Transcription
Y'all want it advanced? Here it is. The more you say "I am..." the more problems you're going to run into. Basically, recognizing that, okay, I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my emotions, I'm not even my identity. I am that which is.
If you want to suffer less, the elimination of a-humara is very important.
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So today, what we're going to do is explore advanced perspectives on a-humara. Let's start with a sort of super big picture.
In the West, our model of the mind is based on people talking, and from talking, we get an extrapolation into thinking. We have people like Freud or Jung who listened to people talk, and based on what they said, they concluded certain things about their minds.
In the East, we had direct observation of the mind, which we had in the West as well. Freud and Jung analyzed their own dreams and looked at their own thoughts. So it's not that there wasn't direct observation in the West; it's just that, generally speaking, our method of understanding was more based on talking.
Freud learned a lot; a lot of his theories were based on his extrapolations of other people's minds, whereas the yogis studied their own minds for like 70 years in one lifetime.
What this results in is a conception of, okay, there are different things in the mind. If you look at the function of the mind, we have our Manas. This is our emotional mind, our reactive mind, and also where likes and dislikes come from.
If I eat a fruit and the first time I try it, I think, "Oh my God, this is delicious," that's not a thought; that's not an analysis. It is a reaction. So this is the Manas.
If we also sort of think about emotions, emotions are kind of like that too, right? You don't get to choose which emotion you experience. Your emotion is an automatic reaction to a particular circumstance.
The second part of the mind is the Buddhi. This is our analytical capability, our reasoning capability, and it's also related to some of our memory functions.
Then we have a-humara. What the yogis then noticed was, "Hold on a second. We have thoughts, we have emotions, we have logic, and we have analytical reasoning, but the mode of our logic can change."
Sometimes my logic is very intact, and sometimes my logic is very biased. What's the difference? They noticed that there is a mode of operation of the mind, that there's variability between Manas and variability between Buddhi. What is that thing that creates the variability? This is a-humara.
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The first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk. This is a Vasa too. Your mind is Vasa all the way down.
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So, a-humara is the sense of "I." If you think about it, even early on, children will exist, but their a-humara won't be present.
If we look at something like an infant, it probably has thoughts; it certainly has emotions, but it doesn't have a sense of "I," "me," or "mine." When kids get a little bit older, around two, they start to develop this quality of possessiveness. As we continue to get older, we start to develop identities about ourselves.
Now, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but the Buddhi just does logic, reasoning, and thoughts, right? But it doesn't have a persistence to it. We can analyze things one way; we can analyze things another way. We have this kind of thought; we have that kind of thought.
But if you think about the a-humara, the sense of "I" is persistent and built up over time. This is something that builds up over time, which is very important.
So, Manas doesn't build up over time. Our likes or dislikes don't accumulate. It's not like I love a banana more and more every time I eat it, or I love a banana less and less every time I eat it.
There's absolutely some element of tolerance and things like that. I may not enjoy the banana, but the Manas doesn't accrete over time.
So then the question becomes, okay, how does a-humara form? This is where we get to the fourth part of the mind, which is Samskara.
In our core lecture on Vedic psychology, we spend a lot of time talking about Samskaras, so let's just do a super quick overview. Anytime I have an experience, that experience comes with some emotional energy and can also come with some Buddhi activation. Depending on the balance of these two things, some of that emotional energy will get stored.
Let's say I go swimming, or let's say my parents teach me how to swim the hard way, which means they pick me up and throw me in the pool. I'm floundering; I'm almost drowning, and the experience is traumatic.
This results in some amount of emotional energy. They pull me out of the water, and I'm not panicking for my life anymore. I run inside the house, but the next time I see the pool, this emotional energy gets recalled, and I can have a panic attack. Now I have a phobia of water. Does that kind of make sense?
This is Samskara. As we go through life, we accumulate some scars because we're not neutral after every experience. We don't return to a true baseline; there is something that is left from each experience.
Even if we talk about something like playing video games, I might say, "Oh my God, I played this game today. I had such an epic match; we made a comeback. I feel so good! I feel so amazing! That was so much fun!"
Then my alarm rings, and I'm like, "Oh crap, I have to go to my 7 PM final exam study session." So I go to my final exam study session. My mind stops thinking about the game, but unless I processed that emotional experience, that gets stored.
The next day, as soon as I'm done with my final exam, that emotional energy, that wanting, that enjoyment from the game returns to my mind, and I want to play the game again.
This is the key thing to understand. We have our mind, and it has stuff happening inside. Whatever stuff we process in the moment gets fixed, and whatever else doesn't gets stored.
