the Self.
• Yet we habitually say "I am angry" rather than "my mind is agitated" — pinning the mind's weather onto the ever-free, thoughtless Self.

Both desire and attachment cause pain:

flowchart LR
    A[Desire — for what<br/>I don't have] --> C[Pain]
    B[Attachment — to what<br/>I do have] --> C

The proof: deep sleep

How do we know these emotions are not our real nature? The verse gives an elegant, everyday proof — dreamless sleep.

Key idea. In deep sleep the mind is not functioning. And notice: there are no desires, no anger, no jealousy, no depression there. If these were your essential nature, they could never leave — heat never leaves fire. But they vanish nightly. Therefore they are incidental, not intrinsic.

And what do we experience in their absence? Not misery — the opposite:

• We wake and report, "I slept happily; I was at peace."
• That is the Self (Para) — problem-free, superimposition-free — being clearly experienced (vibhavyate) once the mind's noise is switched off.

The conclusion for daily life

Because every emotional problem disappears in deep sleep, none of them is truly yours. They are added onto you, and you then feel miserable. To say "I am a sufferer (samsari)" is a cognitive mistake — of exactly the same kind as saying "the sun rises and sets." It feels obvious, and it is simply wrong.

A caution the text adds: this is not an excuse to suppress or ignore emotions, nor a licence to be irresponsible. It is a change of identification — you handle the mind's states as a witness rather than being swept away as their owner. Verse 40 explains the mechanism behind this witnessing: the reflected consciousness.