Self Is Satisfied by the🔗

Self in the Self

6.23 When yoga is practiced with determination without deviating, the misery by contact with material senses is removed.

6.24 Giving up completely all the fantasies born of the mind, one can regulate all the senses from all the sides by the mind.

Krishna talks about two important things, practice with determination and practice without deviating from the prescribed way. Both are key elements to experience yoga. After a few days of practice it is easy to fall into inertia, tamas, and give up. We fall back into our old ways and give up. Our mind has been programmed with our old routine for years. Naturally, our mind will draw us back to the old ways. This is where determination is needed. Determination driven by the curiosity and the quest to see and experience the truth is what will give us the energy to practice yoga.

The other important element is practice without deviating from the prescribed way. We are re-introducing, re-presenting yoga in the form of Nithya Yoga, the Yoga of Eternity. I can say re-presenting because it is a new expression or teaching method. The method has evolved but the system, the truth itself is the same as the original system offered by the great Master, Patanjali. It is so complete we can't add even a single word to the sutra, the techniques. It is the experience of the truth. Truth cannot be developed. Only lies can be developed. All we can do is help evolve the teaching of truth to suit the current minds. The system itself cannot and need not be changed.

Krishna emphasizes here that yoga should be practiced in the prescribed way. All eight parts of yoga need to be practiced, but not as the eight steps as interpreted today. Even one part of Ashtanga Yoga will take many lifetimes to achieve, given the modern man's mindset.

Satya, truth, is a part of yama, the first of the eight steps. If we consistently practice satya alone, we will reach samadhi, the state of liberation or enlightenment. The problem is that it is only at the enlightened state that one truly becomes truthful. Our thoughts, words and actions become pure and truthful only when we are enlightened. This is what Krishna means when He says, 'Self is satisfied by the Self in the Self.' All of this has to happen together, not part by part. When one aspect is fulfilled, all others also become fulfilled.

This is the state of purna, complete fulfillment. Nothing can be taken away from it. Nothing can be added to it that would make any difference to its state of completeness. No joy can make it more blissful, no sorrow can make it less blissful. One becomes centered in bliss. When centered in bliss, it is forever!

These days, yoga is no longer a spiritual quest. It is merely a form of commercial exploitation. It is a fashion statement, a fashion accessory. The people doing yoga and those teaching it don't even know what the true purpose of yoga is. We need to be able to say, 'I do yoga.' I believe in many parts of world, cosmetic surgery is accepted socially. Similarly, in some other parts, being a student of yoga sometimes becomes a necessary prequalification for social acceptability.

So, today there is hot yoga, very hot yoga, temperate yoga, cold yoga, very cold yoga and so on. I saw a documentary some time ago by some professors from Harvard on Tibetan Buddhist monks being able to raise their body temperatures so much that the wet clothes they were wearing dried by increased body temperature. These monks were sitting in the open, in the harsh Tibetan winter of minus zero temperatures!

All these do not lead us anywhere near the truth. It is good business for those who conduct these programs. That is all. Very little can be gained spiritually by doing the physical postures and breathing exercises. These may provide some physical health improvement in the short term if done carefully. But actually, unregulated breathing exercises and physical contortions can do more harm than good.

Krishna talks about moving into reality, transcending the senses and the mind. The way yoga is taught and practiced in many places, one is moved away from reality into a fantasy world, to fulfill one's speculative needs. The senses and mind wander aimlessly.

We cannot suppress desires because anything suppressed will surface with more intensity. But the expression of desires is not the solution either. As we must have experienced in our own lives, a desire may be satisfied momentarily by expressing or fulfilling it but

soon afterwards, the desire arises again. Instead we need to understand what is happening and how it is happening.

A small story:

Buddha had ten thousand disciples that he used to address every morning. One day, he brought a tightly knotted rope with him and placed it before them and asked, 'Can someone untie this rope?'

Many disciples came and they tried pushing and pulling at the rope but the knot became tighter.

Finally, one disciple came up, looked at the knot for a while, and then undid the knot.

We need to look at the knot and see how it has been created. Once we do that, we just have to simply reverse the process of creating the knot and we have untied it. Instead of doing this, if we simply pull and push, we will never be able to untie the knot. It will only become tighter. The way out of the mind is also through the mind and not by avoiding it. Awareness is the key through which all our emotions can be handled. They basically originate from greed and fear. As we witness with awareness, the fear and greed loose their grasp on the mind.

