Amanaska

“Another thing which is very important for us to consider is how our perception can become very defective because of the kleshas, and the kleshas are obstacles, or afflictions and we already talked about them. And part of the Yoga literature of India is, avidya, which is ignorance in myriad forms, ignorance about what life is, about what self is, about what reality is, about what the Divine is. So ignorance about who we are in the first place. Ignorance. Then, raga, attraction to various objects, which give us probably sensory pleasure in one form or another. And then dvesha or a feeling of hatred or annoyance or irritation, so that I want to move away from that particular object.

“And then the fourth one, affliction or kleshas, is abhinivesha, that is, suddenly there is a recurring wave of craving, craving for a particular kind of food, which is our favorite dish or something and craving for a particular movie we want to watch or we want to go to a particular place because we think, we will be very happy by going to that particular place or we want to read a particular book and or we want to take a drink which we expect will make us very happy. So, the craving is not just coming once, but it’s coming in pulses every 10 seconds or every three minutes, its coming in pulses and is lasting for half an hour, one hour. So it has possessed us like a ghost. Now that is abhinivesha. And then we don’t know what to do with it and probably will search for various ways and means to quench that craving, to bring a fulfillment to that craving. And then there is the subtlest and the most imperceptible of the kleshas, the obstacles to the pure inner life. And what is that? And that is asmita, aham asmi, means I am, and asmita is the feeling that you exist as a separate entity, as a separate individual, as the body, away from the totality of life. So these are the kleshas and klishta, Maharishi Patanjali use of the word klishta and klishta means an affliction. It is derived from klesha.

“And what is an affliction? An affliction, when present in consciousness, will serve to distort and color perception so that we do not see what is, or reality, as it is. But we will see it in a distorted way. Let’s consider an example. We are very angry and religion tells us that this anger is not good for us and this anger is not good for the person with whom we have gotten angry and that it is best for us to forgive that person and to be kind to the person. This is what religion is telling us, but we don’t know how to do it. Mm-Hmm. It’s very easily said, but we don’t know how to go to that very pleasant spot where instead of that anger and that hatred, love is blossoming in that spot, we don’t know how to make that transition. So that anger which is present is that affliction in consciousness, and it prevents us from seeing the other person with whom we have gotten angry, he’s actually a manifestation of the Divine, but this anger will prevent us from looking at the other person as a manifestation of the Divine.

“So, we miss out on the mystery of the Divine, which is that the Divine has got billions of forms, billions of names and it is coming in front of us, and it is giving us a display and we only see the display, as some individual coming before us. We do not decipher the mystery and we do not go far enough in order to see that it is the Divine which is at work. It is just the Divine which is behind the scenes wearing a mask. So we don’t see that. So anger is a klishta.

“Then prejudice. Now somebody might have hurt me and I think that the person has wronged me. So I become very peevish, I become very irritable and I say I’m not going to forgive him. And therefore, this negative energy, dark energy is coming between me and the other person in our relationship and which is making this relationship very conflict ridden and full of pain because I feel that he has hurt me and he may feel that I have hurt him, and therefore things are not happening nicely between us, and the prejudice is the klishta here. My prejudice about him and his prejudice about me. Now, in order to surmount this klishta so that the klishta undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes an aklishta, meaning, prejudice is replaced with love.

“I have to definitely begin this self-Knowing where I watch the self creating the prejudice through one of its movements, and the movement will be a thought and the movement will be a feeling. And I have to watch that movement very attentively with great compassion, just as a compassionate mother would watch her very restless and mischievous infant. Now, if I am lucky and if I am fortunate enough to watch the movement of the self, in its prejudicial stance, then I may learn a lot about myself, how the prejudice originated in the first place. And it may be possible that I change my perception and that the prejudice drops off so the klishta undergoes a conversion and becomes aklishta. So through self-Knowing, all the klishtas can undergo the polar shift to their very opposites so that an affliction becomes a non-affliction”.

– Sankara Bhagavadpada