Yoga Vasistha 196: Untouched by Desire, Beyond Waking, Dream and Deep Sleep

Lecture 196 of the Yoga Vasistha series stays with Sage Uddalaka in Section 53 of the Upasama Prakarana. Uddalaka is still in meditation, still reflecting, and the reflection has one subject: what in a person is never touched by desire, by karma, or by the passing of waking, dream and deep sleep. Swami Jyotirmayananda opens with affirmation, which he calls “positive thinking at its climax.” Not the ordinary positive thinking that tries to feel better, but thinking that leads a person to the question every life is quietly asking: who am I? From there the lecture moves through a series of images that each say the same thing a different way. The individual soul is a sun reflected in a jar of water, brilliant and always shaking. Sleep is a plastic bag of water lowered into a river, touching everything and merging with nothing. The soul in ignorance is a patch of blue between clouds; the enlightened soul is the sky itself. And at the close, the Mahabharata’s palace of shellac becomes a picture of the three bodies, all of them burning, while the I am stays untouched like space above a forest fire. The distinction the lecture turns on is whether a person lives as the patch of blue, defined by whatever clouds happen to be passing, or as the sky they pass through. Everything else in the lecture, the vasanas, karma, the fear of death, the three obstacles of the mind, is an argument for the second.

Passages

Affirmation and the Question Who Am I

Swamiji describes the practice plainly. “You want to attain liberation. Close your eyes, relax your mind. Try to figure out what liberation looks like.” Then the affirmation itself: “And Affirmation means I’m liberated.” The mind is then checked, gently, to see whether it is at ease with that statement, and corrected where it is not. This is how the mind is allowed to gain the understanding of the truth. Most people assume they already know who they are. They carry identification, they have a name and a history. Swamiji answers with the dream. “But you go to sleep, in dream you have left your ID behind.” There is a different identity in the dream, and nobody minds. “In dream three things go wrong.” The dream subject, the dream world and the dream experiences are all mistaken, and on waking the same defects continue in a subtler form. The mind covers this over. “And your mind tries to hide the problem.” It does so by going after possessing objects. How much can I own, how powerful am I, how popular am I. All of it seems important. Behind all of it, Swamiji says, the real importance is to discover the Self, and that requires a mind that has become spiritually sensitive. That is the purpose of a life, supported by good association and by the simple philosophy of being good and doing good.

The Self Cannot Be Made Fragrant or Foul

Now Uddalaka’s reflection. Limited objects, made of earth, water, air and fire, “can become fragrant when treated with fragrance”. But “the Self, which is unlimited, cannot be rendered fragrant or foul by the vāsanās of the mind.” Swamiji restates it: “In other words, the Self is ever untouched and untainted by the vāsanās.” This is the hinge of the whole lecture. Vasanas are real enough in their own sphere; they color the mind, shape moods, push a person toward one experience and away from another. What they cannot do is reach the Self. The rest of the lecture is Swamiji showing, from several sides, why that is so and what it means to live as if it were true.

Vasanas and the Trap of Karma

“Vāsanās relate to subtle desires of your unconscious”. They develop in the mind on the basis of karma. The soul, under ignorance, looks for perfection in the world of time and space, and since that cannot be found there, it falls into the trap of karma: what should I do, what kind of action will finally bring fullness? Swamiji’s answer is short. His point is simple: anything attained under the lead of karma is perishable. Anyone living in the realm of karma cannot stay the same. Actions are mixed. “What you think good is not completely good.” And what seems bad may not be completely bad either. “You are constantly moving in a world of change.” That keeps a person thirsty, not fulfilled. He makes the point vivid. Imagine the best of every dream fulfilled, a hundred and twenty-five years without a single headache. Still, “You are never the same even for two days.” Two days ago a person felt energetic; today, not. That is the vasanas operating in the subconscious, influencing body and mind. “And if your happiness is on the basis of karma, then there is no real happiness.”

The Reflected Sun in a Jar of Water

The individual soul is not the final reality. It is a reflection, like a sun reflected in a jar of water. Whatever the reflected sun gains or experiences, it is not the sun. “Mind-based experience is not liberation.” The way out runs through the three states. The waking world is vivid and real, and then it becomes unreal in a dream. In deep sleep there is neither dream nor waking, and a person is not lost; on the contrary, they wake refreshed. Swamiji asks what that points to, and answers: the real Self, the real “who am I”, is beyond waking, beyond dream, beyond deep sleep. All three states operate through the mind. In sleep the mind becomes undifferentiated, as if it were melting. Swamiji’s image is a plastic bag filled with water and lowered into a river. The water inside touches the whole river and feels that everything is over. But on waking the same mental ingredients return. But the plastic does not tear. In samadhi, through sadhana, that covering, avarana, breaks. Then the revelation that I am not the body and not the mind becomes so clear that all other experiences are like small waves, and you are the ocean behind them. The world becomes a toy, and one’s own reality stays firm.

