Your inquiry touches something essential about our modern predicament. I sense you're not merely seeking an intellectual analysis of vrittis (mental fluctuations) but a deeper understanding of how these movements of mind create the fragmented reality we collectively inhabit.
Let me begin by honoring your framework while gently expanding it. The relationship between Vyakta, Avyakta, and Gnya isn't simply linear but cyclical and interpenetrating. The unmanifest doesn't simply await consciousness to become manifest—rather, all three dance in continuous relationship, each informing and transforming the others through their intimate connection.
Vrittis are traditionally understood as modifications or movements of consciousness—ripples on the otherwise still surface of awareness. Yet in our lived experience, they extend far beyond mental phenomena to encompass the entire field of our existence:
Embodied Vrittis: The body itself carries patterns of tension, movement, and response that function as vrittis—habitual ways of holding ourselves that filter our experience before it even reaches conceptual awareness.
Relational Vrittis: Our patterns of connection, attachment, and separation that structure how we relate to others and the world—these aren't merely thoughts about relationship but the very shape of how we engage.
Perceptual Vrittis: The frameworks through which we perceive reality itself—not just what we think about what we see, but how perception itself is organized before conscious thought arises.
The challenge isn't simply that vrittis exist—they're necessary for functioning in the relative world. The issue emerges when we mistake these movements for the totality of reality, forgetting the ground of awareness from which they arise.
You've identified several critical sources of vrittis in our contemporary landscape. Let me explore these while adding dimensions that might deepen our understanding:
Our consciousness now exists within a field of algorithmic influence designed specifically to generate and amplify vrittis:
What's less obvious is how this digital immersion reshapes our embodied experience. The physical postures of phone use, the biochemical patterns of dopamine pursuit, and the chronically activated nervous system states become embodied vrittis that persist even when devices are absent.
The commodification you mention goes beyond products and services to the commodification of consciousness itself: