Thought 32. The Yogic way of fooling the thoughts!

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In the past episodes we saw how yoga helps in minimizing stress. Lesser stress means better health. Most people turn to Yoga with that goal. But Yoga is not really about stress reduction, though that is one of its byproducts. There are far more interesting things that Yoga can achieve. It takes us to an altogether new dimension of our existence far beyond mundane. That is achieved by the advanced steps of Yoga that we are going to discuss in this as well as subsequent episodes.

Thoughts are what make us distinct from lower level creatures. Not that they don’t think, but their thoughts are generally limited to their survival. But these very same thoughts can put us in trouble beyond a point. They can be the cause of our stress as we saw in the previous episode. We can modulate our thoughts to some extent and use them for our benefit. In fact, most modern Gurus use that to induce a feeling of well being and contentment.

But Yoga promises to take us beyond these seemingly blissful states. Yoga gets into the root of our real problems and shows us a way to attain long-lasting peace.

 

In the very second sentence of his Yoga Sutra, Patanjali defines Yoga as “restrainment of the activities of the mind- Yogah chitta vriththi nirodah”. It is not about modulating the mind. It is not about giving auto suggestions as many modern ‘Yoga techniques’ do. It is about restraining some of the activities of the mind.

What are these activities that Patanjali is talking about?

Patanjali talks about two types of activities of the mind – those that are ‘normally’ helpful and those that are problematic. Sense perception and thoughts are the activities that are helpful in our normal day to day life. Patanjali categorizes activities that result from previously ingrained false knowledge as problematic and cause of all our miseries. Yoga is all about nudging the helpful activities such as sense perception and thoughts, to completely nullify the problematic activities.

What happens when one achieves that? That is the most interesting aspect of Yoga. We will be seeing that in subsequent episodes.

Now, let us look back a bit.

A few episodes ago, we discussed about the 5^thstep of Yoga namely the Pratyahara. In that step or rather, the stage, we saw how the sense perception almost stops as a result of a sharply focused mind. This focus is achieved by the prior steps like Pranayama and asana – asana as practiced today. These steps together with the first two steps of Yoga namely Yama and Niyama take us to an almost calm mind.

But almost calm mind does not mean freedom from all thoughts. The thoughts are still going to be there, but there would be very few thought wars, if at all. But to march forward, we need to eliminate even these remnant thoughts. That is when we can attain a completely tranquil mind.

Once we attain such a tranquil mind or ‘niruddha chitta’ as Patanjali calls it, we are ready to take on the most problematic activities of the mind driven by preset mental makeup. We will see that later in the discussion.

Now, how do we eliminate the thoughts? Many modern Gurus suggest that we should control the thought production itself. That is an impossible task. As we have seen earlier, the more you try to control the thoughts, more attention gets paid to them. More attention makes them stronger and helps them in proliferating.

Buddhists typically observe the thoughts as they are produced, without getting involved with them. I wonder how they can do that! Since Buddhists say that there is no soul, who is the one that is observing the thoughts passively? It can be none other than the mind itself. Does it not amount to thoughts that observe other thoughts? Well, no matter how they do it, their end result seems to be the same – cessation of all thoughts.

But Yoga has a different approach. Yoga neither recommends controlling of the thoughts, nor observing them passively. Instead, it focuses the mind on one special thought or a small set of related thoughts. Once you do that, rest of the thoughts gradually die down since they don’t get the required attention. And as you progress further, even this special thought would gradually die down, along with related thoughts as we will see later.

Focusing the mind on one single special thought is called Dharana. That is the step 6 of Yoga.

Now, what should be this special thought?

Patanjali is quite flexible on what it should be. It could be the thought corresponding to the image of your beloved God; or someone whom you hold in high esteem; or some concept; or some sound, or mantra, and so on. Grosser the object corresponding to the thought, higher is chance that the related thoughts could delay your progress. It is also possible that you may go on meandering around the original object and go totally astray. More abstract the thought, there is lesser chance of getting defocused and that could help you progress faster.

But not all can focus their mind on completely abstract things. That could be the reason why Gurus like Swami Dayananda Saraswati insist on some form of God as a target of Dharana. We discussed that in a previous episode.

But even that can take one astray. For example, a Hindu could get into physical details of such a God and myriad stories woven around such a God, and so on. And a Christian could go into the agony faced by Jesus Christ on the cross etc. That defeats the purpose.

The ancient Indian scriptures namely the Upanishads suggest a better alternative. They give an almost abstract definition of God and ask one to use that as a target of focus or Dharana. That abstract concept of God is the word OM. The way this word is pronounced, has the ability to retain the focus and minimize the thoughts.

Even Patanjali suggests using OM as one of the effective targets for Dharana. He says that one has to keep mentally chanting this sound, keeping in mind the associated concepts. The thoughts corresponding to these associated concepts gradually die down over a period of time, as we will see later. And as I said earlier, this sound has the ability to further reduce the thoughts and make the focus sharper. That is a shortcut to ultimate stages of Yoga.

That does not mean that myriad other targets are ineffective. All of them may be effective, but may not take you forward as fast as OM can take.

Interestingly, concepts similar to OM exist in most God centric religions. Even Buddhists who don’t believe in any God use this word OM for their meditative practices. So, one need not be deterred from using it, fearing conflict with their religious faiths. One can just take OM as a sound with some special qualities that help in minimization of thoughts.

What do we do after choosing an appropriate target for Dharana? That is the next step of Yoga namely Dhyana or meditation. We will discuss that step in the next episode.

 

© Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2023