As we go through life, we have all of these different experiences, some of which get processed and some of which get stored. This is what life is: a sequence of events.
What happens is, as we accumulate our combination of Samskaras, this is what results in identity. If you think about your identity, your identity is a storehouse of different perceptions, reactions, interpretations, logic, whatever, that gets activated at a particular time.
For example, when I'm taking a shower, I'm not Dr. K. I'm just taking a shower. There is literally no difference between me washing my face and a prisoner washing their face or a prince washing their face.
The experience of washing your face is roughly the same. Let's assume that everyone has the same soap and the same water temperature. There is no sense of "me" in that sort of experience.
Then, if we think about it, the moment that I start streaming, I become Dr. K. Out of this storehouse of identity, my mind then reactivates these two things, and now I'm in Dr. K mode. My voice changes.
After I'm done streaming and my kids come home from school, then what's going to happen is I will activate a different Dr. K. Instead of talking like this, my mode of thinking will change, my emotional energy will change, my voice will change.
So if you think about it, your sense of identity is highly variable in the sense that you activate it and you deactivate it. If we think about which part of the mind this relates to, these are essentially Samskaras.
Now, what we need to understand is that our a-humara is a combination of Samskaras. This is really important to understand because our a-humara causes us all kinds of problems based on our Samskaras.
Now, what we're going to do is go a little bit into Western science and sort of explain how this works. We're going to give you a parallel system.
In our brain, we have this thing called the default mode network, and the default mode network is super cool. It's basically what makes us human.
If you look at animals—forget about animals; let's say bacteria or amoebas. I have "I am a bacteria," and I've got all my pili out here. I have all my enzymes in here, and then what I sort of detect is, okay, there's green stuff; this tastes good, and there's red stuff; this tastes bad.
Even a bacteria can interpret signals and say, "I want to move in this direction and not in this direction." So a bacteria is capable of stimulus response.
What makes us really human—and animals are capable of stimulus response as well—what makes us human is we can take a set of stimuli and create a meta-level cognition about it.
I'll give you an example because I know that's kind of weird. Let's say a dog is trying to establish dominance in its pack.
So there's dog number one, and then there are three members of the pack. It fights with this guy and wins, fights with this guy and loses, and fights with this person and loses.
So this dog will engage in these three relationships. Their win-loss record is a win-loss-loss.
So then there's a hierarchy of A, B, C. Does that kind of make sense? Am I losing y'all?
This is sort of how animals work. They say, "Okay, I can have this isolated experience, and I can interpret this experience."
But what makes the default mode network really interesting is that we can have experiences like, "Let's say I'm bad at basketball, I'm bad at math, I'm shy."
What the mind can then do, the default mode network, is it takes these three individual conclusions, which are established by other parts of the mind, and it rises one level above and says, "I'm bad."
So now this is important to understand. If we look at why does our human mind do this, there's some research on this, but we don't really know. This is kind of my interpretation of it.
If we look at human beings, human beings were tribal. What that means is, let's say we've got 300 people in the village.
If we look at the survival of the village, understanding which humans were good at what kinds of things allowed us to specialize. Once we started specializing and dividing labor, we had farmers, we had weavers, we had hunters, we had doctors, and we had all of these different visions of labor.
Because we understand that not all human beings are the same, we arrive at these conclusions, we differentiate the labor, and it gives us a survival advantage. This is why human beings have taken over the Earth.
If you think about a mother dog, what's the difference between a mother dog and a human mother? The mother dog does all of the jobs that a mother needs to do. She needs to hunt, she needs to feed her kids, she needs to groom her kids, she needs to teach her kids.
There's no division of labor. Sure, you'll have packs of animals that will share work, but it's not like some moms stay at home licking and grooming all of the kids, and then some moms go out and hunt.
All of the mothers in a particular pack of animals usually do everything together. There's no division of labor.
So the default mode network is important from an evolutionary standpoint because it allows us to form meta-level conclusions and allows us to divide our labor.
The problem with that is that in the society we live in today, we do not function as tribes. The way that we live today is like you can have some division of labor, like if you get married or you have a small family unit, but it's not like when you sign up for life, you get born into a cohort of 300 people, and the 300 people that you get born with are a team for the rest of your life.
This is the way that human society is structured; this is the way the human brain has evolved.
What we tend to see is that this results in ego, and there are all kinds of other problems. This system doesn't really work the way that it used to, and at this point, the ego causes us all kinds of problems.
It doesn't mean that the ego is bad or that a-humara is bad, but this is just kind of how it functions.
The default mode network is able to form meta-level conclusions. Now, how do we understand this from a Vedic perspective?
We're going to use a different color for the Vedic perspective. This is a Samskara.
