Saṃskaras and Smritis: The Cause and the Remedy for Our Mistaken Identity

Saṃskaras and Smritis: The Cause and the Remedy for Our Mistaken Identity

[00:45] Defining Moments that Shape Our Identity

Thank you for listening to my podcast. I’m Thom Knoles. This is the Vedic Worldview.

Saṃskara. It’s spelled S-A-Ṃ with a dot under it, S-K-A-R-A, saṃskara. And it’s pronounced with that sort of nasalized thing that the French people are very good at. Saṃskara. Saṃskara.

Saṃskara is a name given to a mistaken intellect approach to an event. So when some kind of big, very overshadowing event has occurred, when we give that event such importance that it becomes pivotal to our identity, then this is what is referred to as a saṃskara.

And a saṃskara could be something which is an overload of noise, or an overload of experience, or a car crash, or a relationship commencing or ending. Saṃskaras are not necessarily all in the negative category.

They could be positive, meaning an experience which you would prefer to have happened, but is nonetheless overwhelming, or an experience which you would’ve preferred not to happen, but is overwhelming.

So some kind of overshadowing experience has occurred. Something that the impact of it was so great that it caused us to have maladaptation, to use scientific language. We don’t adapt, we end up reacting. And then what happens is it creates a powerful pivot point in our awareness, in our consciousness, that becomes a defining moment of a thing that describes and defines who we are and what we are. The experience that becomes defining.

It is the word saṃskara that gives us the English word scar. Some lasting impression left from some kind of event that broke the skin or made the body have a shock. A scar. A scar in consciousness. A scar in the body. Saṃskara is the etymological source of that word scar.

[03:30] Mistaken Identity

So what is a saṃskara? “Well, I won the Nobel Prize when I was 21.” By the way, I didn’t, but supposing. “I was a great writer, and after winning the Nobel Prize at the age of 21, I won a Pulitzer Prize at the age of 25. Pulitzer Prize winning, Nobel Prize winning author, writer.” Whatever.

If there is an extent to which, in one’s own consciousness, that that is how you define who you are and what you are, the who and the what are slightly different, but we’ll get to that, then that’s a saṃskara for you.

If you are the one who fell off a boat and floated at sea for three days before being rescued and barely made it alive to the shore and you have this event deep in your consciousness of something traumatic that was barely survivable.

Or you went to a war or you had some relationship that was with somebody who didn’t appreciate you and you barely survived the terrible events that occurred while relating to this person.

Or you witnessed your best friend falling from an aircraft without a parachute or something like that. Whatever it is, overwhelmingly good, overwhelmingly negative, and the consciousness space is somewhat in orbit around that. That event has so much gravity that one senses oneself as being defined by it. It describes me.

Now in the Vedic worldview a saṃskara is a thing that causes suffering because it causes mistaken identity. Identity in the Vedic worldview is not based upon doings. It’s not based upon leanings.

It’s not based upon preferences, sexual or otherwise. Any kind of preference. I’m a latte kind of person. I’m a strong-Irish-breakfast-tea kind of person. I’m a no-caffeine-at-all kind of person. These doings, these preferences, these leanings and all of that are not considered in the Vedic worldview to be legitimate descriptors of identity.

What are you? You are the Totality field of Consciousness having a human experience. This is the Vedic axiom. This is the Vedic proposition for you to digest. You are actually Universal Consciousness having a human experience, and we can put parenthetically here (and not for the first time.) Not for the first time.

And so the idea that you as a consciousness field, you as an individual experiencer are describable or definable merely by events that occurred to you, then those events that you’re using to cause yourself to have an identity, they’re referred to as saṃskaras. Saṃskara.

A saṃskara is anything that gives you a false sense of identity. And people argue for their saṃskaras, “Yes, but I am a victim of this.” Or “I am a that. A winner of that.” Or, “I am a this. I’m a that.”

Well, actually you are the Universal Field living in a human body (and not for the first time.) This is your reality.

[07:38] Smriti: Awakening the Vast Consciousness Within

So now we need to contrast a saṃskara with its illuminated cousin, which is going to succeed the saṃskara. And that is a smriti. Smriti is spelled S-M-R-I-T-I, Smriti. Smriti is the illuminated version of a saṃskara.

