Swami Sri Atmananda

Omm Namo Bhagavate

Excerpt from Swamiji’s 5 August 2024 Interaction at Satyachetana Ashram, Tiruvannamalai:

I will today tell you something which is a very fundamental concept, because you all are serious yogis, but may not clearly know the concepts. Why I am saying that? When we say someone has learned it fully, it means that learning definitely is getting manifested through his life, action, thought and reaction. Until that manifestation has happened, learning has not become complete. It’s still incomplete.  

Say for example, if the whole world will come and tell you that you are a dog or you are a cat or you are a tiger, no one will accept that. Why? Because the learning that I am a human being is so complete that even if the whole world will say you are not a human being, one will not accept it.

This is one part. The other part is, human beings don’t manifest cat’s nature, dog’s nature, tiger’s nature. So for human beings, that learning is complete. In yoga also, we say so many words, but whether our learning or our knowledge or our understanding is really experiential understanding, whether it is truly complete? That we will know only when our knowledge gets manifested.

Knowledge gets manifested through action, reaction, impulses and emotions. These are the four ways. What we are, what we have learned, what we have realized, that gets manifested in four dimensions. When we speak, when we act, when we do something. When we do something impulsively, not consciously, but it comes out, that is called impulse, and we get swayed away, swept away. That is called emotion. One does not become impulsive intentionally. One cannot become emotional intentionally. There is a mechanism that makes it.

Why I am telling you this? Because yesterday in my Odia Gita class, we were dealing with Chapter 6. After the class, one very sincere yogi asked me a question. I explained it in Odia. Then I thought, maybe this is a concept I should also speak in English so that it gets recorded and all those who are in our yoga path can benefit from it.

The person asked me, “Gurudev, what is mascharya, and how to control mascharya?” I told him, you know already mascharya is one of the six enemies of a yogi. Kama, krodha, loba, moha, mada, mascharya, and this is a vikara. Vikara means it is not natural for a pure system. When the system becomes impure, then only mascharya is possible.

How pure is your system, how pure is someone’s system, how can you know? You watch his conversation. When he is talking, not on yoga or God or guru or Gita, when he is just normally talking, how much of that talk is ungodly and how much of it is godly, divine? From that you can know how clean is the person’s system.

Every seeker puts emphasis on kama, that is desire, krodha (anger), lobha (greed), moha, (attachment) and mada (ego; ahamkara), but rarely people talk of mascharya. Yet mascharya is so silent, so pervasive, so corrosive that even great yogis take several years to get rid of it.

For a serious yogi, the definition of mascharya is ungodly talk. But does it mean that when we go to the market to purchase vegetables, these are also mascharya? No. When a mother or father is advising the child or a friend is talking to a friend, we all talk on material or social things, but that is not mascharya.

Just understand. Mascharya will never come unless there is karta, doer. And mascharya will never come unless there is a result motive. Usually mascharya comes when one gets trapped by the process. That means, whosoever is in mascharya, already he has doership, or karta bhava, already he has asakti, pull for result, and definitely he is the victim of this process.

When a  conversation between two people leads to argument, it means both are in mascharya. Suppose I am saying we should do something one way and Rama is telling, “No, no, Swamiji, we should not do in this way,” then I am telling, “Yes, definitely I feel in this way,” then Rama says, no, you are wrong, it means we both are in mascharya. Why? Because I will not say that this should be done in this way a second time unless there is a doer in me, the karta bhava. Means I feel this is right. The other person is responding to my karta bhava, so she is also saying, no, no, I am right. This makes it very clear that both are having a heavy sense of doership, and if the karta is not feeling that he is right, he will never insist on that. Here the karta wants the other person to listen to me, feels he must agree with me. That is identification with the result.

This mascharya means there is a doer, there is a result motive, and one gets trapped by the process. Someone is doing something, someone is saying something, and we get identified.

When you go to the very advanced stage of yoga, you will be transcending the doership, and have less of this result motive. Then it will be easy to be neutral to the process. Until that has happened, you cannot be free from mascharya. As per my experience,mascharya is much more dangerous than any type of indulgence. You can get rid of all your bad habits, but you may not get rid of mascharya during your whole lifetime. That is how dangerous it is. It appears as totally harmless, but it is so pervasive it may take lifetimes.

That is why I say a serious yogi should always watch how much of ungodly talks she is having. Means the talk that is not concerning God, nor the sadhana to realize God, nor the knowledge pertaining to God. It is all pertaining to what you feel is right or what you feel the other is doing wrong. Ninety-nine percent of this is verbal; only one percent it is mental.

Suppose I am just sitting and thinking of a person, why she is so disobedient, so insincere, procrastinating, unclean. All are mascharya. The more this type of negative thought is allowed, the stronger and stronger it becomes and it descends down to the vital. Vital is the seat of action drive. If the thought remains only in the mental, it will be wiped out. But if it goes to the vital, it can be only released through karma. What type of karma? Karma that someone else is doing. This is the reason, yogis in traditional path maintain silence. Even if someone is telling something wrong, they don’t enter into that discussion.

