Day 5

This begins the discussion on the Vṛttis-s or mental activities. The Vṛttis-s are always changing, never-ending, and temporary. They are the thoughts and emotions housed in our heart-mind field, Citta. Patanjali organizes them into 5 types, that will be defined in the following sutras. 

Our Vṛttis-s spring forth from our Saṃskāra, the deep habitual impressions in our Citta, our individual heart mind field of consciousness. Vṛttis-s also lead to saṃskāra-s, further enforcing our state of mind. Our state of mind here is the play of sensual impressions, thoughts, ideas, cognitions, and psychic activities at any given moment that influences our behavior. 

Patanjali also describes the  Vṛttis-s as being either kliṣṭa (harmful) or akliṣṭa (helpful). Harmful mental activity leads to karma, the cycle of action-reaction-rereaction…, and keeps us bound to Prakṛti, the external world. This type of mental activity has the qualities of tamas (heaviness) and rajas (aggression) Guṇa-s. Helpful mental activity leads to liberation in divine consciousness, Puruṣa, and a sattvic (divine) state of mind.

This reminds me of the Law of Attraction, the quality of our mind is directly related to our quality of experience. This is a challenging idea because it puts us in the driver seat of our own lives, we are responsible for ourself and our own experience. This is also a liberating idea, it gives us the awareness and power to change the thoughts and experiences in our lives that separate us from our own divine truth and bliss. 

Harmful and Helpful to what? These activities are considered to be helpful or detrimental to the practice and experience of Yoga, the cessation of activity in the mind. The Vṛttis-s absorb the consciousness of Puruṣa, distracting us from our own true nature, however, though meditation we develop discerning intellect that allows us to see the fullness of Puruṣa.  

Harmful Vṛttis-s have also been described as selfish mental activities that ultimately cause pain.  Helpful Vṛttis-s have been described as selfless. This is important because it requires us to explore not only our thoughts but our motivations, the underlying inspirations for our inner and outer actions. This means that we can not rely solely on analyzing just the outward, superficial thoughts and actions, but that we have to dig a little deeper, forging a  wholehearted relationship with ourselves so that we can understand our own deep-seated needs and desires.  

When we sit to meditate we are providing ourselves with the opportunity to watch our thoughts, becoming more intimately familiar with our own mind.  This familiarity with ourselves gives us the opportunity to analyze our own habitual mental patterns and tendencies. With this awareness of ourselves, we are empowered to change the patterns that we find, patterns that do not support our true nature. We can start to break our own mental patterns by inserting Sattvic thoughts. At first intermittently but with diligent and continual practice the natural state of our thoughts and the quality of our mind becomes Sattvic, maybe with intermitted harmful thoughts at first but eventually without interruption. This quality of mind influence how we experience the outer world and how with interact with it. 

However, it is important to remember that to experience Yoga one must surpass all mental activity because even the helpful thoughts are an external distraction from the Divine.