What is Mind?

When one reads the sutra yogaha chitta vritti nirodhah, it is commonly interpreted as “yoga is stopping the mind work”. A teacher might then provide techniques to stop the mind, leading to a lifelong struggle, often ending in frustration and a loss of confidence. However, a master is a person who straight away makes the very understanding as Patanjali expressed, and makes the savikalpa (a state of clear understanding) happen in you.

Let us delve into Patanjali’s consciousness and what he truly felt when he uttered the word nirodhaha. It signifies the spontaneous disappearance of mind. The mind is not a linear movement; it’s not one thought after another. Believing it to be linear will only lead to more struggles, sufferings, and ultimately, denial of your failures. Since the mind is not linear, the word “stopping” does not truly make sense in this context. If you understand nirodhaha as stopping, it implies a linear mind, which Patanjali did not intend. The word nirodhaha actually means spontaneous disappearance.

So, what is the mind, and how can its spontaneous disappearance occur? What did Patanjali truly mean when he used the word nirodhaha in yogaha chitta vritti nirodhah?

The Ocean and Fish Analogy: A Visualization of Mind

To understand this, visualize an ocean where a few fishes are jumping randomly and spontaneously, for no apparent reason. These fishes represent the random thoughts you continuously experience. Unfortunately, we often cannot look at this scene as it is; we constantly want to make meaning out of everything. For instance, when you see a rose, you don’t just directly enjoy or perceive it. You begin thinking, “Oh, it’s beautiful, it’s a rose”. Then, memories of all the roses you’ve received or gifted flood your mind, along with associated moods and reactions. By the time you’re done, the rose itself is lost. This happens with a moon, or anything else; you do not perceive it as it is.

J. Krishnamurti beautifully states that when the perception happens without the interference of the mind, you are free from what you perceive. Freedom from knowing, the knower, and the known is true freedom; it is a very important and powerful truth.

Your mind is like an ocean where a few fishes are spontaneously and randomly jumping. Because you do not have the awareness or patience to look at it as it is, you connect those fishes and try to create a picture.

The Top View of the Mind: Random, Unconnected Thoughts

From a top view, the mind operates like this: one fish jumps here, another there, and so on. These are the random, spontaneous, unconnected, illogical, and independent thoughts happening inside you. You can observe this by simply sitting for five minutes with your mind and jotting down whatever comes. You will see it has no logical connection – “Wow, cold evening, hot budgie would be really nice. No, no, I should have gone to Madurai and seen my parents. It would be really nice if I stayed in the ashram. No, no, the family needs to be taken care of”. The thoughts are completely illogical, independent, irrelevant, irresponsible, unconnected, and unclutched from each other by their very nature.

Thoughts are not connected because they are happening randomly; there is no logic explaining why one fish jumps, why another jumps, or why it immediately goes back into the water.

The Second Layer Illusion: Creating the “Mind”

As we are not established in pure awareness, we feel uncomfortable looking at anything as it is. We somehow want to make meaning out of these random moments. So, we start creating a rectangle, trying to create a connection between the different spontaneous random moments of the fish. This act of trying to connect something and make something out of it is what is called mind.

Please understand, mind is not the movements of the fish, the random moments of the fish. Mind is you trying to connect something and make something out of it. When you try to make something out of random moments happening inside you, you create mind. It is the second layer illusion.

Anyone who understands this second layer illusion and relaxes himself is called a Buddha, or liberated – taking things simply, saying “it’s okay”.

The Pitfalls of Strategy Planning

As long as you trust these diagrams you make out of these fish moments and create daily strategy planning, you will invariably fail. Nobody can win by making any strategy out of this rectangle or diagram. What you do is think, “Oh, it almost looks like a rectangle, why not move this fish point from here to here so that it will become a perfect rectangle?”. That is your strategy planning. But you don’t understand the funny thing you are doing: all your strategy planning is in the second layer illusion.