The more and more the yogi becomes pure, the much less and less he will be trapped by mascharya. One can immediately know: this is not a topic to be discussed; this is not a topic to be taken into mind. Then what will happen, your system will not be corrupted. Until one reaches the state of Shiva, until the kundalini has crossed your sixth chakra, you are always vulnerable to receive the samskara from others. You might have burned all your negative samskaras, but you are living in society.

That is what I yesterday explained in our Odia Gita class. Kütastho vijitendriyah; Yuktah ityuchyateyogï samaloshträ shmakänchanah [Verse 241; 6.8]  Until your chit has reached kutastha. Chit is kundalini. Until it has gone to that point, crossed that point, you are vulnerable to receive samskara from others. That is why the more and more you become spiritualized, the less and less you get emotionally involved with anyone. Emotional involvement—that is where this samskar is.

If I will be emotionally involved with you, your samskar will come to me. Yet without being emotionally involved with you, I can discharge all my roles. I have discharged the role of a son without getting emotionally involved with what my father was saying or doing. For more than thirty years. I remained as a husband without at all getting emotionally involved with my wife. You just imagine. I am remaining with you all. I’m shouting, but I am not getting emotionally involved with any one of you. If I see that a person is not capable to receive what I am transmitting, I conclude that her time has not come, so let me be silent. But my love, my respect, my care, my concern are not getting reduced even by one ounce.

Thirty years I am living with you all. Sometimes you speak in a nasty way, or you do something in a rubbish way, but how your samskar is not entering into me? Because I’m not emotionally linked with anyone. It is possible because my kundalini, my chit has transcended the rudra granthi. When the kundalini rises, it moves up to the sahashrara and your whole channel is cleaned. Then you will not receive the samskaras from others. This kama, krodha, lobha, moha, madha, all these are coming due to the samskaras that we have stored up. That is why these are coming and floating on the chit, floating like the waves, that is called chitta vritti.

The best way to get rid of these is to always remember that you have to transcend this prakriti’s maya. Many times after my marriage I saw that my wife is much more mature than me. She does not react, she does not argue with me. Many time I am wrong, but she remains silent.

And I ask her, “You never reacted, although I was wrong. Did you not get hurt?”

She told me, “Yes, I got hurt, but why should I hurt you?”

My Lord, you see.  

“But I hurt you,” I said.

“Okay, you hurt,” she replied, “but now you are understanding that you hurt me, so try not to hurt me again.”

Through her silent nature, she pushed me. She is the one who told me, “Don’t remain in the house, because the state you have reached, neither you are in peace nor anyone is in peace. Father wants to listen to Ramayana, you are getting irritated. Children want to play, you are getting irritated. Father will not take food unless you are sitting at the table, but you are in meditation. So the disturbance is coming. Just you go.”

I asked, “Who will take care of the children?”

“I will take care,” she said. “I will take care. I know what state you are in.”

If at the age of forty-two I could reach my goal, I think ninety percent is because of her, and ten percent is because of my aspiration. She never pulled me down, never. Knowing one hundred percent that her husband is a mad person now, a crazy person now, but no.

We never had mascharya. My children also never had mascharya with me, because from childhood they knew “our father is a guru.” I have also seen that between them, they don’t have any mascharya habit. I told them, you are listening from me the pure gyaana. Apply it to your life, and your kundalini will be automatically moved. You don’t have to do all the specialized techniques that I was doing.

I was doing those because I was doing sadhana by reading from books, since my guru was not there with me in a form. What he has written and said, and what those who stayed with my gurudev have told me, based on that, I was doing all these techniques. But now you all have a living guide. Just do what I say. It is nothing but a constant remembrance that you need to transcend this triple veil. That is yoga. You need not run away from home. You need not tell to your husband that “I am doing yoga, so don’t talk like that to me.” No. You remain as a loving wife, a loving daughter, a loving mother, but you still can do yoga. Then you will be an enlightened wife, you will be an enlightened mother, you will be an enlightened daughter.

That’s my life. My father told me, “You go, otherwise, I can’t leave. I will not die, because in your presence, death is not coming.”

I said, “I’m your only son. If I go, will people not blame me?”

He replied, “You are enlightened, no? You are a sadguru, but you are still having attachment? I am telling you, go. If I am telling you to stay but you go, then people will blame you. But I am telling you to go, and you are still attached? You are not attached to me, you are attached to your ego.”  

As I looked at my father, I saw that my gurudev was standing before me. I touched his feet. Tears were coming.

This happens because we are now in Kali Yuga. It’s natural for these waves tamas and rajas to come, but they should not push the yogi back to the ocean of samsara bhava. That is to be remembered.

Attachment is hidden in mascharya. Result motive is hidden in mascharya. Ego-ness, I-ness is hidden in mascharya. When all these are hidden, it is natural that a person will be trapped by the process.

Everybody talks of mascharya, but they don’t know how to be free from it.