Take fear for example. What do we do when we feel afraid of something, whether it is fear of insects or fear of heights? The moment we are faced with the object of fear, we try to escape. Have we tried facing the fear? The next time you are afraid, try this. Instead of running away, just try looking at the fear consciously with full awareness. Do not try to suppress it or run away from it. I tell you, when you look at fear with awareness, you will see that the fear does not exist as you thought it existed. It simply does not exist because fear is born out of ignorance when something is unknown to you. Perhaps we haven't completely seen some aspect of the object we fear and we have fantasized or imagined how that could be and how it could affect us, and that is why we fear it.

When we bring the light of knowledge upon fear, ignorance is removed and we get the courage to see the object as it is. Because now there is nothing hidden, our mind cannot fantasize about the unknown. So understand, our fears are nothing but negative fantasies.

A real incident:

During one of our discussions one day, a girl jumped up when she saw a spider. I asked her why she was afraid of the spider. She replied she didn't know exactly why but she was always afraid of spiders since childhood. I told her to meditate on the spider every time she saw one. She followed this and every time she saw one, she looked at it with awareness and concentration. Slowly, she started wondering why she was scared of it after all and her fear of spiders simply dropped on its own.

The same also applies to greed. Why do we always feel that we need more? We start running after the next desire before one desire is even fulfilled. We are so tuned to running after things. ‘What next? What next?’ becomes our chant. Have we ever stopped to think what we are running for? After fulfilling a desire, have we stopped to think whether we have achieved what we wanted? Have we stopped to enjoy what we just fulfilled? Even if we do this after fulfilling one desire, if we just contemplate in sincerity, by now, we would have gotten out of the control of the vicious cycle of desires.

Can we ever drink water from a mirage? Running after the fantasies created by the mind is just like running after a mirage or running after the horizon. We can never achieve bliss by running behind these fantasies because these fantasies have no existence in reality.

Q: Master, we are ruled by fears and fantasies throughout our lives. Do they arise from the same source? You have said that we can eliminate fears by facing them. The problem is that we are too scared to face them. That is why the fears seem to continue. How can we overcome this problem?

Fantasies arise from a blocked root center, the muladhara chakra, and fears arise from a blocked spleen center, the swadhishthana chakra. Simply put, fantasies arise from a sense of wanting, from a sense of possession arising from the feeling of ‘my’ and mine’, whereas fears originate from the potential loss of identity, the ‘I’. All fears ultimately arise from a fear of losing one’s identity or a loss to one’s identity. Some of the greatest fears are those of death, public speaking, failure etc. In one form or another, these are all spaces where we feel that our identity may be lost. It may be physical as in death, or reputation as in public speaking or material possessions as in failures.

We have no fears when we are fully confident about doing something. We also have no fears when we have no hopes of being able to do something. Most of us will not have fears of not being able to climb a mountain, as we probably don’t have the skill to do it. But to a seasoned mountain climber the fear of not being able to climb Mount Everest or some such peak may be very real, affecting his status and reputation.

The fear of losing a million dollars is irrelevant to someone who has only a few thousand, but very real to a multimillionaire. So, how does he face that fear? Such a person can face the fear by deliberately imagining the worst-case scenario of losing all his wealth. If the visualization is strong enough, the effect will be real too. The person may go through trauma with just the visualization, but once the experience is over, he can be sure that he can face the loss with far greater equanimity.

Many people, especially women, are afraid of reptiles, insects and such things. These are fears that are deeply rooted and carried over in the unconscious brain. As I described in the case of the girl who was afraid of spiders, the solution is to visualize or meditate on that fear. There are guided meditations that will help. In general, in order for a fear to drop, it has to be faced.

In our first level LBP course, participants go through a guided meditation during the Swadhishthana chakra session to remove fears. This meditation helps us overcome the fear of death or the separation of the spirit from the mind-body system. Done under controlled conditions this helps us face the fear of death and gives us the ability to cope with that fear better. If our fear is deeply rooted and we find it difficult to face it ourselves, these courses and these meditations can help a lot. As I said, all fears are ultimately about death. Once we understand that death itself is not an end but a passage, the fear of death can be dissolved. Along with that, many of our other fears born out of the fear of loss of identity will also dissolve.