Imagination is the result of mere words

Do you know that imagination is the fantasy which moves you away from the reality?

The biggest click I got from the 9th Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is – imagination is the results of mere words – words we create unconsciously! Patanjali says anything experienced by you, other than your pure consciousness is vikalpa – imagination. Imagination is that which is created merely by words! Hence imagination brings more suffering than wrong knowledge because for wrong knowledge to happen, your consciousness needs be present and the mind needs to do something. Wrong knowledge can only happen in waking state or dream state. Wrong knowledge is nothing but wrong logic. But imagination can disturb you in all the three states – waking state, dream state and deep sleep state because imagination touches the deeper zones than wrong knowledge.

Another important truth I discovered from this sutra is that imagination corrupts your seven chakras. What are chakras? See, your mind and body come in contact with each other at 7 points in your body. These 7 points are known as the 7 energy centres or chakras. The Yoga tradition describes these 7 points as Chit-Jada-granthi – the points where matter and consciousness meet each other. Whenever you carry imagination, you corrupt these 7 energy centres and disturb their functioning.

For example, if your imagination touches your root centre, Mooladhara chakra at the base of the spine, it is called fantasy. You are caught in fantasies about others and yourself which results in distortion of your basic perception of reality. You start seeing everything as larger than life, you start expecting the things which can never happen. Projecting your magnified expectation on reality is called fantasy. This happens often in relationships, you will always feel that the other person is not fulfilling you. You start imagining things, projecting things and creating things. When you see that it is not happening through the other person, you start blaming the other person. That is why you constantly feel the other person is depriving you or suffocating you. You are not even aware that it is your fantasy which is creating the expectation of things which can never happen or which never happened.

Next, if your imagination touches your Swadhistana chakra or being centre located 2 inches above the root centre, it is called fear. You experience fear of others and fear of yourself. You start to have phobia for no reason. If your imagination touches the Manipuraka chakra, the navel centre, it is called worry. You start worrying about others and worrying about yourself. If your imagination touches your Anahata chakra, the heart centre, it is called attention-need. You suffer from continuous attention need from others and from yourself. Sometimes you put up with abusive relationships just because of your attention-need. You forget that you can be a source of love and you need not be a beggar for love and attention. If your imagination touches your Visuddhi chakra, the throat centre, it is called jealousy. You start constant comparison with others and comparison with yourself. This happens a lot when you constantly compare with yourself what you were able to do yesterday and not today. If your imagination touches your Ajna chakra, the brow centre, it is called ego. You start suffering from ego with others and with yourself. The greatest suffering is you judge yourself, you regret your own words and actions or you are angry with yourself for something. When you carry too many judgments about life, about others and yourself, it means imagination is corrupting your brow centre. Finally, if your imagination touches your Sahasrara chakra or the crown centre, it is called discontentment. You suffer from discontentment with others and discontentment with yourself. This is how we create different kinds of suffering in our life due to the inability to handle the realities of life!

Have you seen people renouncing life due to many unfulfilled fantasies about life? They fantasized about luxury lifestyle but they didn’t make it and they couldn’t tolerate the failure, the reality of their life. They started to renounce out of frustration due to not having the right understanding about their fantasy.  I’ve seen people misunderstood about yoga and they created a fantasy about themselves and tortured themselves in the name of yoga. They are not able to come out of the fantasy they are caught in. That’s the endless suffering.

In essence, imagination – Vikalpa is fantasy which not only moves you away from reality, but it also makes you experience the ultimate suffering. It has to be understood with very deep awareness. It originates from the words you use to yourself and others because words have power to shape your destiny. Your ability to relax from imagination is the ultimate relaxation you can have in life. Namaste 😀

Source : 108 Truths of Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Is problem becoming your reality?

Do you know that if you are convinced about some problems due to your powerlessness, it just becomes your reality?

Many times, instead of going to the root of the problem and solving it, completing it, you go on holding onto the surface and enjoy the suffering. For some people they are afraid that if they go to the root of the problem, it may just disappear and what will they do in their life?! With the unconscious mind, we can get so comfortable with our problems that we are afraid to come out of the comfort zone and live without any problem. Sometimes the problems have become our companions and we just love our problems because we can get attention from others. Worrying about the problems has become a pattern that one may feel lonely without problems. Hence we don’t want to look into the root of the problem.

In the 8th Yoga Sutra, Patanjali says “Interpreting based on past conditioning leads to misconception or wrong understanding”. In this one Sutra, he analyses and describes ALL our problems.

First of all, most of the time we suffer only with our conditioning, not with the situation itself. If you look deeply, 99.9% of the sufferings are not related to the external situation, they are related to our internal conditioning.