It is not in denial of events. It is not in any way making light of things that occurred and that happened, but it is the way in which those things get converted into pivot points of change in the storyline of an individual growing into realization of their true identity, growing into realization of their vast consciousness.

I created a course once called Awakening the Vast Consciousness Within. And you can ask your local teacher of Vedic Meditation to provide you with the experience of that course. It’s many hours of discussion on this topic of saṃskara versus smriti, but let’s dive into smriti for a few minutes, and just to give you a preview of coming attractions.

A smriti. When we learn Vedic Meditation, we learn a methodology whereby we sit comfortably in a chair and we learn to close our eyes, and using the mechanism of the technique of Vedic Meditation, the mind settles down into a less and less excited state until transcending, stepping beyond thought, the mind experiences the Unbounded Consciousness Field.

And with repeated experiences of that, people tend to practice the technique every morning for about 20 minutes, and then sometime late afternoon, early evening for another 20 minutes, repeated experiences of that becoming one with that Unified Field of Consciousness, that deep, inner, vast awareness imprints itself on, delicately, on the inner ego structure.

[10:24] Like Attracts Like

The ego structure is that layer of human consciousness that assembles elements of identity. And for most of our life we are restricted only to those things that can come in through our senses and get past the intellect and get past the fine level of feeling and then arrive in the ego structure.

So if somebody looks at you with knitted brow and says, “You are a bad girl,” then likely, if we’re very young, that sound and the meaning of it goes through our ears and reaches the intellect. The intellect may not have any deniability in any of this, and so that information goes to the fine level of feeling and creates whatever impact it creates and enters the ego structure.

And now a saṃskara, “I’m a bad girl,” is vibrating inside my consciousness. One day I hear at school that, “You see that big fig tree over there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where all the bad girls congregate.”

And something from inside goes, “Oh, one of them. Sounds like that’s talking to me.” And so you head over and hang out with the other bad girls because you can identify.

Your saṃskaras end up, and I’m making a rather childish analogy out of this, but just to give you an idea, our saṃskaras end up giving us a sense of definition which is not entirely accurate in terms of where our consciousness is going. Our consciousness ultimately is attempting to illuminate itself and to expand and extend its territory of influence, in order to have a sense of reality that is resonant with our innermost concept of what we are.

Our innermost concept of what we are is, “I’m the one indivisible whole unbounded cosmic field, having a human experience. And this thing about, “I’m a bad girl,” or, “I’m a this,” or, “I’m a that,” or whatever it is we think we are because our saṃskaras can guide us around the world collecting more of the same. Like attracts like.

[12:55] Printing Out Litter in the Body

Saṃskaras attract other saṃskaras that are like them, and they end up being litter. It’s like litter on a beautiful field, a beautiful field of grass that’s had some old milk cartons thrown on it, and a tin can here and some garbage there, and so on and so forth.

Saṃskaras tend to litter the landscape of the ego structure, and as is the consciousness, so becomes the body. So when we have consciousness that has these… that is besmirched with saṃskaras, then these aberrations end up printing out as physiologic status and structure. As is the consciousness, so becomes the body.

And so just as any kind of state of consciousness that we’re in is going to print out as a body, we have a saying in Veda, which is, yesterday’s mind printed out as today’s body, and today’s mind right now is in the process of printing out as tomorrow’s body. As is the consciousness, so becomes the body.

Yesterday’s consciousness is today’s body. All the yesterday’s combined, and today’s consciousness is right now printing out tomorrow’s body. And so, when we look at physiologic structure, this is a printout of the consciousness state. Consciousness is the software, and the body is the hardware that got printed out by it.

So saṃskaras also have a tendency to print out litter in the body. Just as they are litter in the ego structure and in the individual consciousness field, they also print out a dysfunction and dis-ease in the human body. And so it’s important for saṃskaras to be relativized.

[15:10] Vedic Meditation: Adding Context to Growth Experiences

This is what happens when we practice Vedic Meditation. So we settle down to that least excited state, our consciousness becomes imprinted for moments at a time, but long enough and consistently, morning, evening, morning, evening, consistency makes a big difference.

Added to, “I’m a boxer,” or “I’m a Pulitzer Prize winner,” or “I’m a convict,” or “I’m a wife beater,” or “I’m a whatever…” alongside that is, “I’m the Unbounded Consciousness Field,” and the ego structure begins progressively to expel and eliminate those elements of boundary. Tight boundaries that don’t sit well with, “I’m Unboundedness,” get expelled from the ego structure during meditation.

