Patanjali Yoga Sutra - VIII

Remembering

Anubhuta Vishaya Asampramoshaha Smritihi

To remember is the fifth quality of the mind. An incident that happened, a song or speech that one heard, the names and faces of people, emotional feelings, concepts and ideas one has read or recollection of any experience through the five sense organs is called Smriti or Memory.

To re-member (hyphen used deliberately to signify that the word means to connect again) means to attach the mind from the present moment, to some name, object, situation, concept or experience. I travel to the Himalayas, see the mountains, rivers, temples, sights, scenes and people. Now sitting in Chicago, I re-member my experience in the Himalayas and connect my mind to it. Depending on the , understanding and my response to the experience, the memory can be good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable, joyous or sad.

Yoga, the technique of connecting the individual mind with the cosmic mind, uses smriti or memory to re-member the biggest, infinite existence and become that in the present moment.

Every moment spent at the altar in prayer is an exercise in Smriti of Jesus Christ, Allah, Shiva or the Para Brahman - connecting our mind to that person or thing that we are thinking about. Every act of chanting a mantra or repeating an affirmation is to use this faculty of Smriti to re-member oneself with the name and form we think about.

(Photo: Our actions are the results of Smriti or memory. One who thinks of Consciousness has written 'Om' on snow while another who has thought of a greeting has written 'Hi' in the same snow.) - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Maha Shivaratri, Bhagavad Gita, Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Himalayas, Satsang in Chicago, swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - VII

Sleep

Abhavapratyayalambana Tamovrittir Nidra: The mind has the faculties of cognition - Pramana, misapprehension - Viparyaya and imagination - Vikalpa. It has a fourth capability too, which happens to all at the end of day time - sleep.

Sleep happens daily at night and sometimes during the day too, when there is an absence of any thoughts, notions or ideas. The mind holds on to this attitude of a state of no thoughts when it takes rest, along with the body.

Either, when it is the time to sleep at night, or when the body is tired with hard work and exhausted and also when the mind is bored, it slips from conscious activities of working, talking and thinking and settls down like a wave that rises high and falls back into the ocean. Every living creature is a similar wave of expression that falls back to a few hours of rest.

During this period of rest, the mind is submerged in the super-conscious self and wakes up in the morning or at any time, after sleep -refreshed and rejuvenated.

(Photo: Sunset near the Aurora temple in Chicago. Even when day slips into night, it rests a while and wakes up refreshed next morning.) - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Bhagavad Gita, Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Himalayas, Indians in Chicago, swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com).

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - VI

Imagination-Visualisation

Shabdagnananupati Vastushunyo Vikalpaha

Following Pramana and Viparyaya, Vikalpa is the third faculty of the mind. The mind is just like a toggle switch. Each time the same mind can function with one faculty or the other. When it sees something and grasps it, it becomes the understanding mind. At another time, the same mind can have a distorted vision, leading to misunderstanding.

Vikalpa is imagining something which is not, following sounds and words one is hearing or has heard before. The misunderstanding in the case of Viparyaya is a distorted vision. In the case of Vikalpa it is a doubt, uncertainty, indecision, hesitation, suspicion, contrivance, artfulness or a dilemma, caused by what one has heard. Many a time, our first impression of a person may get distorted if we have heard something unpalatable told about him/her by another. The opinion may change when we get to know the person more and find that what we heard was not true!

This can be seen most with children. If the child has heard a fake roaring sound of a lion, in a dark room, where it cannot see anything, it will hear the roar of a lion and cry, imagining a lion to be there.

Vikalpa is a function of the mind, negative when it gets anxious, imagining situations which are not and perceiving people different from what they actually are. A wife who is anxiously waiting for her husband to return home from office imagines some mishap if he is a little late, for instance.

The other end of Vikalpa is Sankalpa or creating a positive affirmation. This is a commonly practised self-improvement technique to create an image of a desired situation or goal and work for it to happen. A student who wants to become a doctor can create the image of becoming one in his or her mind and work to make that ideal a reality.