I played a game of basketball, and I got benched. At the end of the game, someone passed me the ball because I was the only one open. I was open because I sucked, and no one wanted to cover me.
I took my shot, and I missed, and we lost the game. Everyone said, "You suck at basketball."
Okay, Samskara. I'm bad at math; something similar happens.
What do we end up with? We combine these three different Samskaras into a-humara.
Now, why is this important? Because a-humara, remember, controls our emotional and our Buddhi experiences.
So this is literally true: your sense of identity will shape your thoughts and emotions.
I remember this is Dr. K's experience of trauma 101. When I was 15 years old, I was sitting in the library one day studying, and there was one girl in our class who was considered to be the hottest girl.
The hottest girl came and sat at my table and started talking to me. Since I was a loser at the age of 15, and the hottest girl came and sat down next to me and started talking to me, my reaction was, "This is some kind of trick. This girl is trying to take advantage of me. There are people hiding; they're going to be looking at me. She's going to do something, and I'm going to be the butt of some joke."
Why is that? That's because I had lots of Samskaras where I was bullied. Since I've been bullied in the past, I look at this situation—this hot girl is coming and sitting down next to me and talking to me—and my thoughts are paranoid, my emotions are shameful and anxious because of my interpretation of the situation.
As it turns out, the girl just happened to be nice. She was one of these genuinely good human beings who thought, "Oh, that kid has no friends and is sitting alone, and I have lots of friends. Let me go and talk to him so that this person doesn't feel lonely."
That's all it was; there was no trick.
If we look at what a-humara does, we have the real world, which is objective, and then what happens is our a-humara takes these real-world stimuli and interprets them based on our past experiences of being bullied and whatnot, and then it generates a set of thoughts.
Okay, and that's all it was, right? She was just a nice human being. What my mind produced in the echoes of my past experiences developed a sense of identity, which then created particular thoughts and emotions that messed things up.
This is the real world out here. If you want to see good examples of this, just look at any gender-focused space on the internet.
What you'll tend to find is that people are bringing a lot to the table. If someone says, "Hey, my partner didn't get me the right cake for my birthday," there will be people who will say, "Break up with them! Your partner is abusive! They're a red flag!" It's like all this kind of unfiltered nonsense.
If you think about it, how is this person interpreting the text? They're interpreting the text based on their own experiences, their a-humara, etc.
We see that a lot in our community, right? Sometimes people will post for help, and then people will say, "Why don't you try this?" and they'll say, "That won't work for me," which is not necessarily wrong.
I'm not saying that. A-humara has a function for a reason. It's not that it's completely false; it's based on your experience, and your experience matters.
My point is that if you look at the function of the mind, there is the objective world, and then there is something that we add to it. This is what a-humara does.
If we want to really live our life in the best way possible—and I mean this both objectively and subjectively—what do I mean by that? I mean that if you want to suffer less and you want to be more successful in your endeavors, the elimination of a-humara is very important, or the control of a-humara is very important.
This is what allows us to observe the world as it is. Our interpretations can get us out of whack, even in a case of something positive.
I want to be super careful about even positive signals from the outside world and interpreting them correctly. I don't want my ego to get control and fall victim to flattery.
People will say, "Oh, you're so great," or whatever, and really, you're not. I'm a nothing. I just am what I am. It's neither good nor bad; it just is. If it helps people, great.
So does that attitude sort of make sense? The interesting thing is that once we shed the ego, we can actually function correctly in the world.
I know this sounds weird, but in the real world, you can have something like a setback. You can get an F in a class, you can miss a promotion, and there's a very simple, logical way to approach this.
You can sort of say, "Okay, I missed the promotion. If I remove ego from the equation and I allow the fullness of my Buddhi, unencumbered and completely objective, to analyze the situation, is there bias? Will I ever get promoted, or do I need to look for a new job?"
If we let ego get in the way, it causes all kinds of problems. Let's say we let ego get in the way, and I say, "Oh, this person is biased. I'm amazing! This person is so biased; they play favorites."
So instead, I'm going to go looking for a new job. But if I'm objectively not that effective at my job, no matter how many jobs I go to, I won't get promoted.
The correct interpretation of the real world, in removing your ego from the equation, is critical to your success in life.
The other advantage is that when we remove ego from the equation, the ego is the thing that gets hurt.
When I work with people, I try to help them remove their ego from the equation. Once they remove their ego from the equation, they are able to see the world as it is, and they can harmonize with the world.
If this is the situation, there is a right move and a wrong move. In order to see that right move and wrong move, you have to remove ego from the equation.
