The Four States of Vasana, and the One That Fools You

2026-09-01

Yoga Vasistha, Upasama Prakarana, Section 50. Lecture 188 by Swami Jyotirmayananda. The previous section closed the story of Gadhi, the brahmana who asked to be shown the extension of maya and got a whole exiled lifetime inside two muhurtas with his head under water. Section 50 does not add to the story. It changes register. Sage Vasistha stops illustrating and starts prescribing, and Swamiji follows him there: the question is no longer whether the world is a dream, but what is actually done about the mind that keeps producing one. The answer arrives in a form that is easy to misread as pessimism. The sages, Swamiji says, still possess minds. They still have vasanas, thoughts, sentiments. Nothing is amputated. What has changed is that the seeds have been burnt — the subtle impressions that used to germinate into new rounds of desire cannot sprout any more. The image he chooses for it is popcorn: the same grain it always was, now permanently unable to grow. Sanskrit calls that condition dagdhabija, the roasted-seed state, and Swamiji names it plainly as the goal of sadhana. Most of the lecture then goes into a diagnostic that is rarely taught this frankly, because it is unflattering. A vasana can be in four conditions, and two of them feel like progress while being nothing of the kind. One of them is the specific trap of the practitioner who has been at this for years. The section’s second half turns from the diagnosis to the cure, and the cure is not a new technique: it is a way of looking that needs no second lamp, the jewel in deep water found by the light it is already giving off. This companion follows the lecture in order. The passage index below deep-links each turn in the talk, and the sections after it stay with what Swamiji actually argues rather than summarizing around it.

The Passages

After Gadhi: The Dream Is Not Argued With, It Is Woken From

Swamiji restates the previous section in two strokes before moving on. The world is a dream, and not an ordinary one — a dream within a dream, within, within. And the length of a dream makes no difference to its status. A short one and a long one both end the same way: you have to wake up from it. He then gives the mechanism in a domestic image that has become one of his signatures. As long as the soul is using the mind as an iPad, and the mind is using the brain as a desk, the wandering continues. The equipment is not the problem. The identification with the equipment is. From there comes the distinction the whole section rests on. The Self is devoid of mentations. It is untainted by the thoughts and desires of the mind. Everything you imagine, want and dream passes through the mind, and the reality of your own Self is neither enriched by any of it nor diminished by any of it. Two illustrations carry that. Whatever is projected onto a screen — comedy, tragedy, terror — does not touch the screen, which remains completely aloof. And the sun goes on illuminating whatever drama its light falls upon while remaining untouched by what happens in it. Both images are old; what Swamiji does with them is press the practical consequence. However your day went, however your mind behaved, when you leap into sleep all of it not only stops mattering but stops existing. Sleep, he says, gives you the closest glimpse of the highest reality about your own Self — a line worth holding onto, because the lecture returns to it at the end and asks for something far more demanding.

Where the Mind Is, the Flocking Begins

The verse Vasistha gives next is unsentimental. Wherever the mind exists, there do the desires and concerns for objects flock. Swamiji reads the flocking literally: crows and vultures gathering at a cremation ground. It is a crude illustration and he says so, then defends it, because the beginner’s mind needs to be trained on what is actually in front of it before it can be trusted with subtler claims. What is in front of it is destructibility. Every animal, every bird, every human being is here for a while and not forever, and the world itself goes on changing. That is the field the mind flocks to — kshara, the perishable, as against akshara, the imperishable. Calling the world a field of mortality is not contempt for it. It is a refusal to be surprised by it. And then the pivot that opens the rest of the lecture: it is true that sages possess mind. The mind is not the disqualifier. What is gone in them is the root system.

The Sage Keeps the Mind and Loses the Seeds

“Mind will be there, vāsanās will be there, thoughts will be there, sentiments will be there.” What will not be there, Swamiji says, is the deep holding-on to body identity. The natural state of I am stops being the body and stops being the limited mind. The burnt seed carries the argument. Subtle desires are the basis on which the mind goes into projection at all; when the fire of wisdom has passed through them they behave like roasted grain. “Vāsanās come to the state of roasted seed.” Samskaras still operate — they are what keeps the body intact after enlightenment — but no new ones are being laid down. The old ones are simply allowed to finish. Swamiji is careful about the word burning, and the care matters. Burning is figurative; nothing is actually consumed. If a cloud obstructing the sun moves off or is dissolved by the light, nothing has been destroyed, and the sun is exactly what it was before. Atma is the same. We say burnt only because there will be no new vasanas to sustain the delusion.

