Your identity is an illusion
Ahamkara: Identity
The identity principle is another major source of human suffering. “I am better than them”. “I am not as competent as her”.” I am a liberal”. ” I am the underdog”. It is our entire personality, both its dormant and active aspects. The stronger the individuality, the more embellished, more fortified, more powerful the person. More famous, more sought after, more emulated. What’s wrong with individuality, we should aim to have a strong personality, shouldn’t we?
What is wrong about individuality is that it is illusory. Our identities are a tapestry of our desires and fears, and only them. In fact desires and fears are the building blocks, the meat and potatoes, the bricks and mortar of ‘identity’. We think, we feel and do everything motivated by just two emotions: Desires and fears. We fashion our identities around them.
The desires for acceptance, love, money, power, fame are in effect the desire for happiness, are they not? I desire these things/people/phenomena because I think they will make me happy. I fear rejection, failure, humiliation, pain, loss, because I fear suffering. I prepare to avoid this suffering by fortifying my identity. I work to create acceptance and love. Don’t you see how my fears feed my desires too? I desire happiness and I fear suffering, so I want all outer world phenomena which will fulfil my desire and reduce my suffering. Don’t they have an intimate link? Fear is a desire too, it is negative desire. The desire to avoid.
Desire and fear are the pillars on which the complex, swirling, nebulous organism of our ‘identity’ precariously rests. Our desires are the source of our suffering, so are our fears, which are actually negative desires, the desires to avoid.
We now know all fears and desires are gross manifestations of our subtle, invisible samskaras. These samskaras are deep-seated impressions, with positive and negative emotional charges. Impressions from good and bad experiences we had in the past. In the past of our current lives, or even further back in our previous lives. We also know that all desire, and in turn all samskaras are the source of all our suffering. Hence any construction which rests on the foundations of desire and samskaras can cause only suffering. Ahamkara, our identity is exactly that, a terrible source of suffering in our lives.
Raga and Dvesha: Attachment and Revulsion
Attachment and Revulsion are two of the greatest causes of our suffering, we sufficiently know of this reality. We do not want to attach ourselves, but it is involuntary. It is unwitting, it is compulsive. We abhor some experiences in life, and it is a matter of great suffering to come face to face with them yet again. We prefer some ideas/people/ phenomena and we want to avoid some. Isn’t that natural with us all?
Tying in intricately with the identity principle, attachment is the desire to re-experience. An earlier experience left behind a positive impression/ residue with a positive emotional charge. We wish to have re-experiences, goaded by the positive impressions of the past. These are the gross manifestations (Vasanas and Vrittis) of our positively charged samskaras.
Similarly revulsion is the deep desire to avoid, it is the fear of re-experience. Another experience left behind a negative impression carrying a negative emotional charge. The negative emotional charge fuel our desires to avoid re-experiencing them. These are the gross manifestations (Vasanas and Vrittis) of our negatively charged samskaras.
Abhinivesha: Fear of death
The fear of death is in a class of its own, and no other fear compares with it. With its uncertainty, its dreadful, ominous sense of finality. Each one of us fears most this deep, dark, unknown of life. The lack of any a posteriori knowledge, i.e. knowledge after experience, puts it apart from all other fears. No one alive can ever tell you what death feels like, or what happens after death. Yoga, in its most mature manifestation, in its full embodiment, releases you from this fear of death, from the suffering that this fear brings. This fear transmutes when its true meaning dawns on you along the yogic process. You will know that this fear, along with all others is simply a misconception, a misunderstanding. Travel the path to know, see it for yourself. Embark upon it. Words are embarrassingly incapable of expressing the true meaning of Yoga. They beggar description. Unable to capture its full expression, words do the disservice of oversimplification. These truths are best left unsaid because words reduce them, but they must be expressed because otherwise they are misunderstood. Ignorance is worse than reduction.
Experiencing Yoga is the best way to know. It is the only way.