Consider this: In a night dream, you have a huge house, property, workers, and an obedient wife. You then start doing strategy planning for how to beautifully maintain that house. What happens the moment you wake up? Your whole strategy planning vanishes. This strategy planning happens in the second layer illusion, not even in the first layer illusion. If you were planning how to have a pleasing, pleasant dream, you would be working with the first layer illusion. But you have the first layer illusion and are doing strategy planning for the second layer illusion; it is illusion on illusion. That is why we miserably fail; the miserable failure happens.

Even if you are successful in correcting this rectangle, you will feel empty. That’s why you do not want to face the emptiness, so you go on comparing yourself with others, thinking, “Everybody else also lives the same way I am living; this is the way life is”. You try to satisfy yourself by comparing with others. Just because everybody else is in depression or a lonely or empty mood, you don’t need to be. If you think, “The whole society is like this, how can I be separate? I also should be like that only,” then that is what is called social conditioning.

Very few courageous people are bold enough to stand and say, “No, just because society is constantly feeling lonely and in illusion, I don’t need to be”. When you stand up and reclaim your truth, you are called controversial. This is the top view of the mind.

The Side View of the Mind: Pigeon-Holing

Let me give you the side view. This is the ocean, one fish jumps here, one here, one here, and you try to create a rectangle out of it. This is how you try to create thought. These are all independent moments. Fortunately, the fishes do not have any group meeting, theme coordination, or planning for when to jump, how high, or when to land back. It is a random, spontaneous moment. But the mind, the ego, cannot operate on spontaneity. It has the basic necessity to create a kind of an understanding, to create a kind of a boxing, or “pigeon-holing”.

Just as a post office sorts thousands of letters into boxes for Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, anything that happens randomly and spontaneously in your inner space, you try to pigeonhole it. This pigeonholing happens by creating this illusory connection or feeling.

The Path to Being a Yogi: Avoiding Illusion

All you need to do to become a yogi is to just avoid the second layer illusion. This means stopping trying to create this square or rectangle and making it a perfect geometric figure. That’s all you need. Just stop connecting these random spontaneous thoughts and trying to create meaning out of it.

Understand, the ocean is the ocean, a fish is a fish. They are all completely free beings and they jump as they want, they fall into the ocean as they want, they live as they want, they dance as they want. Do not try to create points and make lines. After making lines, thinking “Oh, if this karma is little adjusted, it will become a perfect geometric diagram,” don’t waste your energy in the second layer illusion of creating perfect geometry or diagrams out of the spontaneous random fish jumping.

That is what is called yogaha chitta vritti nirodhaha. The moment you stop making these diagrams, taking these fish points as important points and making this diagram, the moment you stop, suddenly you will see you are in Samadhi. This making of the diagram is chitta vritti – trying to constantly make diagrams out of the spontaneous random things happening in your mind.

If you just sit and look inside, you are getting so many hundreds of unconnected, irrelevant thoughts. But you don’t see the whole thing as it is. You pick up, “This thought is connected to this thought; this thought means this thought; let me make meaning out of it”. You start making plans, greed, fears out of random moments of your mind.

The Third Layer Illusion: Perversions of the Mind

When you talk to people, you will often hear them say, “My whole life is a suffering, Swamiji”. It is not actually. If your whole life were suffering, you would not be alive now. There are enough joyful moments in between. But unfortunately, you pick up only those random suffering fish jumpings and try to make a diagram.

The most funny thing is that sometimes, if you look at the side view, the height of the fishes jumping varies: some fish jump two feet, some only one foot, some three feet, some only half. You try to make the diagram with various height fishes and various height experiences. You try to create different figures, meaning you try to understand joy experience as suffering, or suffering experience as joy, or fantasy experience as reality, or reality experience as a dream. That is what is called perversions of the mind. This is the third level illusion.

To understand the layers of illusion:

1. First layer illusion: Thinking that fishes are jumping after a clear strategy planning meeting as a team, working together.
2. Second layer illusion: Trying to create a logical diagram out of those jumping points.
3. Third layer illusion: Analyzing the diagram and trying to make it a logical geometrical diagram by altering, correcting, or adding.