And this process happens spontaneously without any individual human intellect being invited to the party. Just a spontaneous purification of the ego structure. It’s not that the event can’t be remembered. It can be remembered, but it is put into context. A contextualized deeply impressed event in consciousness, which had been a saṃskara is now able to be remembered as a pivotal event and a comparison point from which one grows, from which one grew.

[16:51] Siddhartha Sees Suffering

Let’s use a very live example of the Shakya Muni. What is Shakya Muni? This is the proper name of the person who later on became known as the Buddha.

The Buddha. Buddha. Actually, the historic Buddha was never called Buddha anytime in his lifetime. In fact, not for a hundred years after his death was he ever referred to as Buddha. During his lifetime, he was referred to as Shakya, which was his family surname, and Muni, M-U-N-I. Muni means a saint, a saint of the Shakya clan.

And who are the Shakyas? They’re still extant today in North India. An aristocratic family who held the throne of North India. They were the royal family of North India of 2,600 years ago, approximately.

During the time of the Shakya Muni, the king and his wife had a child. They named the child Siddhartha Gautama, and his last name was Shakya, and he grew up in a kingdom as the crown prince.

And so what is in this case the saṃskara? “You are the crown prince. You’re the crown prince. You’re destined to lead the country. To lead the nation you have to behave like a prince. You have to learn all the elements of State. This is what you are. This is who you are. This is your destiny. This is what you were born to.

“And your marriage has already been arranged. That lady over there who, from her childhood, was trained to become the consort, the royal consort and wife and queen of the crown prince when you become king. You’re destined to run a country. So let’s get on with this now.” And he did so obediently. Saṃskara begins.

And then he grows to be a man in his young twenties, and he and his wife have a child. He’s still the crown prince. His father’s still alive and the king. And then there was a pivotal event. For the first time wandering outside the carefully protected palace grounds. Siddhartha Gautama, the Shakya, the last name Shakya, saw suffering outside the palace for the first time in his life.

People sick. People old. People crying. People starving. People having all these experiences. Another saṃskara was deeply emblazoned into his consciousness. And it was a pivotal event that then made him leave the comforts of the palace and go off seeking to become at first an ascetic monk who attempted to gain enlightenment by robbing his body of every kind of pleasure that the body normally would desire and deserve.

[20:13] Siddhartha Attains Nirvana: Becomes the Shakya Muni

And cutting a long story short, eventually he arrives at a new state of consciousness and learns meditation, learns how to go beyond thought, and sitting under a Bodhi tree, arrives into the nirvana.

Nirvana means liberation. Liberation from the fetters and shackles of bondage to an identity created by saṃskara. No longer was his consciousness the consciousness that was defined by all of these various kinds of boundaries and events that were placed upon him in his upbringing. Now he experienced himself as the one indivisible whole Unified Field.

He was liberated from the shackles of these boundaries, and he was liberated, and his potentials were liberated. Nirvana has that double meaning, just as liberation in English has that double meaning. Liberated from boundaries, liberation of potential. Nirvana.

Now he was the Shakya Muni, the saint of the Shakya clan. Did the Buddha, as later he became known, did the Shakya Muni have memories of his childhood as a crown prince? Absolutely.

Did he have memories of seeing the suffering of others? Absolutely. Were those things still pivotal to him? Absolutely. They were. He accepted the title of Shakya Muni after all. Royal family name, Shakya, and then Muni.

It would be the equivalent today if one of the Windsor boys from the palace. Buckingham Palace, went off and became enlightened, if we called them the Windsor Saint. He still used the royal family name, Shakya Muni, the saint from the Shakya family. And so allowing himself to be referred to as Shakya Muni, there was acknowledgement of the family from which he came, acknowledgement of his aristocracy.

He was already a very famous person, long before gaining his enlightenment. Long before gaining his enlightenment, he was famous all over India, and the fact of his enlightenment was easily made into fame by virtue of the family from which he came. So it was all part of him. This was not rejection of his past. Complete acceptance of his past.

[22:56] Enlightenment is the Big Story

But now who is in there inside that body? What is inside that body? Universal Consciousness having a human experience. Not an individual human seeking universal experience. No. Universe sitting inside of the human experience adopts all of the features that went to make that individuality, adopts the history, adopts the storyline, contextualizes it, gains it, gives it perspective, historic perspective, and gives it grace.