This is objective. If you pay attention to your life—and we'll get to how to do that in a second—you will see that the more you say "I am..." the more problems you're going to run into.
Even when people will sort of say, in a lot of trauma work or whatever, right now there's this sentiment of empowerment: "I am great! I am awesome! I am lovely! I deserve the best! I deserve to be loved! I deserve to get everything that I want out of life!"
I'm like, "Wow, that's really interesting. Where do you get that idea?"
All of this, like, I don't know, toxic positivity in the sense of entitlement that we see nowadays is like, "I deserve the best." I don't know what you deserve in life. I have no idea. I don't know where that's written or what you base that on.
I literally do not know how people arrive at that conclusion. Show me any evidence that you deserve the best in life. I don't see that.
It's a wonderful dream. I think you should strive for the best. I think we should support you in striving for the best, but I don't know where this sentiment comes from.
So whether it's positive or negative, a negative a-humara can be worse than a positive a-humara. But even towards the end, in my clinical work, what I do is someone comes in with a negative a-humara, "I am a loser," and then what I end up doing is I try to give them a positive a-humara, "You're a winner."
Sometimes in my practice, they come in with a positive a-humara, "I'm a winner." They're a narcissist. "I deserve everything."
What we try to do is transcend a-humara. You are neither a winner nor a loser; you are just you. That's all you are.
Transcend a-humara. This is my goal.
As we eliminate the a-humara, we allow ourselves to be more objective, and we can take the right tasks.
The other thing that it does is it reduces our suffering. If you think about it, after Michael Phelps won his first four gold medals, the next day he woke up and was suicidal, which seems really confusing.
We'd think that you should be prideful and happy and exhilarated and whatever, but this is what a-humara does.
Because, okay, now I have won. I don't know if I can win again today. I'm the best, but the moment that you become the best in the world, a moment will come where you are no longer the best.
Can I live up to my expectations? Is it only downhill from here? I've achieved everything that I can in life; now it's just downhill. Oh my God, let me quit while I'm on top!
If you think about the top, what is the top? The top is a comparison to other people.
This is a-humara because remember that one of the functions of a-humara is comparison. If we look at better, worse, best, worst, in order to have this, I must have a sense of "I'm here," and someone else is here. I have to have an "I."
This is what's kind of weird. As a-humara enters the picture, it shapes our thoughts and reduces our outcomes. It doesn't end up doing well.
There can be an improvement in outcomes, by the way. If you're kind of moving from here to here, this can be an improvement.
You can see improvement from this phase to this phase, and then ultimately we'll see improvement from this phase to this phase too.
For the record, we're not recommending—or I'm not recommending—the elimination of a-humara completely. What I'm recommending is a control of the a-humara.
It should not be in control of you. It's okay to have some degree of pride, right? That's okay.
But the question is, are you in control of the pride, or is the pride in control of you? Are you in control of your ego, or is the ego in control of you?
So now the question becomes, "Okay, Dr. K, you are saying that a-humara should be controlled." Absolutely fine.
So how do we do that? Now we're going to teach y'all some advanced concepts.
We're going to start with the basic concept. If we look at a-humara, a-humara is a combination of Samskaras.
Literally, if we look at the process of psychotherapy, if someone says, "I am a loser," then what we do is we go back to their past, their traumatic experiences, and we therapize their traumas.
As we therapize their traumas, the "I am a loser" thought starts to disappear. Does that make sense? Very simple, right?
We do therapy for trauma. If you look at what happens in trauma, we have all these experiences, like my parents are abusive; they're always yelling at me.
What do I conclude as a child? "I am bad," because it's always my fault. My parents are always blaming me, always blaming me, always blaming me.
As they always blame me, my a-humara grows: "I am a loser." My mind stops functioning properly because now it's controlling my Buddhi and my Manas.
It's now controlling my logic, and if it controls my logic, I conclude that I really am a loser.
This is why people with trauma don't realize that they're decent human beings. It's because the mind is not functioning healthily because the a-humara is in control.
So this is one thing that you can do: you can work on the Samskara level.
The second thing that we can do is just focus on something like... If you look at yourself—not look, but if you pay attention to yourself—you are just a bundle of experiences.
You are that which experiences all of the things in your life. You have your thoughts, you have your emotions, you have your conclusions. You enjoy pizza; you dislike smoothies.
But the one thing that's always the same is that you experience it. Your body changes, your mind changes, your identity changes, but you are always you.
I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but I used to not be a doctor, and now I'm a doctor. That's not really a core part of who I am.
It is a part of my identity, but it's not me. If you took me and dropped me off on a desert island and I lived the next 40 years of my life by myself and never interacted with another human being, would I still be a doctor?
