Are you looking for proof? Debating within yourself? Are you hanging on to “wrong knowledge” of how things are? You do not know how things are because the world is fluid. There is nothing solid here. Nobody is solid. Nobody’s mind is solid. No thoughts are solid. The whole world is fluid.

 

Anything can change any time, in any way. The whole world is filled with all sorts of possibilities. But your mind tries to fix everything — thought, people, ideas and places — into definite items or quantities. This is how it is. Your mind has set ideas of yourself, using proof, wrong knowledge or vikalpa, fantasies or fears or dwelling in the past. The four modulations of the mind plus sleep, that is another modulation.

 

Abhyasavairagyabhyam tannirodhaha  meaning “they can be restrained by practice or dispassion”. How do you get over that? One can overpower this vrutti through abhyasa and vairagya or the practice and detachment or self-centeredness.

 

Tatra sthithou yatnobhyasaha meaning “practise is that effort made to steadily be there in the seer”. That which you do to be there is called abhyasa or practice. Abiding in the seer is abhyasa, that which you do to be right here, this moment is abhyasa. A little effort is needed to relieve you from the five modulations and just be here, now, now, now, now, now bringing the mind to the present and not dwelling on the past memories. That effort is called abhyasa.

 

You can do the following practise. Close your eyes. You are not going to dwell on any logic now. That means you are free from pramana. You are not interested in proof from anything. You just observe it. You relax. You are not interested in any wrong knowledge or right knowledge, whatever.

 

Often when the mind has wrong knowledge, it thinks it is has the right knowledge. Retrieving the mind from knowing also, from knowledge. You are not anxious to see, smell, touch, feel, understand anything… let things be the way they are. Who cares? Right or wrong, no judgement. That means that you are freeing yourself from viparyayaya and vikalpa.

 

If the mind is on some imagination, fantasy, just knowing that it is imagination, fantasy, just knowing it is enough and it fades away. Just like, when you know that you are dreaming and the dream vanishes. Then free yourself from sleep and relieving from all the experiences of the past. Pleasant and unpleasant experiences are gone. The moment is free, fresh and full. Being here this moment totally is abhyasa.

 

The mind might try to go to the past, to smruti, or may try to go off to sleep and it can try to bring some logic and justification or some knowledge or some fantasies. Just knowing that again it is getting into the five vruttis, without aversion or craving, come back to the centre, to the seer. This is abhyasa.

Tado drashtuhu swarupe avasthanam meaning ‘the seer then rests or remains in his/her own nature’. Discipline is to unite yourself, to unite all the loose ends of your existence. Vrutti sarupyamitaratra  meaning ‘You identify yourself with the modulations of the mind all the time’.

What this means is that your mind is engaged in the outside world all the time. With eyes open in the waking state you are caught up in all that you see, smell, hear touch, taste. If not, you return to sleep or to the state of dreaming where you are completely shut off from the world.

In the sleep and dreaming state, the same memories return but you are never to yourself, calm and quiet. You become the object of your perception. You know, if you see villagers or innocent people or children, when they are watching a movie, they are so totally involved in the movie and nobody exists for them at that time. It is just the movie that exists at that moment. They wouldn’t even know if their legs were hurting or if they had a back ache. They do not feel pain. They do not feel their body at all.

What has happened? Your consciousness assumed the form of that movie, of that vrutti. You know, once in a village, somebody was watching a movie and the people saw that the hero was being tortured by the villain, people stood up really with sticks and stones and said, “Come on. I am going to hit you” and rushed towards the stage. Our consciousness assumes the form otherwise.

The whole purpose of yoga is to be one with the self, to bring integrity and make you whole. Abiding in the form, in the nature of the seer is yoga. Whenever you experience — joy, ecstasy, bliss, happiness in life, knowingly or unknowingly, you are abiding in the form or in the nature of the seer. Otherwise, at other times you are with the different activities of the mind. You become one with the different activities. The modulations of the mind are of five forms.

Vruttayaha panchatayyaha klishtaklishtaha Meaning ‘the modulations of the mind are five-fold, painful or not painful’.There are certain vruttis or modulations of the mind, which are problematic. Now, what are those?

Pramanaviparyayavikalpanidra-smrutayaha Meaning ‘wanting proof, wrong understanding, imagination, sleep and memory’.

Five modes of consciousness arises in your self. What are they?

Pratyakshanumanagamaha pramanani Meaning ‘the different kinds of proof the mind requires are the obvious, experiential proof, inferential proof and scriptural proof’. Pratyaksha means obvious, experiential. Our mind constantly wants to have an obvious, solid experiential proof. This is one mode of activity of the mind. Another is anumana, which means, it is not so obvious, but you infer and whatever you infer, you believe.

Agamaha is the proof the mind takes from scriptures or from books. Because it is written. Even today in certain remote villages, anything printed is the gospel truth. Many people say that since something is written it must be right. We are constantly looking for proof of something or anything.

Yoga is when you drop this search and then abide in the self. Abiding in the self does not need proof. Truth cannot be understood through proof. God is beyond proof. You cannot prove God, nor can you disprove God.

Proof is connected to logic and logic is very limited in its preview. This is the same with enlightenment, same with love. Love can never be proved or disproved. This is not in the realm of the seer. The seer is beyond proof.

Viparyayo mithyajnanamatadrupa pratishtam Meaning ‘wrong understanding is knowing of the unreal in a form that is not its own’. Most of the time you impose your own ideas and views and feeling on others and you think that is how they are. This is called viparyaya. You have an inferiority complex or you suddenly see someone else behaving very arrogantly. They might not be arrogant and you are not being ill-treated by them. But you suddenly feel that you are being ill-treated. You are not respected because you do not respect yourself. You think that others do not respect you. This tendency of your mind is viparyaya. Suddenly people feel that they are not being loved.

Shabdajnananupati vastushunyo vikalpaha It is a sort of hallucination followed in sequence by mere words or knowledge and which in reality is devoid of truth. Vikalpa is sort of a hallucination. Nothing of that sort exists, just mere words which do not carry much meaning hover in the mind. This fantasy is called vikalpa, the third modulation of mind or chitta.

Vikalpa can be of two types. One could be a joyful pleasurable fantasy and the other could be baseless fears. “What will happen if I die tomorrow? What if I have an accident?” These are all just simply sounds which have no value. Baseless fears in the mind or fantasies.

Abhavapratyayalambana vruttirnidra Meaning ‘sleep is that modulation of the mind which has for its objective substratum, the cause of non-existence’. If the mind is not in any one of the above mentioned three modulations, then in the fourth place it goes to sleep. The fifth activity of the mind is smruti, which is remembering the experiences it had.

Anubhuta vishaya sampramoshaha smrutihi Meaning ‘remembering the past experiences’.