Great revolutions, movements, achievements in life are usually the result of a Sankalpa of an individual or a group of inspired people who work with a strong vision or a dream for the future. Vikalpa denotes the imaginative and creative faculty of the mind.

Photo: A night skyline view of the Chicago Tribune building. A building such as this is the result of the sankalpa of the architect who visualised it in his mind before even laying the foundation. - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Bhagavad Gita, Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Himalayas, swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 5

Misapprehension

Viparyayo Mithyagnanam Atadroopa Prathistam

Out of the five capabilities of the mind, Viparyaya, or the ability to misunderstand or misapprehend a situation or a person is the second.

Few are the people who can see the world with plain eyes. There are many who need power glasses. Some others see the world through coloured lenses and there are many who see the world through cracked glasses.

The mind is like a glass. When the glass is polished and clean, we can see clearly. When there is a stain on the glass, the vision also contains that stain, which is not in truth there.

The texture of the mind is dependent on the experiences a person goes through in this lifetime, his or her social, economic and environmental conditioning. And the differences we see among humanbeings at birth is because of the different experiences each one has gone through in the previous lifetimes and their response to it.

A clear mind is one that is not having disturbing thoughts. It is just like a serene surface of a lake with clear water. We can see through the lake and even the pebbles on its bed.

A disturbed mind is one that has rushing flow of thoughts. Though the telecast from the station is clear, if there is a problem with the television set, the picture will not have clarity.

To quote an example for misapprehension, we can take a rose for instance. A rose is simply a rose. A botanist will call it with a botanical name and look at it as a specimen to study due to his academic conditioning. A poet will look at it with a poetic mind and sing that life is not a bed of roses, but has its thorns too. A lover will see the same rose as a possible gift for his beloved and plan how to pluck it. A priest might be wondering how to offer it at the altar of his deity while a bee will be sipping the honey from the flower without a thought!

There will be misunderstanding and misapprehension as long as the thoughts agitate in the mindscreen in multiple, criss-crossing frequencies. When the mind is fine-tuned, with the practice of Yoga, then the screen is not agitated and helps the individual to perceive people, circumstances and situations with clarity. - Swahilya Shambhavi.

(Bhagavad Gita and Vignana Bhairava Tantra. (swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)

Patanjali Yoga Sutra - 4

Three types of cognition

Prathyaksha Anumana Agamaha Pramanani:

Out of the five different activities of the mind, Pramana or its cognitive ability using its own yardstick is of three types.

The first is Pratyaksha. Through the five senses, the mind recognises an object directly and clearly. For instance, if there is a tree before you, your eyes see the form and the different colours of the tree. Your ears perceive the sounds of the rustling leaves and the birds on the tree. The tongue can taste its leaves and fruits and know about the tree. The nose can, by smell, understand the presence of a tree and the skin can touch, feel and know that the tree exists. This is the direct cognitive capacity of the mind through the five sense organs.

Anumana is the second tyle of understanding by the mind. For instance, you are standing on a ground where a tree existed before, but has been chopped of presently. From your previous exposure to a similar tree, your mind can understand how this tree would have been and recall its smell, sounds, texture, colour, taste and looks.

The third faculty of cognition by the mind is through the Agamas or a body of information compiled or written by reliable sources. This applies to understanding abstract ideas. For instance you wish to know about the world. It is too big for your five senses to grasp. So you look up a globe or an atlas compiled by sources you think are reliable.

It is the same with concepts such as Yoga. You refer to the yoga sutra, the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads or any sacred texts for that matter. For an understanding of abstract concepts and ideas, the cognitive faculty of the mind relies on Agama or texts that have been written down in the past. - Swahilya Shambhavi. (Bhagavad Gita and Vignana Bhairava Tantra. (swahilya.soulmate@gmail.com)