You can debate that as much as you want to; the question becomes irrelevant. What makes a doctor? It's a philosophical, intellectual question.
But I'm just me, whether I'm practicing medicine or not. So what you really are is that which experiences.
The second way to get rid of a-humara is through Shuna-oriented practices. That's just an example.
Shuna-oriented practices are practices where we've discussed before in other parts of HG, basically recognizing that, okay, I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my emotions, I'm not even my identity. I am that which is.
People love being just that which is. To be that which is is amazing.
I'll give you examples of being that which is. Flow state is a good example of that. When you're in a flow state and you're vibing, you're playing some music, whatever, you're not thinking, "I'm the best, I'm the worst, I'm good, I'm bad." You're just saying, "This is enjoyable. I'm one with this experience."
See, the a-humara is not one with an experience. In fact, it is a sense of identity that is independent of an experience.
Does that make sense? If I'm just sitting there vibing with the music that I'm playing, I am one with the music.
But if my a-humara is active, am I the best musician here? Am I the worst musician here? Are people judging me? Do I look like an idiot? Am I sexy?
All of these kinds of thoughts will impair your cognitive focus on the experience at hand.
Shuna-oriented practices are designed to remove all the other layers of self so that you're just left with raw experience. But you can experience this in other ways too.
I think watching a sunset is a really good example of that. Walking on the beach is a really good example.
That's the second mode of a-humara dissolution. You will notice that your best periods in your life are the ones where you have no sense of identity.
Even if we look at drugs of abuse, part of the reason that people get addicted to things like opiates and fentanyl is that they let you forget who you are for a little while, plus euphoria.
So now we're going to get to the two new things, which are Vasa and Glisha. These are advanced techniques. They're difficult, but they will be very, very, very powerful at melting your a-humara.
Vasana is a mental habit, and this is going to sound kind of weird, but 99% of your mental experiences are habitual. They're not real; they're not correct; they're just habits.
People say, "Oh, I struggle with desire. I can't control my desires. After I have dinner, I want dessert."
If you really pay attention to that, what you'll notice is that that is a Vasana. It's a mental habit. Every time you have dinner, a part of you will want dessert.
You also notice that you have other kinds of Vasanas. Every day when you go to school, you will think the same thing. You'll double-check your appearance; you'll make sure there's no toilet paper on you at the end of your walk down the hallway.
You're going to make sure no one put a sign on your back because you get bullied.
If you look at the structure of your thoughts, the majority of them are habitual, especially if you're suffering.
People think this is the huge thing. People think, "Yeah, the reason I think this is because it is real. That is why my mind consistently thinks that."
That's not correct; it's a mental habit because you have thought it before, you will think it again.
So if you look at your a-humara, what you will discover is that 99% of your a-humara is a Vasana. It's simply a repetition of the energy of the mind.
Just because you say something a thousand times does not make it true. Just because you think something a thousand times does not make it true.
Yet we go on believing that our identity is correct, but it's not correct; it's just a habit.
If you want to really understand this, this is where things get tricky. Normally, if I were to tell you, "Hey, the stuff that you believe about yourself is not true," how would your mind respond?
It would say, "No, Dr. K, you are wrong," and then it would provide reasons to give me, "Here are all of the reasons you are wrong."
Now, where are your reasons coming from? They're coming from your Buddhi. Is your Buddhi in control of your a-humara, or is your a-humara in control of your Buddhi?
If your a-humara is in control of your Buddhi, your reasons are wrong because they're a distortion of reality.
You will observe this. You may say, "But what if you can't be right?" The answer is basically no.
What we know is that the more narcissistic you are, the more divorced from reality you become. This is a scientific fact.
The more your a-humara is active, the more incorrect your logic is, and the more your reasons are useless. But people don't think that way, right?
When the a-humara is active, it's stealthy. No one thinks, "I am being narcissistic right now." They think that their interpretation of the world is objective.
"This isn't a subjective interpretation. Everyone does hate me. Here's all the evidence."
This is why this is advanced. You have to have a foundation in practice to be able to understand this.
What I mean is you have to have spiritual practice, meditation; you have to be good at observing your mind in order to even realize this. Otherwise, you'll never get it.
I can say this intellectually, but you will have no awareness of it. It won't make sense to you.
What I want y'all to do is observe the habits of your mind, and what you will notice is eye-opening. Your desires are just a habit.
Once you realize it's a habit, you will realize a couple of other things. The first is, if it's a mental habit, you don't even want it.
It is an echo of a want; it's not even a real desire. It's just that my body is used to it, my mind is used to it, and that's why I want it.
