18. Make a Cognitive Shift🔗

Today's subject is: 'Illumine your Comprehension.'

I can say, this is the whole subject of Patanjali. This is the subject which Patanjali is expressing through all these sutras. 'Illumining your Comprehension' means seeing things in the proper light, with awakened vision.

Your mind leads you to bondage, your mind leads you to freedom; your mind can make anything out of anything. Any situation can be experienced in any way. Mind can enjoy a certain happening or suffer due to it. It can experience joy or suffering in the same situation; it can comprehend pleasure or pain in the same situation. It can make you experience anything out of anything.

I have seen that the people who come to me for healing are of two types. After two days of healing, one type of people come back with so much of joy, saying, 'Oh God, Swamiji, 50% of the disease has disappeared! I'm surprised how can this happen just with a touch!' They are in ecstasy. And there are a few people who come back and say with long faces, '50% of the disease is still not healed, Swamiji!'

They don't even understand that a disease which has been there for twenty years has melted down 50% in just two days! This is called wrong comprehension - unable to see what is happening. See, both are helped equally, but one guy is in ecstasy while the other guy is not even able to feel or enjoy the miracle of healing. Mind can make anything out of anything.

Here Patanjali says, 'These five modifications - right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory - these five can be the reasons for your pleasure or pain, for your anguish or joy, for your peace or restlessness.’ You can use these five modifications towards anything.

People ask me one more question: ‘How can wrong knowledge create joy?’ Wrong knowledge can lead to joy for a short period, but it is not permanent joy. It is joy that leads to bondage, to suffering. So even if it gives temporary joy, wrong knowledge is still wrong knowledge!

Sometimes, people ask me, ‘How can right knowledge be the reason for suffering, Swamiji? Why will we use right knowledge for suffering?’

Please understand, many times I have seen people creating guilt out of right knowledge!

In the small story about Suzuki and his Master’s death, the disciples had an idea that an enlightened person should not cry; he is supposed to be balanced. This is a kind of right knowledge. But when you misunderstand and apply it in the wrong way, or

Actually, what really needs to happen inside us is the COGNITIVE SHIFT, which means that your comprehension should be illumined. You should be able to straightaway relate with the truth, without difficulties or complications, without torturing yourself; the straight ability to relate with the truth. In my experience, people can neither resist the joy, the ecstasy of being in my presence, nor drop their arrogance and come out of their ego! So they continue to come, and then find fault with something, criticize something! They can neither keep themselves away, nor completely surrender and relax. Means, they are struggling with wrong comprehension. The cognitive shift has not happened. Here, Patanjali emphasizes on cognitive shift.

when you misuse it, you can create agony, guilt and doubt inside you and other people. In the hands of the wrong person, even right knowledge can create suffering.

Today, contemplate on this:

Wrong knowledge can lead me to joy for a short period, but it is not permanent joy. It is joy that leads to bondage, to suffering.