We are suffering and struggling due to these layers of illusions. Only when you understand the layers of illusion, layers of struggling, and layers of suffering, will you be able to get out of it. It is a very deep but strong truth.

Understanding Leads to Liberation

Just by understanding, liberation is possible. The moment you understand that all the thoughts happening in you are irrelevant, independent, illogical, unconnected, irresponsible, and unclutched, you will not bother too much to respond to those fish jumpings. You will not try to create a diagram first, then you will not try to geometrically alter it, you will not try to fit it with what you call as a perfect figure. You will not be wasting your time and energy in the second level or third layer illusions. Wasting or putting any energy into the second layer illusion or third layer illusion is utter waste.

It is like doing strategy planning for housekeeping for a house you have seen and are living in a dream. You can spend any amount of time doing strategy planning: “For this glass, you need that kind of an acid to clean. For this floor, you need this kind of an oil to clean. For this restroom, you need this kind of a panel for cleaning”. You can go on doing the strategy planning, ordering things, buying it. But unfortunately, the house is being seen and experienced in a dream. So, the strategy planning done based on the random movements of the mind is what is called second layer illusion.

The True Meaning of Yogaha Chitta Vritti Nirodhaha

Now comes the question: what does Patanjali really mean when he says yogaha chitta vritti nirodhaha?

Please understand what Patanjali really means: Just understand whatever is happening in you – your consciousness is the ocean. Any thought which is happening is just the fish jumping spontaneously and randomly. Do not try to connect those fishes and make any diagram, meaning, geometrical structure, logical understanding, and conclusions out of it. Just relax.

With this visualization, suddenly the huge weight of necessity to do strategy planning, to protect your so-called identity, and to do all the things which you never want to do but which are forced on you by that thirty-four-letter word duty disappears.

Please understand, you have only one duty towards yourself: to be duty-free, to be a Jeevan Muktha. Nothing else. Everything else follows. The first preference, the first priority—I can say, not just first priority, but the only priority for human beings—is living enlightenment, being a Jeevan Muktha. Suddenly, you will see the wealth, strategy planning, whatever you think as necessity for existence, happening around you without even you being involved in it.

Just understand this one Sutra and relax with it. This one Sutra can lead you to Samadhi. Now you don’t need anything else. Just visualize, just understand: you do not even need to visualize, just understand your consciousness is an ocean, and any thought happening is just a random jumping of some fish without any logic, unconnected, independent, illogical, irresponsible, and unclear.

Do not try to create a logical geometrical diagram between the points of this fish jumping. Understand, birds do not leave their footprint in the sky when they fly. Fishes do not leave a point when they jump in the ocean. So don’t try to create a point and create a geometrical diagram. Just relax. Don’t try to catch the fingerprint of fishes jumping and make a logical diagram; that’s all you need to do.

When you understand this: “Oh God, my being is a consciousness ocean, and any thought which happens is a random jumping of the fish, so I don’t need to connect and make meaning out of it,” immediately you are in Samadhi. The restful awareness which happens to you is what Patanjali means by the word yogaha chitta vritti nirodhah. Suddenly, you will see the restful awareness, “Oh God, that’s right!”. The spontaneous disappearance of the movements is mentioned or explained, expressed by the word nirodhaha. Nirodhaha does not mean stopping; it is spontaneous disappearance. If Patanjali was having the idea that mind is linear, he would have used the word Aroha or Vi-rodhaha, which means stopping. But he is using the word nirodhaha; it means he is very clear mind is not linear.

This is the exact visualization Patanjali was having in his consciousness when he expressed the Sutra yogaha chitta vritti nirodhah.

The Proof of Right Understanding

How can we trust or understand that this is what Patanjali was having in his inner space when he uttered those sutras? See the result. Just with this visualization and understanding, sit with yourself. See the restful awareness happening. See the nirvikalpa (a state beyond all thought and concepts) happening. See the settlement happening. See the relaxation happening. See the chitta vritti nirodha happening. The happening, the experience, is the solid proof that the Sutra or the formula or the equation is truth and rightly understood. The end decides and justifies the means used is right.