Four Conditions, and the Two That Feel Like Progress

Here the lecture becomes a diagnostic. Before naming the four states, Swamiji narrows the field: the vasanas at issue are the ones tied to the kleshas, the afflictions. Vasanas unrelated to the afflictions are not your problem. A black cloud obstructs the sun; a soft cloud does not obstruct it, and rather glorifies it. The afflicted vasana — malina-vasana — is fed by five factors, and they are Patanjali’s: avidya, ignorance, which Swamiji glosses sharply as having the opportunity to understand and somehow not wanting to use your intellect; asmita, egoism; raga, attachment; dvesha, hatred; and abhinivesha, fear of death. Minds dominated by these lay down klishta-samskaras, and out of those sprout the vasanas that actually bind. Prasupta, dormant. Children are the standard example: anger, hate, egoism and pride are all present and asleep, which is why the child reads as pure. But the state is not the child’s alone. At any moment most of your own vasanas are latent, not operating. Tanu, attenuated. This is the practitioner’s state, and Swamiji spends the most time on it because it is the most flattering and the most dangerous. After a stretch of satsanga and discipline, the afflictions that produce anger, hate and greed become so thin that the aspirant develops the illusion that he has conquered everything. One would wonder whether he has become Brahman. Then a provocative situation arrives and the anger comes up bigger and more vigorous than before — and now it has a larger ego behind it, an ego that has awakened kundalini and is a great yogi. A mere straw just defied you, Swamiji observes. The state is good if you keep going; it stops your progress the moment you are deluded by it. Vicchinna, mixed. Here you cannot tell whether you are angry or attached, whether what you have toward an object is raga or dvesha, because impressions of both are lying in the same place. Swamiji calls this the cultured state, the condition of normal cultured humanity, and the image he gives is unkind and exact: guests are coming, there is no time to clean, so the dust goes under the rug and the room looks well. Then people sit in it and their allergies start. “Impurity is not gone, it’s just under the rug.” This is why the people we agree are good people have limited goodness — put them under sufficient provocation and the goodness explodes. Udara, fully expressed. Nothing has to be inferred here; the state keeps its eyes and tongue and teeth open. The person is angry and boiling with it. But the defining feature is not the loss of control. It is that the loss of control produces no sense of defect. It is felt as a distinction. Swamiji sends the listener to the news for as many examples as they want. The ideal, he says, is to bring the vasanas down to tanu — and then keep going, because tanu is precisely where practitioners stop.

Sublimation, Not Suppression

The correction is short and it is the practical heart of the lecture. All these negative qualities are short-circuited energy. When you cut down that energy — burn it up, drive it away, whichever word you prefer — what has actually happened is that it has been corrected. Negative things are sublimated. “Anger is never cut down, it’s sublimated into love. Pride into humility.” The same energy that produced the fury now expresses the humility. Which means the measure of a person’s capacity is not how little heat they have. The more furious the anger used to be, the greater the love available on the other side of the conversion.

Satsanga and Svadhyaya, Read Practically

Vasistha’s instruction is to adopt persistent self-effort with a firm resolve to attain wisdom in this very life, taking recourse to good association and the study of scriptures. Swamiji then widens both terms past their scriptural definitions. Satsanga is not confined to this room. It means everything you do from morning until night, and the vigilance is against wrong association wherever it starts — including inside your own mood. He gives the modern version: you are in a negative mood, you sit at your desk, and you ask Google for the ugliest things you can find. Plenty opens up. A thoroughly negative person finds even an atmosphere of joyousness hateful and wonders how people can be laughing at a time like this. The same situation is a source of good association or bad association depending on what the mind brings to it. “understanding association is a profound art. Art of your heart.” Svadhyaya gets the same treatment. Study the scriptures and their guidance, and study them again and again, because the enrichment does not run out. The same Gita read repeatedly opens further. Good food is never finished with; you want it again and again. Thinking you have now known everything is simply a mistake about how this works. Then he extends good association to the world itself, through Sage Ashtavakra’s twenty-four gurus — the ocean, the sun, the breeze, animals, birds, human beings. Twenty-four is symbolic, he notes, in the way twenty-four by seven is symbolic. If the mind is sattvika, if the body is relaxed and the life simple and the mind carries the aroma of bhajana and kirtana, then lessons come from a bird, a tree, a leaf, your own nails and hair. “The whole world can be your guru.”

Discovered by Its Own Light

The section’s central question is now asked directly. Where can this Self be found? How is it realized? And the answer is the verse the lecture opened with, cold, before the invocation. “Behold how a shining jewel that has fallen into deep water is discovered by its own light.” Swamiji says it needs little explanation, then supplies the version anyone can test. Your torch has fallen into a bit of mud. Look into it — do you need another flashlight? You do not. Look, and you see where the light is coming from. Applied inward, the search runs out quickly. Something coordinates touch and sight and hearing: the mind. Something evaluates the mind and throws light over it: the intellect. And what lights the intellect? In simple terms, awareness. Without awareness nothing can be known, and everything known or experienced requires it. Experience goes on changing; awareness remains the same. That awareness is God. That awareness is Brahman. So the question of distance collapses. How far away is your own awareness — the root core of your consciousness, what operates through the brain, sustains the body, makes you speak and touch and feel? Devotion at the temple stage is perfectly commendable, Swamiji says, and it is kindergarten. The purpose of every temple and church is to turn the mind toward its own source. Once that sensitivity develops, God is closer to you than your own brain. You do not have to find God. Just relax and let go of egoism.

