A simple model of spiritual practice - sāṁkhya

A simple model from traditional sāṁkhya.

An infinity exists - unmanifest. Within are three categories:

1. sattva - illuminating/discriminating/"aware"-ing,

2. rajas - impelling - and,

3. tamas - impeding.

All three are initially unmanifest as well.

sattva is subtlest, rajas gross, tamas grossest, with respect to understanding.

sattva, rajas, and tamas can have individually different levels of vibration or subtlety.

sattva is also related to willpower; subtlest sattva => subtlest intention or will.

The effects of rajas and tamas on mental and physical "stuff" are the same - causing/changing movement or stopping movement. (Movement is eternal, across different levels, so tamas is also temporary vis-a-vis eternity. Thus, even static rocks erode and disappear over millennia.)

When manifestation starts, sattva is maximum, rajas and tamas are minimum or nil.

Manifestation evolves to grosser levels and devolves to subtler levels. (Why manifestation at all is unclear, though there are speculative answers.)

At our current individual state and that of the universe, sattva is minimum, rajas and tamas maximum. Put differently, free-will in the present is minimum; habitual unthinking reaction - fighting/fleeing or freezing - is maximum.

Individual meditation and other spiritual practices increase the ratio of sattva - in this infinity - compared to rajas and tamas. 

One view: increasing activity - rajas - reduces the quantity of tamas, and rajas is reduced in turn by increasing sattva.

Another view: sattva is transmuted into rajas and tamas and reversal happens during spiritual/inward practice.

(krodha may be equivalent to rajas and kāma to tamas. Hence Babuji saying they are natural and practically ineradicable.)

rajas and tamas are "mechanical" or "non-conscious". sattva is also non-conscious, but is closest in appearance or function to consciousness. Thus, spiritual practice aims first at increasing sattva to attain or become pure consciousness.

Once the "devolution" reaches pure or maximum sattva, it can only go further through unmanifestation. At this point, even separation or "this and that" awareness are lost.

Individual devolution probably results in only a part of the infinity becoming unmanifest. A universal devolution alone - mahāpraḷaya - can cause total unmanifestation. What if every individual did not devolve? Can universal devolution occur?

Please note all of the above are only regarding prakṛti or pradhāna. Consciousness-energies - puruṣas - are another set of infinities, each one eternally separate from the prakṛti infinity, and untouched by its series of evolution-devolution sequences.

Simplest definition of spirituality

Attention - inward and upward/subtler, effortlessly, continuously.

Babuji puts it pithily, as usual: Turn your head from here to there.

Daaji and/or Chariji: Don't turn your head back from there to here afterwards!

Why effortlessly?

It is as natural for the attention to go inward as outward. It is even easier.

Why continuously?

It's an infinite journey.

Can I look inside and yet lead a normal life?

Apparently, we understand the outside world only through our brains [1], or we live in our heads already, so it's nothing new.

NOTES

[1] Eagleman, David. 2015. (Video) How The Brain Creates Reality, Episode 1, The Brain with David Eagleman. PBS, USA.

Happiness, carpets, expectations, and now

Consider:

Can I be happy without something outside? Do I want to carpet the whole world so I can walk barefoot? What about shoes?

Can I be happy or sad - or whatever - right now, when something is happening, than later - after I have figured out what emotion I should have?

Is life without expectations possible?

Does happiness from outside circumstances last?

Now these:

Something I like          happens - I am        happy.

Something I don't like happens - I am not happy.

From Idries Shah's Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasruddin:

  There Is a Different Time-Scale

Nasrudin went to a Turkish bath. As he was  poorly dressed, the attendants treated him in a casual manner, gave him only a scrap of soap and an old towel.

When he left, Nasrudin gave the two men a gold coin each. He had not complained, and they could not understand it. Could it be, they wondered, that if he had been better treated he would have given an even larger tip?

The following week the Mulla appeared again.

This time, of course, he was looked after like a king. After being massaged, perfumed and treated with the utmost deference, he left the bath, handing each attendant the smallest possible copper coin. 

‘This’, said Nasrudin, ‘is for last time. The gold coins were for this time.’

And finally:

           Babuji: The happiest man is he who is happy under all circumstances.

[Heartfelt thanks to Daaji - unwritten words make a much bigger set than written ones.]

Yogic evolution - defence to defencelessness

A profound story:

Two yogis meet.

Yogi #1 is immensely proud of his powers and says, "I'll show you my siddhis. Strike me with this sword as hard as you can!"

The other does and the sword shatters against his adamantine frame.

Yogi #1 then says, "See, nothing can hurt me! What about you?"

Yogi #2 says, "Do the same to me."

The first yogi whips out another sword and strikes with immense strength, but the sword simply swishes through the other yogi without any resistance.

Try replacing:

• swords with words, 
• adamantine body with adamantine ego and self-image;
• both yogis with yourself

to understand the evolution:

from aggressive defence

to

total defencelessness or unreactiveness.

Idries Shah writes somewhere that a seeker first becomes a dervish and then a Sufi. A dervish may have greater powers than a Sufi who has surrendered totally.

NOTES

The two yogis may be Gorakhnath and Sadasivendra Sarasvati, aka Sadashiv Brahmendra, though I have no idea from where I got this story.

Inertia, impetus, and understanding

A different take on the three gunas - tamas, rajas, sattva.

Think of tamas as inertia - that which impedes movement and sustains rest. A mind or attention with tamas dominant is also at rest, a stuporous and involuntary rest, upon some object.

Think of rajas as impetus - that which makes something move and sustains movement. Attention of a rajas-dominant mind is also in motion, uncontrollable and without volition, pulled all over the place by different objects.

