Understanding of modifications of the mind

For those intellects out there, this is a sutra for you from Patanjali, the great sage of yoga.

In the 6th Sutra, he states that “Right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory – these are the 5 modifications of the mind which may lead to suffering or joy, anguish or non-anguish.”

The revelation is right knowledge can lead to suffering or joy! Even though it is right knowledge, it is still a modification of your mind which is bondage. The mind leads you to bondage or freedom, you mind can make anything out of anything. Any situation can be experienced in any way. The 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! That is the power of the mind.

Have you seen people creating guilt out of right knowledge? With the right knowledge, when you misunderstand it and apply it in the wrong way or when you misuse it, you can create agony, guilt and doubt inside you and other people. In the hands of wrong people, even the right knowledge can create suffering!

Next, all of us know that wrong knowledge can also lead us to suffering or joy. This is because wrong knowledge comes from our emotions, mood swings which are nothing but the function of liver and hormones. Do you notice how your mood changes during morning, at noon and at night? Your thought patterns and moods are all based on your liver function which is wrong knowledge. Another example, when you are hungry, your idea about food is very different, after you finish your meal, suddenly your idea about food is different. This also applies to lust: when you want the experience, your idea about the other person, your idea about beauty, your idea about the act, everything is different. When you are finished with the act, suddenly everything is different! Hence, Patanjali says any knowledge based on your senses, your hormones which changes from time to time, is wrong knowledge. That’s why Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) who is a living incarnation, emphasized that during the hormonal hijack, one should never make any important life decision.

You may ask – How can wrong knowledge create joy? According to Swamiji, wrong knowledge can lead one to joy for only a short period, but it is not permanent joy. It is joy that leads to bondage, to more suffering. So even if it gives you temporary joy, wrong knowledge is still wrong knowledge.

There are only 2 things your mind can do – it can either continuously condition you or it can continuously liberate you. Your imagination can either go this way or that way, it cannot stay still. You either progress or you go down, in the inner world there is no such thing as being stuck. If your imagination is used by you to liberate yourself, to remove all conditioning, it is called meditation. If your imagination is used by you to bind you more and more, to create more and more bondage for you, it is called mind. Imagination can either lead you to hell or heaven. People can either move completely away from the spiritual path or completely get enlightened.

Even with this great knowledge of Yoga, I’ve seen people create one more bondage – like feeling depressed due to misuse of this knowledge or misinterpretation of this great truth. That is why these great truths should be heard directly from an enlightened being. The enlightened being knows how to interpret Patanjali and from what context the truths are expressed.

Here Patanjali emphasized the importance of a cognitive shift by a master. The moment we experience a cognitive shift, our comprehension is illumined. We will be able to directly relate with the truth without difficulties or complications, without torturing ourselves. This cognitive shift happens with the initiation of an enlightened master. For instance, the science of unclutching is the direct initiation (energy transmission) by Patanjali where he spoke about in the 2nd sutra – “Mind is an action, you can stop it”. In the entire Yoga Sutra, Patanjali did not mention about initiation because he already knew that enlightened beings will continue to come down to planet earth to remind humanity of this science as a form of initiation and keep this tradition alive for future generations. It is only with a living master who can take you to the right imagination and lead you beyond the mind, the no-mind state of ecstasy!

In sum, the right knowledge, wrong knowledge and imagination are different modifications of the mind which only lead us to the extremes of joy or suffering, anguish and non-anguish. Beware of them! Namaste. 😀

  • Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

You are untouched by suffering

This is the straight truth by Pantajali, the great sage, the father of Yoga: Suffering can never touch you!

How many of you are ready to accept this truth?

If you are able to grasp this truth, then you are already a living yogi! But for the majority of people, their cunning mind is not ready to accept that it is so simple because it still wants to do the nonsensical game of clutching and identification with thought patterns.

If we look in deeply, we will realise that everything is just a game. The mental game that doctors, psychiatrists, psychologist, priests used to exploit us by using guilt, fear and greed. Since young, we are very strongly made to believe by parents, educationists, society, politicians, by people at large that we have an unconscious mind and subconscious mind especially the psychiatrists and psychologists. The funny thing is they don’t even understand fully about their own mind, let alone trying to guide the world! No wonder they created a mess in the human consciousness with all kinds of disorders and we are suffering from it. For example, Sigmund Freud is the biggest fraud who sold a big hypothetical and fraudulent system of thinking to the world, which can never be questioned, and which can never be proved. Recently the scientific father of the disease ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) Leon Eisenberg, just before his death, he gave a confession. He said, “ADHD is a fictitious disease.” Dr. Edward C. Hamlyn, a founding member of the Royal College of General Practitioners also made a statement: “ADHD is a fraud intended to justify starting children on a life of drug addiction.” It is the conspiracy of the psycho-pharmacology units all over the world which fabricated this delusion and made us believe it due to some vested interests.