So, understand, just sit with this simple understanding of mind and do not create the geometrical figures of suffering, pain, joy, or meanings you make out of the random moments of the fish jumping. Just relax from those moments. Just relax from that second layer illusion. Then suddenly, not only are you not doing the second layer illusion, even the first layer illusion of the fish jumping stops.

Fishes are encouraged to jump when you create more and more diagrams and struggle with those diagrams or try to correct them. They have fun seeing you jumping and running around them. When they see nobody is jumping, nobody is attending, they just lie down and rest, or go to the deep sea. Only when people enjoy do dolphins jump. When there is nobody, they just relax. So, stop creating diagrams, creating theorems, creating logical conclusions out of the fish jumping. This right understanding, this right thinking, takes you beyond thinking.

A person who makes techniques out of each Sutra is a teacher. A person who makes savikalpa experience out of each Sutra is a master. So understand this one Sutra properly. Sit for a few moments within yourself, you will see the nirvikalpa happening in you, restful awareness settling in you.

The Importance of Right Understanding from a Master

That is why there is always an emphasis on the importance of learning, listening to the Sutras from masters who experience the same consciousness of Patanjali, the same inner space of those great masters who created the Sutras. When you learn from ordinary teachers, you will understand mind as a linear moment and stopping as the goal of yoga, and struggle with some techniques or methods, blowing your nose or blowing your mind. Finally, you will blow your life—30-40 years of struggling, ending up in frustration, depression, and losing trust over yourself, losing trust over the system, finally losing trust over everything.

So, find the right source, the right person, right visualization, right understanding. Naturally, it will lead you immediately to the right experience. Buddha says the first thing, the first step, is right understanding. J. Krishnamurti says right listening is God. Right listening will lead you to God; you don’t need something extra more than the right listening.

So understand, whatever is happening in you is random fishes jumping. Just random fishes jumping. You don’t need to connect those diagrams, connect those points, and create a square or circle or rectangle or triangle and feel, “I think this one corner is a little disturbed; I think I can complete it; I should complete it”. Having a strategy planning to have a logical geometrical diagram is unnecessary. No, relax. Just see fishes jumping randomly in your Innerspace and do not create a diagram out of it. You will see you relax into the restful awareness which Patanjali calls yogaha chitta vritti nirodhah.

The Living Enlightenment Process (LEP)

This one Sutra, this one truth, this one revelation, is profound. For 53 days in prison, there was constant meditation on the space of unclutching to come up with more and more deeper and deeper understandings, techniques, and methods to unclutch different kinds of human beings, different kinds of human problems. Almost 200 new understandings, methods, revelations, techniques happened just like unclutching. There will be continuous talks on every revelation, every truth, every deeper method to transmit that experience.

From this Guru Purnima, time will be spent with a small group of people, disciples, directly transmitting these deep, huge, strong understandings and processes. It is not even a technique; it is just transmitting those understandings and transmitting those experiences through the process. Because, the understanding given now will work for a few minutes and give restful awareness. Within a few times of trying this method, the mind will master this technique also and will not yield even for this understanding. You may have this understanding, but your mind will continue to think. Then you need another understanding, the next level of understanding. It is almost like, until your mind is done, more and more and more understanding and revelations need to be added. This is what is called process.

Anything which gives restful awareness immediately is a process, without practice or struggling, which gives restful awareness immediately, nirvikalpa immediately. But the human mind is so cunning, even if it experiences that restful awareness immediately, it will slowly develop methods and techniques to be the techniques.

From this Guru Purnima for 48 days, there will be work with a small group of disciples, transmitting all these great understandings and processes to ensure that at least that group lives enlightenment. This is a serious endeavor, with no interest in taking presence for granted on planet Earth or the ability and possibility to teach for granted. Although there is a long time planned to be on the planet Earth and teaching, it will not be taken for granted anymore, delaying the great processes that have always been desired.