A Patch of Blue, or the Sky Itself

Then the simpler illustration. “In the state of enlightenment, you become like the sky.” If you are not the sky, you are a patch of blue between the clouds. A patch of blue “has no rest.” Clouds cannot give it rest; they define it. “As an individual soul, you are a patch of blue. As enlightened, you are the sky.” The sky has no quarrel with clouds. They can arrive dressed up or ugly and shouting. “The sky welcomes them”. It does not shrink its space for good clouds or bad ones. They pass through all of it, and “the sky remains un-scratched.” Swamiji adds, with a smile: “Look at this sky, it has nothing to tell you about history.” The innermost I am is the same, and that same is God, Brahman, the goal behind every soul. Swamiji is honest that this discovery is progressive. A person gets it for a few days and then loses it for many. “But as you go on doing your abhyāsa, repeated effort, and insisting on practicing your sādhana, integral yoga. Then you are being led to your spiritual destiny, realization of who am I.” “That’s the real destiny.” He returns to the sky speaking to the clouds that come threatening to overpower it, telling them they do not belong to it. The vasanas, likewise, do not belong to the Self. Their apparent ownership is the reflection of the Self in the intellect. “You always understand yourself through your own mind.” And what the mind reports is a reflection in a jar of water. “Reflection looks wonderful, there’s nothing like it.” That is where ego begins: there is nobody like me. True, Swamiji says, at the level of the reflection, and not true at the level of the Self.

Prajnanam Brahma: Awareness in Itself

“Now coming to deeper understanding. I am pure consciousness.” The objects the mind thinks of in waking do not touch it, nor the experiences of dream. This points toward the Mahavakyas, the great utterances of the Vedas, and the first one Swamiji names is Prajnanam Brahma. “God, the absolute, is pure awareness.” It is “very simple at the same time, extremely elusive.” People ask where God can be found. “But every bit of experience that you have, awareness of anything that awareness is a glimpse of Brahman.” The very looking that searches for Brahman is itself backed by Brahman. Awareness works at three levels: the practical world led by the senses, the inner world of feelings that makes each person’s life entirely different, and the unconscious, where the world has gone into a seed state. All three keep changing. “But what is permanent behind all these three?” Awareness in itself. That is God, that is Brahman. “And that Brahman never left you even a second, even for a moment.” “Absolute awareness is like a calm ocean.” Every experience of the world is a wave in it, a reflection in it. “And there isn’t a single wave that has been rejected by the ocean.”

Untouched by Good and Evil Karmas

Uddalaka continues: he is untouched by the good and evil karmas that gave rise to the body. “Let this body continue to exist or let it die. I’m ever beyond it.” Swamiji turns this toward the fear everyone carries. “Everyone is handling the biggest problem, mortality.” A child of five or seven already sees grandparents dying and hears the cries around it. “Your reality is immortality.” The fear comes from losing sight of the real I. “Fear of death is a myth. Who is dying?” The body, personality, mind and intellect change constantly within a single life. Not a drop of the body from several years ago remains, and that does not trouble anyone, because the sense of I continues. The real I is not the body, and it is not the mind, the intellect or the ego either. This changes how enlightenment is approached. “So therefore, Attaining enlightenment is not a matter of figuring out what should I do and how much should I do and creating a mathematics.” Nor is it a ledger of how many vices remain to be removed. “In other words, to come to a stage where we don’t look back.” Spiritual movement does not depend on what one was in the past.

From Karma to Akarma

Karma still has a place. “Of course, if karma becomes karma yoga, do your duties but in the spirit of surrender to God.” The aim is not securing objects but securing the revelation of the I am. So action leads to akarma: “From action, karmic action to negation of action.” Outwardly the same things are done, but the inner understanding has changed. “The body is subject to birth and death. But Consciousness is all-pervading and eternal.” The reflected sun returns. Every reflection seems to be a brilliant personality doing amazing things. “Question. Who is doing it? Not the reflected sun. The sun, real sun.” So the first stage is to do good things and be good. The next is to understand who is really doing them. “That who is not your ego. God within you”. The reflected sun grows brighter as the water clears. However fine it becomes, its quality is borrowed from the sun. From the level of the real I, Swamiji says, one can neither be hurt nor hurt another. He points to Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, where the Self neither kills nor is killed, and brings it back to the sky: clouds may shout at it with all their force, and it is not injured. The sky neither kills nor can be killed. “So is your innermost Self.” “Life and death are mere imaginations of the impure mind.” The impure mind, he explains, is the unenlightened mind.

