Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy

by Sadhguru

In the yogic system of classification, the mind has sixteen dimensions. These sixteen fall into four categories. There is the discerning, or discriminatory, dimension of the mind or the intellect (buddhi); the accumulative dimension of the mind, or memory (manas), which gathers information; and what is called awareness (chitta), which is beyond both intellect and memory.

The fourth dimension, ahankara, we discussed earlier—the aspect of the mind from which you derive your sense of identity.

The intellect is becoming a barrier because you keep it constantly dipped in the accumulative part of the mind—your memory, manas.

You will find that every thought that arises in the mind has its roots in data you have already accumulated.

When you keep your intellect dipped in this limited, fragmented, accumulative dimension of your mind, you draw conclusions about life that are completely distorted.

But the same intellect can be sharpened if you allow it to soak in the other aspect of your mind—your awareness, chitta. If you want to reach your ultimate nature through the mind, you need to make the intellect truly discriminatory, in the ultimate sense.

all it means is learning to discern the real from the illusory, what is existentially true from what is psychologically true.

Learn to place your intellect in the sheath of your awareness rather than in the sack of memory and identification. Once you do, this tremendous instrument can cut its way effortlessly toward the ultimate.

Sadhana If you consciously walk a tightrope, you have no choice but to be aware. If your intellect is constantly choosing between good and bad, it has become a prejudiced intellect. And when it is busy sorting the world into good and bad, you will most definitely fall off the tightrope. Don’t take the tightrope literally. You could just try bringing a certain precision into the physical movements of the body. (If you have a hatha yoga practice, it should happen anyway.) For instance, if you see a straight line on the floor, try walking in perfect alignment with that line, maintaining an easy gait. This is not about becoming self-conscious, but about becoming precise or exact. Try this with your body and see. Bring precision into every movement, every gesture. This is one way of dipping your intellect in awareness.

Awareness is not something that you do. Awareness is what you are. Awareness is aliveness.

The dimension of the mind that modern societies have completely ignored at their own peril is awareness, or chitta. This is intelligence that is completely unsullied by memory.

When you are in touch with this dimension, you are in a state of heightened awareness, which allows you to be fully conscious and intoxicated at the same time—and with no external stimulus whatsoever! When you learn to access chitta, being blissful is entirely natural.

Awareness is a process of inclusiveness, a way of embracing this entire existence. You cannot do it, but you can set the right conditions so that it happens. Don’t try to be aware. It will not work. If you keep your body, thought, emotion, and energies properly aligned, awareness will blossom. You will become far more alive than you are right now.

the universe is just a play of five elements—water, fire, earth, air, and ether. Creation is just a frolic of these five. It is ether that we refer to as “akash”in yogic terminology, and each human being has a certain dimension of this fifth element around him or her. While the other elements are within the body, the akashic, or etheric, dimension envelops the physical body—usually up to a distance of eighteen to twenty-one inches. Because this element is still physical, it carries information. Anything that happens at a certain level of intensity or profundity in your life is written into this field of akash around you.

When you gain conscious access to your awareness, you gain access to the akashic dimension around your body, as also to the akashic dimension around the planet, the solar system, and the entire universe.

In the yogic lore, it is said that when you learn to access this dimension, you have enslaved the divine! God works for you from now on.

This means that once you distance yourself from the compulsiveness of your own genetic and karmic information, life becomes unburdened, flexible, incredibly effortless. This is a dimension beyond intellect, beyond identification, beyond memory, beyond judgment, beyond karma, beyond divisions of every kind. This is the intelligence of existence itself, in which life always happens exactly the way it should, with absolute and unfaltering ease.

Sadhana If you are aware at the moment of death, you will be aware beyond death also. Start practicing with sleep. Sleep is nothing but temporary death. Every night you are presented with a tremendous possibility—the possibility of becoming aware of the dimension beyond death. You can try this experiment tonight. At the moment that you move from wakefulness to sleep, make an attempt to be aware. This practice can be done in bed. If you can be aware of the last moment when you make the transition from wakefulness to sleep, you will be aware throughout your sleep. You will see it is a lot of work. So here is another thing you can do. If you are used to waking up to an alarm, substitute it with a sound, a tune, or chant that reminds you of your awareness. You can easily train yourself to make this association. It can become an alarm for your awareness. Of course, you cannot use an alarm to go to sleep! But the fact of the matter is that unless you completely dis-identify from your body, it is not easy to move consciously from wakefulness to sleep. The first possible moment that you come awake, see if you can become consciously aware of something—your breath or your body, for instan...

Knowledge is essentially accumulated information. All information is only related to the physical nature of existence. Knowing, on the other hand, is a living intelligence. With or without you, it still is. You are either in it or you are not: that is the only choice you have.

And the pursuit of yoga is just this: moving from this small headful of information to a cosmos of intelligence. What a tragic choice people so often end up making—choosing the finiteness of the human brain over a universe of infinite knowing.