Free Yourself from Delusions and Limitations
Summary: Consciousness has fallen into two correlative sets of delusions. The first is the delusion of false identity and its sequelae. This triggers the second set of delusions, those that create a false limitation of our intelligence, power, freedom, creativity, and time. We have a responsibility to overcome these false beliefs. Our primary tools in that project are faith, love, reason, and steadfast determination to realize the ultimate Truth.
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The entirety of the knowledge of Sat Yoga can be summed up in simply that proposal to realize that you are not the machine and its mental apparatus, but that who you are now, always, is the Supreme Intelligence, the Infinite Self.
And all that has to be done is to let go of the false belief that “I” refers to a bodily being and an earthbound mind that is concerned with a very limited circle of care and of belief in its potentiality.
This was summed up in the teachings of the Trika wisdom school of Kashmir around the 10th Century when they came up with two different concepts of, I think, great relevance, perhaps even more now. The first concept is that we suffer from three malas. Malas are usually interpreted as impurities, but I would just say illusions. And the first mala that we must go beyond to become nirmala or vimala, which is the goal of yoga of every wisdom school, actually is the Anava Mala. The Anava Mala—does anyone remember what the Anava Mala consists of?
Student: Identification with the body?
Yes, identification with the ego operating system of the body. So, in other words, if you think you are an individual being, a human functioning as a bodily existent entity, then you are under a delusion. That’s not what we are.
But once you come under the influence of that mala, then along with that come two others, one of which is the Mayiya Mala, meaning the mental apparatus has been preprogrammed with a number of false beliefs and orientations to reality based on that false identification that you were indoctrinated into believing.
And those projections and attitudes and belief systems create the third mala, which is the Karma Mala. It produces glitches in the matrix because there are errors in judgment that arise as a result of those mistaken beliefs and disappointment. And all too often, anxiety and depression and other mental disorders arise that increase one’s suffering. And these, in turn, lead to karma of an external variety, that lead to unhappiness in relationships.
Then the second set of concepts that they developed, which are in alignment, but elaborate a bit on this, is the theory of the five kanchukas. If everyone—I’m sure that those who were here remember those. They are limitations. Once you have fallen into the malas, you are subject to five varieties of limitation which are really contained in the definition of the malas.
But they’re elaborated more in this module that was developed by Abhinavagupta in Kashmir in the 10th Century. The first one is the limitation of power. There’s a limited amount of energy that the body has. A limited amount of power to concentrate, a limited amount of willpower, because in the ego, with its structure, there are always internal conflicts, and the will is divided against itself.
And then, in the second kanchuka, is limited knowledge, incomplete and inaccurate knowledge, both phenomenal plane knowledge, knowledge of the world, and its trajectory of unfoldment. We have some knowledge. So, for example, everyone who pays attention to the news knows that the dollar’s value is going down every day. But we don’t know how long it will take before it crashes to zero. And we don’t know if some days it will spike and actually increase in value, because it tends to be on that kind of a wave function. So, we don’t have complete knowledge, but we have enough knowledge, perhaps, to make mature assessments as to the proper strategy for dealing with a situation of that sort, as well as all of the other kinds of situations that we are faced with, both on an individual and a collective level. And, of course, the other kind of knowledge is the knowledge of liberation from the phenomenal plane, which at the ego level is also incomplete and often inaccurate.
And then the third is the preprogramming of the apparatus with a certain set of attachments, loyalties, fears, and desires that have been installed in the consciousness for those who are adapted to the social order and various other drives and tendencies, proclivities, preconceptions that are part of the conscious and subconscious program.
And then the fourth kanchuka is that of the fact that external events cannot be controlled. We could call this karma again, but it’s a matter of recognizing that we are having to flow with surprises that are always occurring, and that we cannot maintain a particular course without often tacking and shifting strategies and approaches, and even paradigms that must shift in order to more adequately understand the unfoldment of events.
And then finally, time. There’s always a limited amount of time and too many things to do that can’t be done in that time.
How many of you feel subject to these five kanchukas? Okay, so this is what the Buddhists would call dukkha.
Now, it’s true that this is the case for the machine and for the ego apparatus to some extent. But, when we go back to the understanding of knowledge, not all knowledge has to do with surviving and thriving on the phenomenal plane as an individual being. That’s a very low sort of knowledge from a yogic perspective. The real knowledge that we want is to recognize that you are not the machine, either the hardware or the software, that is its current operating system. But you are the user of the machine and its software. And you have the inherent power to upgrade the software so that you can increase your knowledge, both knowledge of the phenomenal and knowledge of the noumenal, the transcendent, the Real.