Mala, Vikshepa and Avarana

The unenlightened mind suffers three troubles. Mala is gross impurity: anger, hate, greed and every vice. Its source is subconscious desire rooted in ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred and the fear of death. Vikshepa is distraction, the mind led about by so many subtle desires that it becomes, as Swamiji puts it, a monkey. Avarana is the veil of ignorance itself. Manonasha, the dissolution of the mind’s restlessness, is the mind gaining serenity in spite of every challenging situation. The mind becomes so confident that it hears all that goes on in the world, gain and loss, adversity and prosperity, and stays fixed. “The I am is never lost.” As that happens, the vasanas change. They are no longer impressions of egoism, attachment and hatred but of generosity, compassion and humility. Distraction moves away, and the vasana itself begins to dissolve. That is vasana kshaya. Swamiji’s image is a cloud. “Cloud first gains light.” It begins to shimmer and shine, and ultimately dissolves. Then the last veil moves away, and vision is unobstructed. He adds that the three are finally one. Manonasha does not happen without vasana kshaya, and vasana kshaya does not happen without removal of the veil. “So all these three you may consider it progressive. But ultimately, they are one and the same.”

The Body Is an Instrument

Uddalaka tells the Self that one identified with the body is subject to birth and death, but the Self is free of that identification. Swamiji compares this to the affirmation process: speaking to the body as if from a distance, asking who it is and what any of its troubles have to do with oneself. His illustration is from the dinner table. “Kitchen knives etcetera, forks etcetera are needed when you eat food, but you don’t chew them.” “Body is an instrument.” So are the senses, the mind, the intellect and the ego, and a person’s task is to put them in order under the guidance of the higher Self. Everyday speech already admits the distance: my eyes are not well, my mind will not think clearly today, my ego is irritated. Whatever helps a person understand the real me is what he calls purposeful movement. What leads away from the inner Self is the world of vanity.

Escaping the Palace of Shellac

The body is a blend of flesh, blood, bone and marrow. Swamiji recalls the Mahabharata story of the Lakshagriha, the palace of shellac built of combustible material, in which the Pandavas were meant to burn. He reads it as an allegory: the Pandavas within are the soul and the purposes of life, and the palace is the body. “And your body is on fire. Constant fire.” The Pandavas escaped by digging a tunnel. Swamiji’s reading is that one must create a tunnel “through your own heart by your meditation”, moving inward beyond the senses to the mind, and beyond the mind to the intellect. Penetrate “the intellect level and you have escaped this burning Palace”. He is quick to add that it is simpler than it sounds. “All this in description seems like big things to be done. But it’s simple understanding that you are not the physical body.” The body here means three bodies: physical, subtle and causal. Each has its fire. The physical body burns in physical fire. “Mental body is fire of sorrow and misery.” The causal body is finally burnt by the fire of wisdom. None of it touches the I am. “All the flames can go on in the forest, the sky is untarnished.” “No one goes after saving the sky.” That revelation, Swamiji says, has to come and be digested.

Terms

vasana — subtle desire in the unconscious, developed on the basis of karma.
akarma — action that no longer binds; karma done in the spirit of surrender.
karma yoga — doing one’s duties as an offering, for revelation rather than for objects.
Prajnanam Brahma — the Mahavakya “Brahman is pure awareness.”
Mahavakya — a great utterance of the Vedas pointing to the Self.
abhyasa — repeated effort in practice.
mala — gross impurity of the mind: anger, hate, greed.
vikshepa — distraction, the mind scattered by subtle desires.
avarana — the veil of ignorance.
manonasha — dissolution of the mind’s restlessness; serenity amid every situation.
vasana kshaya — the dissolution of subtle desires.
Lakshagriha — the palace of shellac in the Mahabharata.

Three Questions

Swamiji contrasts the patch of blue that has no rest with the sky that welcomes every cloud: which clouds in your own week have you been letting define the patch of blue?
If every awareness of anything is a glimpse of Brahman, what would change in an ordinary hour if you noticed the awareness rather than the object?
Swamiji says enlightenment is not a mathematics of deeds and vices: where do you still keep that ledger, and what does he offer in its place?

Yoga Vasistha, Upasama Prakarana, Section 53. Lecture 196 by Swami Jyotirmayananda, Yoga Research Foundation. The complete archive of Swami Jyotirmayananda’s teachings is free.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.