I don’t mean that you always show being wishy-washy. That is also self-deception. You do not have to be so vagary. Some people keep saying, “Everything is nice, everything is nice”. They say it is so perfect. They are smiling outwardly but boiling inside. You do not have to be like that -
Then comes manomaya tapas, tapas of the mind.“Manahaprasadahsowmyatam”. Four things have been said: The pleasantness in the mind, manahaprasadam.Maintaining it. To have pleasantness in the mind is a big tapas. You feel pleasant and very soon you can drop all the pleasantness. Maintain the pleasantness, manahaprasadah. Contentment in the mind.Sowmyatam. Soumya means what? Calm and composed, cool. You can feel pleasant but excited. You may feel pleasant but you may not feel calm. The pleasantness can make you feel excited but it is not that calm and composed soumya.
People who are happy create problems for others. This is because they are not aware, they are not at all aware of what they are saying and how it can affect others. If a person is calm and composed, he is more aware. Awareness comes in composure. You are sensitive to others’ feelings, sensitive to the surroundings, how it affects everybody’s mind.So a pleasant mind,composed mind.
Manahaprasadah.Soumyam.Mounam. A silent mind, not a chattering mind. Silence is the tapas of the mind. If we have a mind which is scattered, bring it all together, tying all the loose ends of the mind and bringing it to the self. Atmavinigraha. Bring the mind back again, again and again to the self, effortlessly, easily and seeing that everybody is also my self.
Normally, we think that our mind is in the body. But it is not so. The body is inside the mind.Have I discussed this before? Ten times bigger than your physical body is your body of prana or the energy body.
Ten times bigger than your pranic body is your mind body, your thought body.Ten times bigger than that is your intuitive body.Ten times bigger than that is your bliss body. Ten times means infinite times bigger is our blissful body. Boundless is our bliss. Blissful body.
That is why, when you feel blissful, you do not feel the boundary, you do not feel the body. You feel expanded. When you feel sad or unhappy, you feel crushed because then your prana is getting smaller than your real body. That is exactly the mechanism of happiness. You know it is like you are trying to put your body through a ventilator. It cannot fit into it. Your body cannot fit in and you feel suffocated. That is why you feel unhappy.
When your prana is so big, you try to crush it into the small opening. When you walk through the door, your body can go through it. Whenever you are unhappy in life, know that you have put your love into a small chamber. Your love is so great, so big. It needs a royal door to walk through. But we have stuck our big elephant body of love in a small chimney or a ventilator. It can neither come in nor go out. This is entanglement. That is why, love seems to bring problems to you. We do not understand its magnitude. This is tapas. Mano tapas. And atmavinigraha is coming back to the self. Gripping the centeredness.That much for today.
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(This is part of a series of knowledge sheets based on Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's commentaries on Patanjali Yoga Sutras.)
