Before you make any vehicle, any house or structure, you first make a blueprint, a plan, a design. When you are satisfied with the blueprint, you follow the system to create the construction that you have visualized in the blueprint and your design. The same principle applies to life.
We did not make our life. We received life. Somebody gave us life as a blueprint of what goes in this design of body. What goes in this design of the body, and defines the characteristics and traits of the body, its nature and personality, are four things, known as SWAN, the strength, weakness, ambition and need. From birth until our last breath, we are intimately and closely connected with these four building blocks of life: strength, weakness, ambition and need. Many times, even on our deathbed, we have our ambitions and we cannot let go. Many times on our deathbed, we realize our weakness and we cannot overcome it.
These four things are the building blocks of your personality, and that is how they have to be understood. They are not principles or theories of yoga that you follow. They are the building blocks of your personality, and that is what you express all your life, along with the six conditions of mind. This is the blueprint with which you have come into this life. Strength, weakness, ambition, need, passion, aggression, greed, infatuation, arrogance and envy define your personality.
When you learn how to drive the car, there is a driver next to you who guides you, who teaches you and who tells you what to look out for, what to do in case of an emergency, what to do to go fast or slow, when to break, when to accelerate. Then you develop this mastery yourself. This is the external learning, which only enables you to drive. There is another level of education, which is knowing what can go wrong. If the spark plugs are faulty, you need to replace the spark plugs. If oil is little, you check it with the oil dip and refill it with oil. There has to be some technical knowledge as well, not only driving knowledge – how to change oil, how to give water, how to change the tyres and repair them. The third level is more technical than that and for that you go to the garage.
In learning how to drive a car, one level is you learning, the second level is you understanding how the car functions, and the third level is knowing that in a major crisis, the car goes to somebody who is an expert.
Apply the same principle in your own life. First learn how to drive and control the car. First learn when to accelerate and when to use the brakes. Learn, that when you are going uphill, what should be your gear, and when you are going downhill, what should be your gear? When can you go on fourth, when can you go on fifth, when can you go in reverse? You have to learn. You have to know it instinctively. You cannot be thinking logically while driving, ‘Should I do this now?’ You cannot be phoning your instructor, ‘Sir, should I do this or should I do that?’ Many times you ask me, ‘Swamiji, should I do this or should I do that? Should I repair the puncture in my tyre or should I put a new tyre in?’ You have to use your common sense.
If you have a new tyre, put in the new tyre. Keep the old tyre for repair, and repair it. If you do not have the new tyres, use the old tyres again. What can one do? Questioning the instructor all the time, ‘Should I do this, should I do that?’ will never give you any competency. You will not have the ability to face yourself, to look at yourself and confront yourself. You will just remain a person in the primary class, who does not even know how to hold the pencil, and who wants someone to help write the letter A. If you think of this principle in life and learn to apply it, you will be able to realize the SWAN principle, and you will be able to manage the six conditions of mind.
Strength is not something positive that you have, but something positive you can cultivate and use for a positive purpose. There are positive strengths and there are negative strengths. Can you identify the positive one and develop them? To stop the dissipation of mind is a strength of mind. To stop the wandering of the mind, when you are focusing on mantra and your symbol is also a strength, a quality of the mind, ekagrata, concentration. It is not what you do as instructed, but what you realize that you need to do. If I am trying to meditate and my mind keeps wandering, and I cannot hold it, it is a weakness.
Can you strengthen your willpower and hold your mind fixed? Develop that strength. Why do you always think of strength in terms of something which is mental, physical or emotional? It is also something very practical. The same applies to weaknesses. They are the shortcomings that restrict your progress. Do not become upset by them, but identify, acknowledge and recognize them. If there is a hole burnt in the dhoti, there is a hole in the dhoti. Acknowledge it. If you start worrying, ‘Oh, there is a hole! What will people think?’ then you go off on a different tangent. You worry more about what people are going to think than about your dhoti.
One has to be very realistic and practical, when observing the traits of one’s own personality and nature. We all have ambitions which are part of eshanas. Eshanas are deep-rooted, ingrained desires. Lokeshana is the desire to be known, recognized, become famous. People should know I exist. People should know I am a teacher. People should know I am a person. People should know I have made the effort. That desire to be recognized and acknowledged is lokeshana. To be recognized, acknowledged, appreciated and to go up in status is lokeshana. Vitteshana is economical desires and putreshana is the desire for family. There are many types of desires.
You get confused when one of them is seen. You get troubled when one plays havoc. If you know that these are the different types of desires, you can also deal with them. This will only happen when you begin to observe your own ambitions, the negative and the positive component of ambition. Both have to be seen. Some ambitions are worthwhile, like if you want to serve somebody. Some ambitions may not be worthwhile, if you want to be served by this person. It may not be practical or realistic, yet these ambitions are representing your innermost desires. Classify, identify them, and then do the same with your needs. As long as you are not aware of your mind, you will not learn how to live life properly.
Paramahamsaji has said many times, ‘What you live, is your mind. You do not live anything beyond mind.’ At one point he said, ‘In you, except you, everything else is the mind.’ It seems a strange statement, yet if you think about it, it is a true statement. Are you ever free of your mind? Attraction and repulsion always happen, raaga and dwesha. Connection and disconnection always happens, sambandh and sambandh vikshep. Polarities are always experienced by this self, by the mind – good and bad, day and night, right and wrong, just and unjust.
We are never free from the confines of our mind. We cannot get out of it. Since we cannot get out of it, why don’t we make our mind a better place, rather than a place which troubles us whenever we go in. Change the focus, change the intent, change the intention. It is something that people need to learn. They learn meditation, yet they do not know how to change the intention. They do not change the intention. Before meditating, if we can change the intention, it will be better for it will create a path for meditation. As long as we are simply observing ourselves in meditation, we are only watching the plays and games of our own mind.
The peace that you experience is just a relief for a few seconds, when the four brats inside you stop screaming. In a family, if there are four children screaming and playing all the time, and you are surrounded by this cacophony of sound and noise, then, when they go to sleep, suddenly silence descends. When the cacophony of the mind stops for a while, you experience silence and peace. However, it is not maintained and sustained; there is no control over it. As soon as the children wake up, the noises begin again. As soon as manas, buddhi, chitta and ahamkara wake up, the noises begin again. As soon as you begin to identify with your strength, weakness, ambition and need, the noises begin again.
The purpose of SWAN is to reduce the noise created by the mind. From a blaring loud music, come down to barely audible, soft music. From highly loud music, come down to low music. Even that much will take you to a higher experience of peace, happiness, joy and contentment. When instructions are given to do your SWAN, to observe this or observe that, then without applying your mind, just follow the awareness and guidance of the instruction. When you know the process, when to change the gear, how to change the gear, then you do it. It will come spontaneously and easily.
Just as you learn how to drive, at the first level you have to look at your SWAN. As you get deeper insight into the functioning of the car, like the oil, the water, the air, the spark plugs, you come to the second level. Here you see the connection of your SWAN with the six conditions, and attain mastery over that. The third level is the mechanics, the master level. The first two levels are important for each one of us to pursue and to follow. When you are ready, we will come to the third level.
27 November 2023, Kriya Yoga–Jnana Yoga Training, Ganga Darshan, Munger