This 48-day program, the Living Enlightenment Process, will be a pure gift, with no economical commitment requested, but a psychological commitment. Anybody who has done LBE or Inner Awakening is welcome to join the program. It is basically for the ashramites, the chosen few. People who are really sincere and interested to go through the process are welcome.

All discourses given during that process will be available on YouTube. All the techniques expressed during that process will be available on YouTube for people who register themselves as satsang centers. For a satsang center, there is also no economical commitment, but sincerity and psychological commitment. Whoever registers as satsang centers will have all the techniques available. All the intellectual ideas will be available on YouTube free for everybody. All the techniques will be available for free on YouTube for whoever registers themselves with satsang centers. The presence and the process will be happening directly only here for all the people who want to come and directly experience.

Whoever has done LBE or Inner Awakening can apply and will be made enlightened. Deeper secrets of Adiyogi, Swami Atmarama’s Sutras, and Patanjali’s Sutras will continue to be expressed. Patanjali Sutras are for public satsang, and Swami Atmarama Sutras are for classes for closed groups, but both will be available to the public freely on YouTube. Nitha Yoga’s Sat Yoga process and techniques from Swami Atmarama Sutras are for the people who register themselves as satsang centers because it needs a little more attention to digest those great sutras; they are deeper level lessons.

Final Invitation

Just sit with this one understanding: your whole inner being is the ocean of consciousness. All the thoughts happening are fish jumping randomly and spontaneously for no reason in different spots, in different places, as fear, greed, shyness, suffering, or pain – it is jumping in different ways. Do not try to connect all of them; they are moments. Do not make any diagram, geometrical diagram, or logical understanding out of it. Just sit with whatever is happening and be in restful awareness.

Please close your eyes and just sit with this one clarity. Try to sit with this savikalpa which leads you to nirvikalpa, the restful awareness. For the next few days, it will work on you. Then your mind is so powerful, it will take over this technique also. Then another savikalpa or nirvikalpa will be given. No mind can survive more than 10 or 20 savikalpas. So, hundreds of savikalpas are going to be expressed. Even the worst, cunning, intellectual, vile brain cannot handle more than 20 savikalpas. Continuously, different savikalpas will be given to ensure establishment in nirvikalpa.

All devotees and disciples from around the world are requested to take whatever is being offered as early as possible. This 48-day Living Enlightenment Process will be unique, one of its kind. It will involve spontaneously sitting whole day and night and working on different revelations and savikalpas that occurred during this R&D (research and development) and unconscious scanning of all Hatha Yoga and Patanjali Yoga methods and processes.

Devotees are sincerely told not to take this for granted. While there is a desire to live in the body for a long time and share this experience with the world for a long time, those who cherish enmity towards this work seem to be more powerful. It is unknown how long they will allow this job of sharing enlightenment. For this, many things are needed: the body needs to be safe and healthy, and the Sangha (the place) needs to be available. Many things are necessary. The people who cherish enmity have shown their powers; they were able to snatch away for no reason, and they have proved their power at least once.

So, do not take this or the teachings for granted, thinking, “I will do next time, I will do this program later on”. It is unknown whether this Living Enlightenment Process will be done one more time, or if there will be time, or even if there is time, whether there will be interest in doing that again. That is why there is no economical barrier; this is given as a gift. The aim is to share it with the world and feel that what was intended to be delivered and shared has been delivered and shared.

Even when you have the nirvikalpa for a few moments with these processes, your mind, being so cunning, does not stay there; it gets bumped out. So, again and again, using some 20-30 processes (20 will be more than enough for any intellectual mind to go through the process to be established in nirvikalpa), work will be done on 200 different processes and methods.

All are welcome from around the world to come and experience, live, and radiate enlightenment. Let these great truths, techniques, and processes work on you. Let you all achieve, live, and radiate enlightenment. Let you all achieve, live, express, and radiate the eternal bliss.

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source: Nithyananda on Yoga Sutras: What is Mind? A New Revelation