Your Questions Answered

by Swami Krishnananda

SWAMIJI: This is explained in the sutras of Patanjali. There are two types of psychological processes dealt with in modern days, in what we call abnormal psychology and general psychology. All thinking in terms of a particularised desire for anything in the world is abnormal perception. Thinking of objects without any particular desire for anything is general perception. If I look at a wall, I don't have any particular desire for the wall; but if I see an orange, there may be a desire to eat it. So, these are two types of thinking. The mere consciousness of an object without particular emotional reaction towards it, and consciousness of an object with emotional reaction towards it, are both reactions of the mind called vrittis.

The emotionally charged vrittis are called klishta vrittis, by which the author means pain-giving psychoses. Pain is caused by the feeling that you have not got it, while you would like to have it. Secondly, you have pain even after getting it, from the fear that you may lose it; worse still is the pain when you have actually lost it.

So, the object of desire is always a source of pain. When does it give you pleasure? Anyway, such desires and ways of thinking are klishta vrittis. These have to be dealt with in the beginning. You asked me the sequence. The pain-giving ones should be dealt with first, just as in medical treatment, acute diseases are treated first, and the chronic ones later.

Suppose a person is breathless, and also has eczema. You don't treat eczema at that time; you treat the breathlessness first. So also we don't bother about general perceptions of mountains and rivers and all that, though they are also vrittis. We have to deal with acute conditions first (desire-charged vrittis), which have been classified by Patanjali briefly into objects which you like, and objects which you dislike. Both are connected with desires. The desire to have and the desire to avoid are both desires only.

Actually, you cannot desire a thing unless you do not want certain other things. You exclude certain things automatically when you go for certain chosen things, and those things which you exclude become the objects of dislike or hatred. So, love and hatred go together; they are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. The one cannot be without the other.

These are two types of vrittis connected with likes and dislikes, as Patanjali mentions. There is another vritti which takes the form of fear of death. All struggle in life seems to be towards the maintenance of oneself towards survival. By some means or the other, one wants to survive. With all the glorious possessions of the world, one does not wish to be threatened in regard to one's life. Fear of death, love and hatred for things, and egoism, self-assertiveness, I am first and everybody else afterwards, are considered by Patanjali as pain-giving vrittis.

Every seeker of truth, spiritual seeker, sadhaka, should dispassionately analyse these psychoses. If you want things, make a list of all those things and find out the ways and means of handling them. All the other vrittis mentioned also have to be taken independently, one by one. They should be dealt with in such a way that they do not cause harassment in ordinary life. Very rarely do people succeed in controlling these abnormal vrittis.

Even if you succeed in having no such abnormal longing for things, you will have the general perception of an object outside you in the form of the world itself. That has to be dealt with as a second stage. This is more difficult than the earlier one. You may somehow withdraw your mind from desiring things in some way, but how would you withdraw the mind from being conscious of the world itself? That has to be dealt with by samadhi or samapatti. There are stages of meditation prescribed by Patanjali. I have detailed these processes in my book, "Yoga As a Universal Science."

These desires have certain peculiarities. They do not always manifest themselves openly. Often the desires have very good intelligence. They know that a frontal attack does not always succeed. They lie in ambush and, when you are unaware, suddenly pounce on you, and you will be caught by these desires even without your knowing that you have been so caught. Suddenly you will start doing something and later you will repent, because you were not circumspect about the possibility of hidden desires.

Desires can also be dormant, like a sleeping thief. Or, when you try to corner them from every side by your meditations, they may become thin, attenuated, as if they are going to die, but they can again become robust when the occasion for it comes. A starved thief also is a thief only; he may eat well and afterwards become robust.

Also the desires may appear sometimes, and disappear at other times. When they disappear, it doesn't mean they are absent; a thing that is out of sight is not necessarily non-existent. And sometimes, they openly come and face you. So, they can be sleeping, attenuated, interrupted, or directly attacking. These are the ways in which desires catch hold of a person. One has to pass through many years of struggle in order to get over them.

In case you, by your maturity of meditation, succeed in overcoming these abnormal longings, you will have the problem of the consciousness of externality itself. That is a very serious matter. The universe has to be identified with the Self in deep meditation so that the phenomenon of externality is absorbed into universality of perception. Briefly, this is the sequence of how you have to handle your mind.

Lyle: I have been thinking that in the sitting process itself to first take care of the tamasik and rajasik mind.

SWAMIJI: These abnormal desires are a mixture of tamas and rajas. The mere consciousness of an object without desire is a sattvik or quality operating. If you are conscious of a tree in the forest, it doesn't harm you in any way; yet the consciousness of it being outside you is an important matter. It is a sattvik vritti, but it is a vritti, nevertheless.