Here’s an incident which happened to my client. This lady once witnessed the infidelity of his father when she was a child. Her parents fought frequently and her mother was depressed. Once a fight broke out and she asked her father not to leave them alone but he did. Her entire world crushed because her idea of her father loved her was completely shattered. She lost the trust she had in her father and in men. Her relationship with her partner become a problem because of inability to trust and she tortured herself with the pattern of spying on her partner. The incident is nothing but the past conditioning which stops her from experiencing the reality. The good news is she had completed with this incident by letting go of the anger and had since started building up on her trust.

From this incident, we can see that it is our mind that is programmed at a young age and we start living life based on our programming. We walk, talk and take decision based on those programs. The scary part is many of us are not even aware that we are programmed and we continue to live in unawareness!

That is what Patanjali calls as wrong knowledge, the very cognition or input in which we receive life is distorted because it is based on past conditioning and incompletions. So naturally, whenever wrong data and process are done, the way we take decision will also be wrong.

Here is a simple exercise you can do just to see how you make the same mistake of interpreting the present moment using the past conditioning. Sit and pen down at least 10 incidents where you made the same mistake using past conditioning. You will begin to see how your mind is behaving, how your life is happening and how you are struggling with this pattern.

The big problem is, before you even understand the depth of the problem, you start trying to correct it from your past conditioning. Then the problem can never end because the very knowledge is wrong. If you just understand the depth of the problem, that’s enough to trigger a transformation inside you. Just by understanding the depth of the problem, the transformation starts happening in you. Be very clear, understanding brings clarity, clarity brings change.

Upanishads declare again and again that all the Enlightened Masters declare – Whatever IS, is divine, it is God. If you see anything other than the Divine, if you have any other experiences other than bliss in life, you are stuck with this pattern, this is the sutra for you. Contemplate on this sutra – Interpreting based on past conditioning leads to misconception or wrong understanding. Decide to get out of this pattern and go to the depth of each problem and see it without your past conditioning so that you see each situation as it is. Namaste 😀

Judging Life is Violence

Do you know that the more judgments you carry about life, the more you will suffer with unnecessary violence and anger?

We are always so quick to pass judgment on a particular person based on one experience or even on a particular race based on one person. The judgment you pass about a particular race, the judgments you pass about a religion, the judgment you pass about a state, the prejudices and biases you carry, are all related to this wrong knowledge – we use the past experience to judge the present situation.

Here starts the problem because not only do we throw the emotions of anger or violence on others, we start internalising them which make us suffer with unnecessary emotions. For example, you read some news about a country’s President and you say “This guy is destroying the citizens of that country! So you start to carry a strong anger against him. But you won’t be able to directly interfere in his life as you have neither the right nor power to do it. So you are just sitting with that anger and later, if you hear some misfortune has happened in that President, you are happy because your anger is fulfilled, your violence is fulfilled. This is called excess anger or unnecessary anger which is in no way directly related to your life. It is just a judgment you are carrying about life.

In the 8th Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, he tells us not to carry strong words or judgments about life based on our narrow logic from the past conditioning. All these things are based on wrong knowledge. He says “Interpreting based on past incompletions leads to misconception or wrong understanding.” We never have compassion towards the present moment, we are always violent with the present moment, that is why we kill the present with the past. We destroy the present moment with the incompletions carried forward from our past. Be very clear – abusing the present moment with the incompletions from the past is hell.

All our fears, greed, worries, whatever we think of as misfortune in life, whatever we think of as our identity, can be sorted out with this one understanding. Eternity presents itself to you in the present moment, you can touch Eternity only by touching the present moment. You can’t directly touch the past nor future, the present moment is the only way you can directly connect with Eternity. However, if you are constantly torturing it with your past, you are creating incompletion, misconception and wrong understanding. All the suffering is just with this one problem – carrying the past into the present, leading to wrong understanding. You go on interpreting life based on the past and creating problems for yourself. This is how wrong understanding leads to wrong decisions which leads to suffering.

In any situation, if you are open, fresh and alive, without the past conditioning and words, you can handle the situation directly, you can live and experience that situation completely. But when you carry a preconceived idea about the situation. You never directly face that situation, you jump to a certain conclusion and start taking actions based on that. See how many time you create a whole problem in your imagination and are ready to attack with all the weapons and arguments. One important truth is we think in a generalised way i.e. the mind always carries the incompletions from one situation from one experience and extends it to all people, all situations and all experiences. Each situation is different, but your mind always generalizes.

My Guru, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) gives this ONE amazing key, he said ‘Have compassion towards the present moment’. If you look towards the present moment with a little sympathy and compassion, it will completely open a new door, you will have a new understanding about life. When you don’t have compassion towards the present moment, you always judge this moment with your past experience. This is a powerful key to unlock all your suffering from the past and see every moment as new!

In essence, stop judging life based on your past, have a little compassion towards the present moment so that you can allow yourself to fully experience life and eventually touch Eternity. Namaste 😀

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