Devotion in Every Act, and the Internal Melody

Vasistha’s instruction is to be devoted to the Self while talking, while opening and closing the eyes, while accepting and rejecting objects, in all such activities. Swamiji makes it concrete. When you talk, do not forget that God is operating through your tongue. When you communicate with someone, they may not know it, but they are the same Brahman as you, and their I am is the same I am. Every reflected sun has its own apparent I am; the real one behind all the reflections is the Sun. Two lines from the devotional tradition anchor it. Siyarama maya saba jaga jani — the entire world is permeated by God. And ghata ghata mem sai ramata hai: in every individual there dwells God, so do not speak a bitter word. You are careful in a temple; the personality in front of you is a temple. Deho devalayah proktah — this body of yours is a shrine, and so is everyone else’s. Then a shift in emphasis. The insight I am the Self, absolute, eternal, imperishable, should become an internal melody, running under a life that continues outwardly as normal. Without that melody the mind is blown off course by the smallest thing; good news takes a week to come back from, and bad news does the same. With it, movement through challenging situations stays unshaken — and the small shaking that does happen becomes nourishing, because a tree that never gets shaken grows weak at the root.

Serenity, the Sleepless Sleep, and Poison Turned to Nectar

That quality is serenity, and Swamiji makes an unusually testable claim about it. “Serenity is your great success in your sādhana.” It is not maintained whole and all at once; it develops by degrees, and to the extent it develops you understand that you are the Self. That understanding is self-evident experience, which is why you never have to ask whether you are doing well. Full enlightenment is the limit case: all three worlds and everything that happens in them cannot shake you. Yoga Vasistha elsewhere puts both extremes side by side — a shower of burning embers, or greenery and a breeze carrying sandalwood — and says that to one rooted in Brahman, both are the same. The lecture’s final instruction is the most demanding thing in it. “Discover the sleepless sleep of the Self.” In deep sleep everything moves away: body, mind, and even the beloved ego. Now awaken the understanding, spur the intellect, and do yoga-nidra, brahma-nidra — visualize absolute sleep without sleeping. If you can do that, Swamiji says, you are opening the window to God-realization. And as it begins to succeed you find yourself patient and enduring in challenging situations, not because they have stopped, but because the internal personality is relaxed enough that all of it looks like drama. The ocean watches its own waves, and to the ocean it is wonderful fun. Section 50 closes where devotional literature likes to close. In this world there is neither mine nor yours, neither me nor mine, neither you nor I. For one tasting the bliss of wisdom, even poison turns out to be nectar. Swamiji brings in Tulsidas — garala sudha ripu karahim mitai, gopada sindhu anala sitalai — and reads it out: poison becomes nectar, terrible enemies become best friends, and the vast ocean that threatened to drown you becomes a hoofprint’s worth of water. The world that had been a standing threat stops threatening from anywhere. That, he says, is the goal to be realized within this lifetime.

Questions for Reflection

Which of the four states describes your own anger most accurately today, and what would honestly distinguish tanu from conquest in your case?
If satsanga means everything you keep company with from morning until night, what did you associate with today that you would not have chosen deliberately?
Where in your day does the internal melody actually stop — what is the smallest piece of news that still takes a week out of you?

Terms in This Lecture

Vasana — a subtle desire-impression left by past experience, the seed from which the mind’s projections sprout.
Samskara — the impression itself, laid down by action and thought; klishta-samskaras are those tied to the afflictions.
Dagdhabija — literally burnt seed; the state in which vasanas remain but can no longer germinate.
Prasupta — dormant, as in children: the vasanas fully present and asleep.
Tanu — attenuated; thinned by practice to the point where an aspirant may mistake quiet for conquest.
Vicchinna — mixed or interrupted, with attachment and aversion crowding the same object.
Udara — fully expressed and unhidden, with the vice felt as a distinction rather than a defect.
Klesha — affliction; the five are avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha and abhinivesha.
Satsanga — good association, read here as the whole company a day is kept in, not a setting.
Svadhyaya — study of scripture, returned to repeatedly rather than completed.
Akshara — the imperishable, set against kshara, the perishable world of changing forms.
Brahma-nidra — the sleep of Brahman; yoga-nidra understood as absolute sleep entered while awake.

Lecture 188 by Swami Jyotirmayananda. Yoga Vasistha, Upasama Prakarana, Section 50. Yoga Research Foundation, Miami, founded 1969. The complete archive of Swamiji’s lectures is free to all.

This study guide is drawn from the archived teachings of Sri Swami Jyotirmayananda.