There is no actual merit to your desire, which is another thing that a lot of people don't understand. They think that the reason they want something is because it is good.
"I'm logical to want these things." But if you really tunnel down into it and you learn to recognize Vasanas, what you will realize is that a lot of your thinking, your desires, all kinds of problems—staying up late at night, procrastinating—these are all Vasanas because you've done it before, you do it again.
If you think about it, people struggle with procrastination. What does that mean to struggle with procrastination?
You can't struggle with procrastination unless you're doing it a lot. You don't struggle with procrastination once in your life and wake up one day and say, "Oh my God, I struggled with procrastination. My life is so hard."
No, the people who struggle with procrastination struggle with it every day. If it's every day, what is happening on the screen of your mind?
It is a Vasana. It is just a mental habit. "I don't want to do this work right now."
You can do whatever kind of Samskara-oriented work or therapy or exploration, whatever. Forget about all that.
This is what's cool about this methodology: it doesn't matter where the thought came from. You don't need to therapize anything.
All you need to do is notice that it's a habit. All you need to do is notice that this is an echo from the past. It is not actually a real thing that I need right now.
It is something my brain and body have gotten used to, and the more that you are able to see that these things are Vasanas, the less control they have over you.
Okay, so let's understand this. Let's say I have a desire for marijuana. So there's me, and there's marijuana over here, and I struggle with this, right?
So I am at this level. This is a conflict; there's a tension. You're on the same floor, right, as the marijuana.
It's like you're on one side of the screen, the marijuana is on the right side of the screen, and you're like, "You know, right?"
You're struggling with the marijuana, and sometimes you get KO'd, and sometimes you KO the marijuana. But every day you wake up, you're existing over here, you're fighting.
If you recognize that this is a Vasana, then you sit up here, and you are looking down on this. You are an observer of now a Street Fighter 2 tournament. You're not actually involved.
The interesting thing is that when you recognize, "Okay, this is just my mind wanting the marijuana today," you can even ask yourself, "Am I going to win today, or am I going to lose today? Which one will happen?"
It's really bizarre. "Let's see if I can win today. Let's give it a shot. Can I control my mind, or will I lose?"
As you go through this process, I know it sounds weird. You'll just really have to try it. Just observe as many Vasanas as you can and just watch them.
What you'll find is that this stuff starts to melt away because you're over here. You're not on the same floor with the marijuana anymore.
It'll start to sublimate your desire; you'll just struggle with it less.
The key thing to understand is that the strength of this opponent will make this easy or hard. If this is a very big MJ, then it's going to break into your floor anyway.
So you have to start this with small desires or small mental habits. Like, "Okay, I get coffee. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I get coffee. I make coffee."
The question is, "Okay, can you not do that? Can you just wait 15 minutes? Let's see. Am I able to notice the habit of my mind?"
If you look at all of your suffering in life, how much of this suffering is this the first time you've thought this?
99% you've thought before, which means that these are all just Vasanas. They're just echoes from the past. They're not created in this moment.
Now, your mind may argue with me logically. It may say, "But no, my boss is real, right? My boss is going to continue to dislike me."
So what? You don't have to. You can be tranquil about it. You can look at the real world and say, "Okay, my boss is biased. Let me move."
"But Dr. K, that's not so easy..." blah blah blah blah blah.
Here's the problem. I'm talking about what is in your mind, and the second I start talking about doing something out here, your mind will start to come up with all kinds of reasons.
But I'm not worried about any of this out here. I don't care whether it's viable or inviable or anything like that.
That's not what we're concerned about. What we are focused on is what happens in your mind.
Then you will notice it's Vasanas all the way down.
This is the crazy thing, Dr. K. It won't work because reasons.
Okay, now let me ask you a question. How many times has your mind told you it won't work because reasons?
Holy, this is a Vasana too!
Okay, this is a Vasana. All of these reasons—how many of you had before? How is this the first time you came up with these reasons?
No, this is a Vasana too. It's all just a chain of echoes. An echo is not what exists in the present; it is an echo from the past.
Your mind is Vasanas all the way down, and the more that you begin to understand that these are Vasanas, the more power you will have over them.
You're going to say, "But Dr. K, hold on a second. How does that work? Just observing a Vasana—how does that actually cause me to... that won't work? I don't understand how that works."
That's a Vasana too!
If you tried it before and you've already arrived at a conclusion, "Wow, that's so interesting. You tried it before. Did you try it this way?"
"Yeah, I tried it basically that way."
"Did you understand what you understand now?"
"Not exactly, but I've tried it before. It doesn't work."
That's a Vasana.
So this is what's tricky. To understand that your mind is 99% Vasana is very difficult.
