Vasanas and Samskaras

The first time I heard the terms vasanas and samskaras was in India with Swami Kashi. Before I met Swami Kashi in India I was in Brazil. I had gone to Brazil to meet a famous healer that a Psychic Medium in the Namaste Book shop in New York City had recommended to go visit. The Psychic said that I would love it because of the crystals that they had there. She told me that the energy of the crystals in Abadiania was like nowhere were else. I got hooked! I said I will go there and I did. I even ended up living there years later.

I wanted to go to India ever since I can remember because I was always amazed and intrigued by the power of the Himalayan Yogis. I read lots of books and researched on the internet and other places about the yogis. I was fascinated by them. So when I saw in Facebook the retreats that Swami Kashi was providing again I got hooked! I enrolled and payed without even thinking about it. I just knew I had to do it. I also saw the dates and my trip to Brazil was very close to my trip to India but anyhow at that moment in my life I felt like the universe was taking to those places.

I remember when I was in Brazil I still hadnot gotten my visa to go to India and even though many beautiful humans told me it was very easy and showed me how to do it I still had issues. Swami Kashi was so nice and he helped me.

Then I returned to Monterrey, Mexico which was where I was living at the moment and prepared as quickly as posible for my trip to India. Unfortunately, I didn’t read all the instructions for the retreat so I was not as prepared as others that joined the retreats. I definitely learned a lot in those retreats! Never did I imagine that I was going to had wash my clothes but I learned and it’s cheaper!

Swami Kashi is a very wise jnana yogi. He has studied for years the scriptures and done tapas and more. So during the retreat he would teach us Vedanta. In the teachings of the Vedanta there are the terms Vasanas and Samskaras. A Samskara is an imprint in the subconcious mind desired or not. It’s left in the subconscious mind because of our daily experiences. These imprints in the subconscious mind affect our psyche. In time these impressions return to the conscious level of the mind and can affect our habits, emotions, our sense of self worth, and making in the end karma.

When we meditate those samskaras come up. There are two different samskaras mentioned in the Yoga Sutras: 1) What leads us to be unconscious. Externalizing consciousness as something outside of us. 2) The samskaras that cessate the mental processes that lead us to the realization of the self.

So, as we can see there are good and bad samskaras. Patanjali says that being present can help eliminate all the negative samskaras. There is a term: nirodha parinama, which means the mental transformation of dissolution. Basically this says that by being present and being aware of the gaps after an inhalatiom and exhalation we can be in stillness.

Now the term vasana means “to dwell” and “to remain”. Vasanas is also the chain of samskaras. To remove these vasanas that govern our psyche we need to to tapas and nirodha parinam.

Ramana Maharishi talks about the vasanas in the Maharishi’s Gospel and how to transcend their limitations. He says if the mind becomes introverted through enquiry into the source of aham vritti, the vasanas become extinct. The mind then becomes absorbed into the light of the One Reality, the Heart.