When you watch a science fiction movie and you see this huge transparent computer screen, in which you are simply moving your hands. As you move one hand, one panel pops open with a heading and everything underneath that. You can flick that, get another one like Chat GPT. Mood congruence is like Chat GPT. You ask one thing, it will search the net, put everything together and put it on one screen.
Everything related to the subject has been listed. It is not one, two, ten or twenty, a complete list is there. Then you can search for another topic and you will get a complete list. When you do a search on prana in Google, you get five hundred results. You can look at each one of them, yet everything that is on the net has been collected to one screen through your search. In the same manner, all these pratyayas stack themselves up in different categories, in different files and folders, according to the mood they represent.
If you search for anger, you will not get one memory but a list of every memory of anger that you have gone through and experienced in your life. Every fear that you have experienced in life instantly comes to this mental screen. You cannot say that this is yesterday’s fear, or this was a fear from ten years ago. Everything is there, whether you look at them, whether you understand them, that is another matter. Everything is put together according to mood, in the mental pratyayas. Anger becomes a pratyaya, an impression, a condition, and under that there are thousands and thousands of incidents which are in your memory, that you remember and recall. They create a picture of how you have to respond. They create your nature. Some people can be aggressive and violent. Some people can be passive, more subtle, more thoughtful and intellectual. Some people can be more emotional. Some people could be more aggressive and rejective. Some can be violent, depending on the grouping of these impressions. If you love something, then again the memory which you will have is not of one, but of all those times, moments, impressions and memories in which you have felt loved. That will decide your nature.
It is the group of the similar incidents and memories that the pratyayas are filed under. This is known as the mood congruence. Everything of pratyaya, the impression, memory or conditioning is stored in the mind at the level of ahamkara. All the impressions and memories are there plus the idea ‘I am.’ When this idea ‘I am’ comes, then the grouping of the pratyayas happens, otherwise they are independently floating memories. When you identify with ‘I am’, they come together, and according to their collection, become part of your natural expression.
Some people can be optimistic, laugh and smile in any difficult situation. Some people can just shed tears at the drop of a hat and say how they feel. Every person’s response is unique to them. If ten people are in a given situation, there will be ten different types of reactions to that one situation. There is nothing common about individuals. That is why they are known as individuals. If there was anything common, we would all be commoners. Right now, we are all individuals and we have our own nature, personality, we are how we think, we are how we perceive the world to be. Everything is guided by the identity of ‘I am’, the sense of ‘I am’, along with all the accumulated pratyayas. It is the ‘I am’ identity that you are always connected with. If that ‘I am’ feels threatened or side lined by any chance, you begin to assert yourself, ‘How can you side-line me? I am here. I am present. This is my need. This is my demand.’ The search of rights begins and in the search for rights such as, ‘This is what I need. This is what I demand. This is what I am going to be.’ There is no sense of responsibility.
There is a saying in the Vedas that people search for rights and avoid responsibilities, yet if you are responsible for your responsibilities, you will inherit the natural rights. That is a true statement. If we are responsible for our responsibilities, we inherit the natural right which goes with that situation.
Everything is stored in this dimension of ego, the I-ness. The I-ness is the craving for your own satisfaction, your own need and it projects a mood. If somebody is hungry, the mood of the mind is different. At that time, you cannot do mathematical analysis of anything, for your whole mind is diverted. If someone is sad, it is difficult to be happy as, all the pratyayas of sadness are there, with which you are involved. So, different moods arise. You are well aware of your moods. One thing is clear and common, when you are happy, all the happy pratyayas are there. When you are sad, all the sad memories are coming to the surface. When you are angry, all the angry memories are coming to the surface, however we are not able to deal with them. We do not know how to counter-balance it. We do not know how to deal with it. What is needed is to change the mental conditioning, the mood.
There is a neuroscience topic about change of mood. A depression can be managed with happiness. An anxiety can be managed with happiness. This neuroscience concept is known as the Niranjan challenge, for it rewires the brain. How many hours of the day are you happy? Forget hours, how many minutes? How many hours are you worried? This is one example. How can you extract ourselves from the negatives of these pratyayas and put them into the positive fold? That can only happen if you begin to consciously and wilfully change the mood.
For that you have the neuroscience of the Niranjan Challenge. The more you extend your moments of happiness, the less moments of anxiety, frustration, pain and suffering you will have. It is a simple principle.
What obstructs you from experiencing happiness is the sensorial, mental and emotional engagement with sense objects. We have to be aware of that. When being aware of that, then instead of seeking pleasure and going through the whole dopamine effect, find happiness. There is a song of sannyasins:
Hari Om, Have no home.
Work, nor food, nor money, have I none, Still, I will be anandam.
What do we have? Two pieces of rope. We do not have employment, we do not have a home. We live in an ashram, it is not home in the sense that people think of home. We do not have a personal bank account. There is nothing personal about it and there is no problem. If there is nothing, we will stretch the hand out and say, ‘Give me something.’ And if there is something, we will say, ‘You take it from me.’ There is no craving for accumulation, possession or pleasure. It is not renunciation, it is just a mental awareness and attitude as to what is needed in life.
Some people are coming out with the idea of minimalism. Live with the minimum. That may become a social way of living. In yoga that idea of minimalism is the idea of aparigraha, non-accumulation. Instead of twenty pairs of shoes that decorate your closet in your home and which you hardly ever wear. Why don’t you just work with two? When they are out of fashion or the sole is totally gone, you get the third pair. Why do you have to stack shoes in boxes inside your closets with the hope, ‘Maybe one day I will wear them?’ I am just giving you an example. So much unnecessary stuff is there in our households, which we never or hardly ever use, yet that is an indicator of the nature to possess. That is a material nature.
Why not have the nature to let go and just keep what we need for our survival, comfort and status? That is our minimum need. If we have the ability to let go, we have the ability to recognize that this is not our need. It is not our greed, it is our need. Those who store twenty pairs of shoes, it is their greed, not their need. The ability to let go is a great ability when it comes to releasing mental pratyaya, as it is connected with ego. All the memories that are in the background, in the operating system of anger, love, hatred or jealousy, are there intermingling with each other.
Happiness is the counter-balance to mental pratyayas. It is only this one thing which changes the entire life. You do not have to practise meditation to change your nature. Just expand the moments of happiness more and more, in your day-to-day life. Work out an average, you know your life better. How happy are you during the waking hours? When you are in a worried state, for how long? When you are anxious, for how long? When you are angry, aggressive, for how long? When you are peaceful, for how long? You will see a graph where the negative is going sharply in an upward spike and the positive is going in a downward curve. Change this graph. The spikes of the negative should become smaller and wavy. The small waves of the good should become like the spikes which remain up all the time. No fluctuating up and down, they go up and then they remain there, static. That is the yogic awareness.
Yogic life begins with letting go and yogic awareness helps you deal with the mental pratayays and moods. Only when you are aware, will you be able to counter the negative. In conditioning we are hardly aware, as we are an expression of that conditioning. It becomes a challenge. How to remain aware of who and what I am while being submerged in my conditioning? Therefore, the antidote to ego in the yogic literatures has been given as viveka, discrimination, to have the discriminatory power to know the right from the wrong, to avoid the wrong and connect with the right. That happens through wisdom and changing the mental pratyaya happens through happiness.
It may be difficult to apply yet that is the challenge. It is the effort of spiritual life. Despite it being challenging, people do become victorious, and it is the inspiration of people who have been victorious that has got us to this path. It is that inspiration which has brought us here together and it means that there is hope for us too.
6 April 2023, Pratyahara and Dharana Training, Ganga Darshan, Munger