Y'all want advanced? Here it is. I don't expect it to be easy.
This is the kind of stuff that if you really want to crack your a-humara, it starts with understanding. Just look at what of this is habitual thinking.
If it's habitual thinking, we want to try to melt it away. Let us start to think based on our circumstances today instead of bringing things from the past.
This is where we get to the second part. We're going to give you some help with that, which is Kisha.
Kisha means coloring. What this sort of means is that the way they thought about this is like this is a pen. A pen is just a pen. It's not a good pen; it's not a bad pen; it's just a pen.
It's just a chunk of plastic and metal and ink, okay? Rubber.
What tends to happen as we go through life is the world just is there. It's not good or bad or whatever, and then our mind attaches coloring to all of these objects.
This is not a good pen or a bad pen, but my mind will say, "This is a good pen. This is a bad pen."
It'll say, "This is a worse pen because see how it's broken? This is a pen. Look at this low-quality ink. It's like a wobbly little tip. The ink doesn't look good enough."
So our mind goes through life, and these are just two hunks of plastic. They're not good or bad; they're just hunks of plastic.
This one is a little bit flimsier than this one. This is a statement of fact.
But then what my mind does is it colors the object. It starts adding all kinds of things. "This is a shitty pen."
If I get a shitty pen, then I feel unhappy. It's just two hunks of plastic, but my mind adds all of this coloring to it.
You don't see things as they are. Your mind attaches all kinds of meanings to them.
I'll give you another example. Someone calls you a loser. What does that mean? If someone calls you a loser, are you a loser now?
Here's the thing: when someone calls me a loser, what does my mind add to that?
In one scenario, I can say, "Oh my God, I'm such a loser. This person is so wise." Or this person is a loser. My mind can fill this in with, "I knew it! I knew that was true! I was afraid that it was true. I believed that it wasn't true, but it turns out it is true. See, I knew it!"
I understood all along. This is all of the coloring that your mind adds, right?
Whereas I could also say, "How so? What is it that makes me a loser? Help me understand if I'm a loser."
Okay, like, what does that mean to be a loser? Let's not add anything to it. Let's just say, "Okay, a human being has called me a loser. They've said these words. That's all."
That's all the reality of it. It doesn't mean anything, right?
You will say, "But no, but Dr. K, that has consequences. What if they're a big content creator and they call you a loser?"
That means that their community—this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. That has real-world consequences.
Sure, so what? This community doesn't like me, so this will necessitate some real-world response.
I can look at that objectively and say, "Okay, I guess I should prepare for some kind of, I don't know, brigading in my chat."
So be it. If there's a brigading in the chat, I need to contact my mods.
I don't need to be mentally untranquil. The real world is out there.
Glisha is like most of your experience of life is what you add to the equation.
There are two things that you all need to do. The more advanced into meditation we get, there are some things that become easy to execute and some things that require subtlety to execute.
We're getting to advanced stuff, which means it requires subtlety to execute. Usually, we'll give you a couple of tips.
This is what I want y'all to do. If you want to understand Kisha, notice that there are all kinds of stuff in the world that exists, and notice what your mind adds to the equation.
This is what you have to understand. That will also let you lean into Vasa because once you understand, "Okay, this is not the real thing; this is a production from my mind," then you will start to see that the coloring is one of the most habitual things that your mind adds.
Even if we get to Samskara and stuff like that, you'll see that Vasana and Kisha are kind of like the mechanisms through which a Samskara operates.
So what is a Samskara? It's a consistent level of Kisha that your mind adds. Every time I see a body of water, I feel fear because it's just a body of water.
Can the body of water be dangerous? Sure, we're not saying that the danger doesn't exist.
But your reaction to the body of water is not commensurate with reality because every body of water you see is not life or death.
If you fall out of a plane and you see a body of water underneath you, then that's a life-and-death situation, right? That's objectively life or death.
But most swimming pools are not life or death. But that's not how our mind reacts because it adds a coloring to the situation.
It does not see the world as it is. That is Glisha.
The second thing is that you will notice that most of your reactions in life are Vasana.
What we need to do is just observe: "Have I had this thought before? Is this a mental habit?"
If you want a really, really, really good way to engage with Vasana, sit somewhere and do nothing for like an hour and watch what your mind does.
Watch, and then do it again tomorrow. Watch how much of this is habitual.
"Holy, my mind is just on autopilot all the time, all the time, all the time."
We'll even have people in our community who are like, "I'm living my life on autopilot." They're even aware that the mental functioning is automatic.
As you notice Vasana, as you notice Glisha, your power over a-humara will improve because a-humara is a combination of Vasanas.