Merely because you are bound by a golden chain, it doesn't mean that you are not bound, and the sattvik vrittis must also be overcome. So, from rajas and tamas, you go to sattva, gradually.

Lyle: And after that, don't you still have to be neither in ida nor in pingala? You have to establish in sushumna.

SWAMIJI: They will take care of themselves by your meditation. You need not even think of the ida and pingala. Actually, they are effects of thought. The channel through which you breathe is a consequence of the manner of your thinking. When the thinking is corrected, the prana gets corrected automatically. You need not bother about it at all. You just ignore it. It will go into the sushumna automatically.

The first and foremost duty is to take care of the thoughts. The prana will be next, and it won't bother you much. The trouble is from the mind only. It has to be considered first. All yoga is a mental operation finally, an adjustment of thought integrally.

Lyle: In the process of meditation, I find the mind in a tamasik or rajasik state. What can I do at that time?

SWAMIJI: At that time when actually tamas and rajas are supervening and they are very troublesome, stop the meditation. Take a cup of tea, have a little stroll on the verandah, take deep breaths some ten or fifteen times, and sit again for meditation. After that, the mind will start concentrating once again. It has entered into tamas and rajas due to the fatigue felt in meditation. It got exhausted, like a horse pulling a cart for a long distance. After some time the horse will halt and then there is no use of simply hitting it and making it go further.

When the mind is tired or unwilling, you should not meditate. If it is exhausted, take rest. If it is unwilling, you find out the reason for it. It wants something else other than what you are doing.

Lyle: Usually it can be worked through, can't it?

SWAMIJI: When it is turbulent, you cannot meditate. If it is a little distraction, well, just keep quiet for a few minutes and then restart. For ten or fifteen minutes don't meditate; keep quiet, take a deep breath and start again. Sometimes you can munch something, so that it may be satisfied. The mind wants satisfaction, not too much harassment. Then, afterwards, you sit for meditation. It will come down.

Sometimes, if it is very difficult and it is not coming down at all, go to sleep for a few minutes; then get up and start meditation once again. You have to employ various methods, as you treat a naughty child which will not at all listen to anything. You have to employ various methods of controlling it. Sometimes you have to fulfil its longings; sometimes you have to use educational methods; sometimes you may give a medical treatment, etc. You have to use your intelligence in understanding the problem.

Lyle: Do you suggest pranayamas?

SWAMIJI: They are useful to some extent, but not completely. You cannot control the mind merely by pranayama. How will you remove your desires when they are strong, merely by the breathing process? Simultaneously you must work with the mind also. Pranayama is necessary as a secondary aid, but is not the complete solution.

Lyle: Swamiji, how can we try to sublimate desires?

SWAMIJI: First you must find out why desires arise. Why should desires arise in the mind at all, if you conclude that they are not good things? If they are good things, there is no need of sublimating them. If they are not good things, why are you allowing them to rise? You deliberately manufacture them under the impression that they are good, and at the same time you say that they are not good. So, you have a dual attitude towards them.

Now, who creates the desires? Are you deliberately creating the desires, or are they, in spite of yourself, coming up? That you have to find out first. It is a process of self-analysis. The deep root of the desire has to be found out.

Lyle: I think they are from basic urges.

SWAMIJI: When you use the word "basic," you perhaps imply that these desires are inseparable from your very existence as a person. That is the meaning of "basic." Your existence as a person implies the existence of these desires, also. So, that would mean that they will go only when you (as a person) go, because they are inseparable from your very existence.

How will you go? The personality of yours should cease to be; then the consequence in the form of these desires also will cease, according to our analysis. When the cause goes, the effect also goes. The whole question is the very existence of the person as an individual psycho-physical existence. That has to go. That has to be sublimated, not the desires. The poor desires are only henchmen of the very existence of the person. The chief culprit is the existence of the individual himself, and the desires are only offshoots of the existence of the person. That is to say, the sublimation is not of the desires, but of the personality-consciousness.

The personality-consciousness can be sublimated only by transcending it in a universal consciousness. You are conscious that you are a person named Lyle, and it is a very wrong definition of yourself. This is a nomenclature of the physical personality. As long as this physical personality persists, your problems also are going to continue. If you want to get rid of these problems, you must be sincere in handling this issue. You should not just say something and forget these things afterwards. Your physical existence itself is a problem, and that has to cease.

The individual existence ceases only in Universal Existence. It cannot cease anywhere else. So, when your meditation is fixed on the consciousness of Universality of Being, the individual consciousness gets merged into It and transcended. Together with that, the desires also get sublimated at one stroke. This is the highest technique that one can think of. There is no other solution, finally. All other solutions are temporary and a make-shift. The final solution is only this deep meditation on the Universal Existence, before which no problem can stand. The whole thing vanishes like darkness before the sun.