In the Vedic tradition, only enlightened masters, who have already gone beyond the mind, are qualified to talk about the mind. He is able to give the unadultered truth and solution so as to raise the collective consciousness of planet earth.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) is one such living master among us, he declared this simple truth “There is no such thing as suffering, there is no such thing as healing and there is nothing to be healed.” Any thought pattern, any incompletion or any memory we are carrying from the past, cannot touch our inner space. The truth is the past actually does not have any control over our inner space. All the so-called suffering is really unnecessary. This is because we are constantly made to believe that our past has a very strong connection with our present. We are constantly taught the idea that we are carrying an unconscious mind filled with many engraved memories, committed sins and karma. We were told that if we have suppressed some thoughts or emotions, we have to release it or if we were abused, we have to heal that wound through past life regression. These are nonsensical ideas put into our consciousness. That is how we create a disorder for ourselves and suffer. If only we realise that we are responsible for clutching again and again with the old thought patterns and allowing them to cause the unnecessary suffering upon ourselves.

Patanjali says that “Till we reach the state of yoga – the cessation of the mind or the withdrawal of thought patterns, there is clutching and identification with thought patterns”. He went on to explain that the modifications of the mind or mental patterns are five-fold, they result in the alternation of anguish and of non-anguish, suffering and peace. He is telling us that we are all qualified for enlightenment if we renounce our self-doubt, self-hatred and self-denial patterns. All we need to do is just stop our action called mind and relax into our true nature. We will experience the state of NOW and nothing else is required.

In essence, no suffering can ever touch our pure consciousness which is by its nature blissful, powerful and all knowing. Just relax into your true nature NOW. Suffering exists only with ignorance of this truth. Namaste 😀

  • Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.

Yoga: Living in a different zone of existence

The year was 2009 when I first heard the discourse on Yoga Sutra of Patanjali as interpreted by a living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji). Patanjali, the great sage declares that the state of Yoga is the cessation of mental patterns where one lives in a different zone of existence of limitlessness and total understanding. To me, it felt something beyond my limited logic and far-flung at that time since I was not able to fathom this truth, let alone experiencing it.

Fast forward to January 2016, as I read the 3rd verse of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali again, suddenly it just clicked within me – “Hey! This is the zone I am living now!” I was too ecstatic with this revelation!

The 3rd Yoga Sutra states ‘Tada drau swarupe vasthanum’, it means “This results in relaxation into one’s true nature of limitlessness and total understanding.”

The first insight we need to know is that anything we can experience again and again is a pattern. Any experience we can enter into and come out of it is just a mental pattern. By this definition, even our sleep is a pattern since we go in and come out every night. It is a pattern.

Here is the truth – whatever you see and experience in the outer world is because of your thought patterns. Your thought patterns create the life that you experience. You could be experiencing the same situation but a different comment by different person could trigger a feeling of deep suffering or a feeling of joy and relaxation. Just see how your thought patterns can influence your response in situations and even life crisis. Without even your knowledge, your life is being run by thought patterns. It is the thought patterns which keep the mind alive!

The second insight is the way to stop the mental patterns is to take the responsibility to complete whatever hangovers you created as mental patterns and relax from everything in complete completion – the consciousness. Yoga Sutra teaches us that only when we really relax from everything, we are established in our own true self. The moment the thoughts disappear, when the cessation of mental patterns happens, when the chitta-vrittis (mental patterns) are no more, it results in relaxation into one’s own true nature. When you are able to have your mind under your control, that freedom is what Patanjali called being established in your true nature.

How to stop the mental patterns? You may ask!

From my experience, the quickest way is to find a living master who is already radiating the state of Yoga. This is what I did. In last December, I attended a 21-day yoga spiritual inner awakening retreat in Phuket called Nithyanandoham 1008 conducted by Swamiji. In this mystical process, he purified the muscles memory and bio memory by removing all patterns I created in these 2 layers and he awakened the bio energy in me. The bio energy is the God particle that exists in all of us.

Now it has been almost 3 weeks since I came back from this program. Like many others who are experiencing the powers and miracles, I am also seeing many changes at different aspects of my existence. At the physical body level, the body feels totally new and young with great flexibility and possibility. There is no sign of tiredness as the body is constantly radiating such high energy, frankly I even forget how tiredness feels like because the tiredness pattern has been totally erased from the muscles memory. The mind feels so clear and it falls into silence, the thoughtless zone whenever I bring restful awareness or whenever the mind is needed for planning, I can just switch it on. It is such a great freedom to be able to relax into my true nature. Another extraordinary thing I discovered is that whenever I am in the zone of Yoga, I can direct my awareness into anything I want clarity or answers.  For example, I have just started writing my next book, just by focusing my awareness on the book, the space is intelligent enough to show me the key points I should write in my inner space. The understanding happens in the space of complete completion. I am just too thrilled to discover this fascinating conscious playground called Yoga.

I remembered Swamiji explained further that “In whichever areas you turn your consciousness, you will have complete clarity in that dimension about that truth. It will be waiting to reveal all its mysteries to you. All you need to do is just look into it. You will be able to connect with it and receive all the information and secrets and mysteries. You can download all the information you need from Cosmos. This is what Patanjali means when he says – limitlessness and total understanding.” This is such an amazing truth which is now becoming an experience itself for me after coming back from Nithyanandoham retreat!

In essence, if you are a Yogi living in a thoughtless zone, you literally live in a different zone of existence because you are experiencing oneness with consciousness, Existence. Your life will be filled with constant excitement, powers and miracles. Namaste 😀

  • Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.