We might assume that living in the mind is one place that is rent and mortgage free.

But it isn’t

The cost is very high.

No matter how intelligent, how learned, how unlearned, how free spirited, how ‘woke’ the mind may be- it is still mind.

As long as we live in mind we are trapped in our own thinking process.

Thinking can bring us to interesting places, inventions, novel ideas, creative insights, new directions. In can guide us into and out of relationships. Thought can seemingly put our life and experiences into a useful perspective -but it is still thought. And thought is neither a good master, useful teacher or good guide.

It is too conditioned!

Yoga seeks to free us of conditioned mind, to free us of the human condition.  Then mind can perform its function in a clear and unhindered way.

Q: why do so many of us want to stay in our minds and won’t allow ourselves to go beyond?

A: Yes, that is the mistake. Your life is beyond your mind. Where there is true life, your mind is not there, and where there is no life, that is where the mind is working. Where there is true laughter, there is no mind. True laughter is even deeper than the mind. Therefore, you have to meditate.”

Swami Muktananda

What is the conditioned mind?

Yoga reveals a unique understanding of mind. Often referred to as four-fold psychic instrument (Antakarana). This describes the four aspects and functions of psyche.

We are intended to be the controller of the mind. Instead for most the mind controls us. Whatever arises in the mind has the power to disrupt us. It can cause a sudden mood and behavioural change. It can cause us to make useful and poor decisions. It can change our feelings in an instant. It can have us caught in loops or repeated thought patterns that seemingly will not let us go. Our thoughts have great power over us. We make the mistake of believing our thoughts.

The four aspects of psyche are:

Manas- cognitive mind or lower mind. It absorbs and filters impressions gained through the senses and the organs of action.

Ahamkara (I’maker): the nearest translation in English is Ego. It decides ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that’, or’ I am completely neutral with neither like nor dislike’. It generates a self-sense that is separate and highly individual. In its purest form it gives rise to the pure feeling of being.

Chitta:  subconscious storehouse. This aspect holds memory of impressions of a life or lifetimes depending what you understand of the cycle of life and death. These impressions hold charge and the power to influence our liking or disliking of something, our attraction and aversions in life. Yoga seeks to annul these impressions rendering each moment a new loveliness.

Buddhi: innate intelligence, wisdom, intuitive knowing, rational understanding, discernment are all functions of buddhi. It is often referred to as higher mind.

The yogi seeks to exercise the full power of Buddhi in life. The view of Buddhi is transpersonal. It has the capacity to remain uncaught in the dramas and colourations of the other aspects of mind and the small self-sense. It can give us the strength wisdom and power to make beneficial choices and generate wisdom from experience. It is not small “I” and “me” centred and so gives the broader deeper view beyond appearances.

Ayurveda and Yoga reveal that the first stage of illness of either body or mind is when afflicted memories and impressions (impressions and memories which create a degree of suffering) disrupt access to buddhi, the discriminative, intuitive and rational intelligence we can learn to have direct access to.

Until Buddhi is accessed healing and transformation is not possible.

Buddhi then leads us toward an identity that is not fixed in persona or personality making and maintenance. It turns our self-knowing in another direction -toward an essential nature that is free of camouflage and posturing or chameleon like tendencies, free of conditioning and not owned or fabricated by a personality. It is essential being, a quality of being that is neither born nor dies and yet witnesses all.

Yoga cannot be found in books, or courses. There you may only find a few guidances and maps. Yoga can only be found in silence and stillness and deep within a place called hridaya or heart which has no bearing to the physical heart. Here the quiet mind reveals all that is to be known. The Upanishads invite us to “Know that by which all things are known” and to sit near to the truth. This is the place where we sit near to that truth. The quiet untroubled mind seated in an unflinching peace casts a light on what is real and essential. The answers to all the quintessential questions pertaining to human existence rise within that stillness. The knowledge is inherent within each soul. It needs to be uncovered. It is the troubled mind that is the covering.

Clever mind maps and models do not untrouble or unburden the mind. They train the mind to change thoughts, trade one kind of thinking for another but still thoughts dominate.

Mind when stilled, when peaceful, when resting in its natural state, just as the ocean can be undisturbed by waves, reveals its own source and power. Then mind is friend and servant to the greatest journey possible within human form.

All of yogic practices are intended to arrive at this state. They purposefully free the over congested state of the mind. But practice must be of a certain kind to facilitate this. This is the way of yoga beyond fad and branding, beyond fusion and adaptations. This is Yoga as it has been since time immemorial. It is a yoga relevant to all times. Human conditioning is the same no matter what the times or state of the world. It is a trick of the universal creation process that causes us to forget that we may awaken again. There comes a moment when we are ready to awaken so powerfully, we will never retreat back into forgetfulness.

If you feel called to study yoga this is the kind of yoga you deserve.

Seek that which will truly set you free!

yoga psychology & Meditation

we cannot know another until we truly know ourselves…..to truly know ourselves we must understand the nature of the mind and the nature of what is real…..this course is rare and wonderful.

It is designed for trained yoga teachers and sincere yoga practitioners and meditators.