The a-humara is the coloring that you add to experiences. It is the narcissistic interpretation.
So these are the two things that you all should look at. As you look at these two things, you may say, "What does this have to do with a-humara?"
If Vasana and Glisha don't exist, a-humara will disappear. It can't stand.
As Vasanas go away and as Glishas go away, a-humara has no... it won't exist. It requires these two things to function.
They're at a kind of a different level, but that's a conversation for a different day.
When trying to work through negative ego, would you recommend people to first move to a positive ego before desiring it entirely?
I would say yes and no. You don't need to.
Let's understand a couple of things. The first is that negative a-humara can be dissolved directly, and the goal is to have a small ego that you control. That's really the goal.
By small, the more control you have, the smaller your ego becomes. So those two things are actually like two sides of the same coin.
The more in control of your ego you are, the smaller it is relative to you. If I'm like a giant and there's a grasshopper that I have on a leash, I can control the grasshopper.
In the same way, the more in control you are, the smaller the ego will be relative to you.
You can directly dissolve negative ego. In fact, we have studies that show that.
We know that, for example, mindfulness practices will reduce narcissistic behavior. We know this.
At the same time, the direct dissolution of ego is a difficult, slow, and subtle process.
If your ego is very, very powerful and it is very negative, it can be hard. It'll take a while to dissolve it.
From a practical perspective, oftentimes, especially if we're talking about people who have lives where they have consequences—if you had two years where you could go to a monastery and just dissolve your negative ego, go for it. That can work.
But practically, what I work with is people whose negative egos have consequences today.
They're in abusive relationships; they act like doormats; they let other people manipulate them; they let other people take advantage of them, and that has a real-world consequence.
Oftentimes, what is easier than dissolving ego—because that's hard—is to build a healthier ego.
Practically, the two will kind of go hand in hand almost.
As we look at especially this Samskara exercise, we kind of talk about, "Okay, when you get this trigger, how do you see yourself?"
Seeing yourself in a different way is easier than not seeing yourself at all.
You don't have to develop a positive ego first, but it is easier to move from a negative ego to a positive ego than it is to move from a negative ego to no ego.
Arguably, it's just... I mean, it's not easier, but practically, that's how it works out.
There are weird subtleties to that. The question doesn't really translate, but if you think about it, right?
If I have some aspect of my a-humara that is negative and I were to transform that into something that is more positive, that'll help me more in the short term than dissolving my whole ego, which is like a weird... it takes a while.
Is being judgmental also related to the ego?
Okay, so judgment can be related to the ego.
Let's just use one quick example to illustrate.
Someone asks the question, "What about judgment?"
Let's just use one last example to illustrate. Remember that the Manas and the Buddhi are here. The Manas makes judgments.
Even then, this is why I like Sanskrit. What do you mean by judgment?
There are two kinds of judgments. There is a logical conclusion, and there is a reaction. These are both judgments.
What do we mean by this? If I'm walking down the street and I see someone's face, and I'm like, "This guy's face... this is a Manas reaction."
There's no logic to it, right? I dislike that guy's face. "This person sucks."
Then I can also make a judgment from the Buddhi. Let's say I have a friend in my friend group who is very drama-oriented, narcissistic, whatever.
Then I logically conclude from a calm mind that hanging out with this person is a mistake.
Both of these are judgments, but they come from different parts of the mind.
Now, the role of a-humara in this is, remember that a-humara can influence both of these.
If we look at, okay, this friend in my friend group is toxic, that thought can come naturally from Buddhi and be conducive with reality, or it can come from a-humara.
This person in my friend group is someone I am jealous of, but I'm not aware that I am jealous of them. Therefore, my a-humara has to tear them down to make myself feel better.
So I'm going to call them toxic, and I'm going to try to remove them from the friend group.
Do you all see how it's bizarre? You can come to the same conclusion depending on how the mind functions.
It's almost like saying, "Okay, if I have a math equation that equals five, what over here?"
Well, we could have 1 + 4. We could also have 2 + 2 + 1. We could also have 1 * 5.
There are all kinds of ways to get five. So any judgment that you have in life, there are many ways to get there.
Maybe it's your Manas, and you just don't like their face. Maybe it's a logical conclusion from Buddhi that is not controlled by a-humara, or it is being controlled by a-humara.
You can arrive at the same conclusion. This is what the yogis figured out, right?
There isn't a good or a bad; there is just a... It's not like a conclusion is good or bad; it's just what is forming the conclusion. What's your methodology?
A scientific study can find any outcome. The question is, what's your methodology? Because that's what tells you whether something is accurate or inaccurate.