Think of sattva as understanding, and subtle, increased willpower. Understanding is independent of, othogonal to, motion or the lack of it. Attention with sattva dominant can rest on an object with little effort and for as long as one wills. It can also move from object to object with little effort as one wills.

A saattvic mind controls its tamasic and rajasic tendencies as needed to change attention naturally, i.e. resting on an object or moving to another as desired.

Mind-field as ocean and universe

[Prerequisite: read and have some understanding of PYS 1.2 citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ]

The term citta in the PYS is often translated as consciousness. In Samkhya-Yoga philosophy, consciousness or consciousness-force is citi-śakti [1]. A better and more precise translation of citta is the English word or phrase - mind-field [1]. Citta is usually understood as limited to a specific individual, possibly localised to the volume of space that is their body. What if this localisation is natural but unnecessarily limiting?

Imagine an ocean. Imagine a whirlpool near an island in the ocean. The whirlpool comes alive as the waters in the area form a spiral and dies with tides, currents, etc. going down - merging into and becoming indistinguishable from the waters around it. If you further imagine it to be a mindful entity, it might think of itself as localised to the area near the island. If its mind spans its coming alive and dying - or waking up and falling asleep - would it still think itself restricted to that area? Perhaps the mind-field would be that of all the waters around the island and the whirlpool would be one of the funkier parts that bubble up and down in a weird way!

Imagine all the connected water on Earth's surface - the oceans - as a single entity. There may be thousands or even millions of whirlpools, big and small, coming alive and dying every day, or waking up and sleeping daily. Imagine the mind-field of that entity like the motion of all the oceans.

Now imagine the enormity of shutting down or pacifying all the vṛttis, the whirlpools, of the oceans.

Samkhya-Yoga psychology or philosophy goes even further and considers the entire universe to have - or be - a single mind-field. Now consider pacifying or shutting down an entire universe of vṛttis!

(This is what each yogi is striving to do, most unknowingly, and a rare few, knowingly. Since this pacification is probably unnatural, there is another, subtler, interpretation of the word nirodhaḥ. Instead of shutting down, the mind-field vṛttis devolve into their subtler causes, successively, until the completely balanced and unmanifest cause is reached for individual areas of the overall mind-field.)

Science starts from individual bodies, conglomerates of matter, developing consciousness and frantically striving to connect and communicate externally. Vedanta philosophy starts from consciousness inherent in the Absolute - the source of all manifestation - and posits an interface - between that Absolute and the manifested physical bodies - called the mind-field, and the various physical bodies. This mind-field may be restricted to an individual body, or more elegantly, may span the entire manifestation at subtler levels and restrict itself to a single body at grosser levels.

A limited analogy might help. Consider icy water flowing on the ceiling of a cave in a cold climate. As water freezes, stalactites form. Water keeps flowing down stalactites, lengthening them. The ice at the tip of a stalactite is separate from the ice at the tip of the others. But ice at the root of one stalactite can be understood as part of a single ice sheet, and is the same at the roots of all the stalactites. And the subtler cause, the water inflow, from which the ice manifested, is even more obviously the same.

NOTES

[1] Sw. Veda Bharati. 1986. Patanjali Yoga Sutras of Patanjali with the Exposition of Vyasa..., Glossary. pp. 452. Himalayan Institute, India.

2.5 minutes of magic

Some 130-odd years ago, Swami Vivekananda, in his Raja Yoga lectures [1] quoted the Kurma Purana's definition, in time, of dhāraṇa-dhyāna-samādhi as attention resting solely on one object for 12 seconds, 12x12 seconds, and 12x12x12 seconds respectively.

What does this mean practically?

Say you like coffee. Place a cup of your favourite coffee before you. Start a stopwatch - your phone's clock app is a good option.

If your attention while drinking a good cup of coffee doesn't drift anywhere else for 12 seconds, that is dhāraṇa on coffee drinking. If it stays for 12*12 seconds = 12*(10+2) = 120/60+24 = 2 minutes 24 seconds, that is dhyāna on coffee drinking. 

Please note that becoming aware of your observation is also a drifting away! A meta activity is still a distraction.

Reset your stopwatch if any distraction occurs.

And samādhi? 12*12*12 seconds = (120+24)*(10+2) seconds = 2 minutes*(10+2) + 24 seconds*(10+2) = 24 minutes+240 seconds+48 seconds = 24+4 minutes + 48 seconds = 28 minutes, 48 seconds. (Make sure you brew many cups of coffee!)

All three states of attention must be natural and unforced. Any effort made takes one's mind back to the preceding state of active attention-placement, pratyāhāra, and the stopwatch resets to zero!

If not for distracting ads or incoming messages every few minutes, attention on the TV or, these days, on the mobile phone would be an easy way to explain the meditative state!

In Heartfulness practice, five minutes of meditation practice every day is enough for a start. One has twice the 2.5 minutes needed to reach an unforced and natural meditative state! Please note that transmission makes the practice even more effortless by sustaining the attention on the heart.

(A sincere and serious effort for just one week will give palpable benefits in resting the attention on a single object. They will be even more palpable coupled with Heartfulness  cleaning to remove emotional weight and unnecessary distractions. Try meditation alone for a week. Then add daily cleaning to the daily practice. Finally add the daily introspection and prayer before sleeping, for even greater benefits.)

And the magic? It comes from experience alone.

(Bonus points: before the day's meditation, link mentally to the condition after the previous day's meditation. After meditation, spread today's condition in the space around you, and share it with everything in that space.)

NOTES

[1] Sw. Vivekananda, 2016 ed., Raja Yoga, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati