Controlling The Mind🔗

6.10 A yogi should always try to concentrate his mind on the supreme Self;

Remaining in a secluded place, he should carefully control his mind without being attracted by anything and should be free from the feeling of possessiveness.

6.11 In a clean and pure place, one should establish his seat by laying kuṣa grass, a deerskin and a cloth one over another, neither too high nor too low.

6.12 Sitting firmly on that pure seat, the yogi should practice the purification of the self by controlling the activities of the mind and the senses.

6.13 Holding the body, head and neck steady, looking at the tip of his nose without looking in any other direction.

6.14 Let him sit with an unagitated mind, free from fear and in tune with Existence, controlling the mind, focusing it on Me and making Me the supreme goal.

In these verses Krishna gives directions for the practitioner of yoga, the yogi. There are instructions about both the state of the mind and the state of the body. These verses are often quoted and misused with a literal understanding and without grasping the inner meaning and significance. We can sit with closed or half closed eyes, with spine erect, in a sound-proofed dark room, and still be far away from enlightenment. Understand, these are general and practical guidelines given to help us with how we should sit and meditate. These are not essential qualifications for enlightenment.

Krishna repeats the importance of controlling our senses again and again. Why? Senses are our doors to the external world. As long as they are open and uncontrolled, we are immersed only in the external world. It is impossible to understand our true reality when we are studying the external world. We may become a great scientist or a wealthy businessman by observing the outer world, but never an enlightened person. For this path, looking inwards is the only way.

Controlling the senses requires controlling the mind. Controlling the mind requires control of thoughts. If we sit for a few minutes and analyze our thoughts, we will find that there is no connection between one thought and another. There is no logic in our thinking process. By their very nature our thoughts are illogical, unconnected and irrational. Thoughts keep swinging from past to future and back to the past.

We need to do two things to control our thoughts. First, we need to stay in the present moment by refusing to move to the past and future and second, we need to disconnect thoughts. I call this unclutching. We need to be aware that thoughts are not inherently connected. We connect them into a shaft of joy or sorrow. These shafts do not exist at all. So I say to you, unclutch and become liberated. I am not saying to stay without thoughts. That is not possible; just witness thoughts. Understand that thoughts are unconnected. Detach yourself from the emotional baggage of the thoughts. If we detach ourselves from the regrets of the past and the speculations about the future we will automatically rise into the present.

We cannot live without desires. If anyone tells us that we can reach enlightenment through elimination of desires, it is incorrect. First of all, we are already enlightened. Our inner Self knows it is connected to the Divine. We are just not aware of it, that's all. If we are already there, how can we achieve it? Second, desires are energy. We cannot inhale and exhale without the desire to live. Simply dying will not give us the experience!

When Buddha talks of desires being sorrowful, he means that the attachment to desires brings sorrow. That is what Krishna talks about here - dropping the attachment and possessiveness. It is the feeling of 'mine,' the desire to possess, that creates the feeling of 'I,' not the other way around. Our identity is made up of all the things that we want, that we desire, that we are attached to. These constitute our mental make-up. The seeds of desire and embedded memories are the stuff our package of 'I' is made of. Once the feeling of possession, the feeling of 'mine' disappears, it is possible to shed our identity as well. When we are free of the feeling of 'mine' and 'I', when we are not attached or attracted to external objects, when we are not led by our senses, we have steadied the mind and senses. To facilitate this, Krishna stipulates the conditions.

There are a few things to note here. For example, we should go to a secluded place. Why? Whatever said and done, in the house, the phone may ring, somebody may knock or some salesperson may call. A secluded place is really just a means to move us away from these disturbances.

The kuṣa (a type of grass considered ideal to sit on and meditate), deerskin and all those things are like insulation, so that the earth will not absorb the energy we create. But now we don't have to bother about that, since we usually sit in a chair, raised a little from the ground. The seat should neither be too high nor too low and it should be comfortable. That's all. The most important thing to be aware of in any meditation is to be relaxed. We cannot meditate in discomfort. Sthira (stable) and sukha (pleasurable) are the basic essentials of any meditation posture.

Here Krishna updates the technique that He gave earlier. Here He gives three more instructions:

1. Head, spine and neck should be in a straight line.

2. We should fix our eyes on the tip of the nose. If we look at the tip of the nose, naturally, our awareness will settle on the third eye. Our concentration will settle on the ājña cakra (the brow energy center).

3. We should meditate on 'Me' as the supreme goal.

These are simple, commonsense instructions. Keeping the head, neck and spine, all in one line, helps in two ways. Firstly, it prevents us from dropping off to sleep. If we doze, our neck will drop, and we will no longer be steady. Secondly, as long as the head, neck and spine remain steady and vertical, the flow of pranic energy, the life-giving energy, through the energy pathways will be unblocked and smooth.

A small story:

In Chennai, South India, there was a famous preacher. He was well known but boring. People used to go to sleep listening to him. On the day he died, a bus driver from Chennai also died. In Chennai, bus drivers are like Yama, the god of death. They drive buses just to terrorize people. People both inside and outside the bus pray for their own safety.

When they both arrived at the gates of heaven, the driver was speedily ushered into heaven's first class suite. The preacher found himself escorted to a hot and humid space, very similar to the Chennai climate.

The preacher started screaming, 'There is no justice in the land of Yama. I, a great preacher, am being led to hell, while this driver goes to heaven. Will someone give me justice?'

Yama heard his screams and explained, 'Here we go by the end result caused by you on planet earth, irrespective of what you might have been doing as a profession. When the driver drove, fearing for their lives, many people remembered god and prayed to Him sincerely. You, on the other hand, through your preaching only put people to sleep!'

That is why I am always afraid with you people. When I talk and teach you meditation, you doze off. Just think, Yama may say the same thing to me! So at least for my sake, keep your eyes open.

Whether we close our eyes fully or half close them, it is important that we disconnect from the external world. When the eyes are focused on the tip of the nose, they are not looking at external objects and ninety percent of sensory inputs are cut off. In addition, the focus is on the third eye between the brows, which, when energized, dissolves the ego block.

Finally, Krishna says, 'Focus on Me.' He means our true Self. If we like, we can meditate on the form of Krishna, with a flute and peacock feather. But I always prescribe going beyond the form. Go into your being. Of course, when we enter into our third eye, automatically we will go beyond the form. We will start meditating on the formless energy that is beyond the form.

Q: Swamiji, is there any harm in sitting directly on the floor and meditating if that is possible? Is it essential to have a floor covering to sit on?

As I said earlier, whatever Krishna says here in terms of what to sit on and how to sit is only from a practical point of view, based on conventions of those days. Where would you go for kuṣa grass today, or a deerskin? Animal rights activists will come after you if they see you sitting on a deerskin!

What is implied here is that you should follow some fundamental principles of hygiene and cleanliness. That is all. People often ask me whether they should have a bath before meditation. There is no real need but if you feel sleepy it is a good idea to bathe so that you feel fresh. Even in the morning, if you move straight from the bed into meditation even without brushing your teeth, you may be in a half-awake state and fall asleep as you try to meditate. Other than that there is no rigid rule that you must bathe or that you must sit on a floor covering to meditate.

What you need is some basic discipline like in every other activity that you engage in. Meditation is also a kind of skill. You need to practice with sincerity to be successful in it, as with every other activity that you undertake. Just because it is considered a spiritual activity, you cannot say that this skill or habit will descend on you from the heavens above.

That is the reason Krishna is laying down basic guidelines for meditation. He knows how unstable our minds are. Even when all these guidelines are laid down so clearly you will go and do what you please. If nothing is laid down, God only knows what you will end up doing. In every discourse at least one person will ask me whether he or she can meditate while lying down. Once I asked that person why he would like to meditate while lying down. He said with all sincerity that it will save him time as he can lie down, meditate and then go to sleep!