All of the saṃskaras got turned into smritis. Smritis meaning things that happened along the storyline, pivotal things that happened along the storyline on the way to enlightenment. So the enlightenment is the big story. The enlightenment is the definition.

The enlightenment is the descriptor that describes accurately what’s inside that body. Not “Oh, once upon a time I was a prince who got everything I wanted, and I was forced to learn matters of State.” It’s the enlightenment that is the thing that is the main descriptor, and there were events. So saṃskaras get transformed into smritis.

And so this is the relationship of saṃskara to enlightenment. In enlightenment there are no more saṃskaras. No more events that define the consciousness that inhabits the body. They are certainly elements of the consciousness, but they’re no longer the defining elements. The defining element is the one indivisible whole universal consciousness that is having a human experience.

[24:58] Q — Can smritis inadvertently revert to becoming saṃskaras?

Jai Guru Deva, Guruji. I’m wondering if you could comment about how some long-term meditators might inadvertently turn smritis back into saṃskaras and recycle that.

[25:15] Pragyaparadha: The Mistaken Intellect

And so, this is the process of what we call making the mistaken intellect resolute. So mistaken intellect has a name in Sanskrit, which is pragyaparadha. Pragya, P-R-A-G-Y-A, pragya, and then a new word added to it, aparadha, A-P-A-R-A-D-H-A. Pragyaparadha, the two words merged together with a long a in the middle, pragyaparadha.

Pragya means consciousness state. Aparadha means mistake. Pragyaparadha is the mistake of the intellect. And then the opposite of that, it is resolute intellect. The resolute intellect.

The last thing to gain enlightenment in the human psychological substructure, the substructure of the psyche, is the intellect. The intellect is the last thing to gain enlightenment.

One of the reasons why the Shakya Muni ended up being called the Buddha is because Buddha, in Sanskrit, means master of the intellect. A Buddha. Buddhi is intellect. Buddha is master of that. Buddha. Master of the intellect. When he had mastered his intellect based on regular repeated experience.

Now, sometimes we can’t take a hint. I go unbounded. This vast unboundedness that occurs in my meditation then begins to appear episodically outside of meditation. There are moments outside of the regular twice-a-day practice of meditation where, because during meditation, so many times my awareness has transcended all this thought.

And then there are episodes outside of meditation where perhaps I’m having a quiet, reflective moment and I feel my awareness mushrooming out into the unboundedness. And what it’s doing is giving me a hint. You’re actually this. “This is what I actually am. I’m this.”

[27:42] The Intellect Cleaves to Its Former Identity

But then one is indoctrinated. We self indoctrinate. First of all, we’re indoctrinated by the outside world. “You’re the one with a skinned knee.” You’re a fully highly achieved Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winner and a head of state, but the kid from school reminds you that you’re the one with a skinned knee. “I know you. You’re just the one with a skinned knee.”

And each of us has a tendency to want to climb back into the comfort of the old suffering identity. “I am really just this.” And then, as against that continued episodic experiences of, “I’m Unboundedness.” Because in the end, what has to happen is integration of the two.

“I’m the Universe having a human experience,” which is enlightenment, does not mean I’m not human. That’s not what it means. It means I’m human, I’m Universe having a human experience. That means that my humanity has to rest well inside the same container as my universal predominant Self. But universal predominant Self has to be the dominant feature of how I consider myself.

So when I consider myself, do I consider myself as a cluster of thoughts that are in orbit, like little planets around a saṃskara, around an event, around a descriptor that is some relative event that’s occurred sometime? 

When I consider what I am, am I just all the thoughts that are in constant orbit around certain kinds of events or bits of information, or am I Unboundedness and I can experience the event, but there are no thoughts in orbit around it that are defining of me?

So I’m undefinable by my thoughts. To be undefinable by your thoughts is something that’s very evident even to other people. In full enlightenment, when we have let go of that tendency, the mistaken intellect tendency, the intellect, which is still untrained, tends to go back to a former identity and to cleave to that, to hold onto it, as against all the other evidence.

[30:28] The Reluctance of Saṃskaras

Somebody may look at you and go, “Ah, deep samadhi.”

Someone may look at you and say, samadhi means pure consciousness. Someone may look at you and think, “That is the unbounded consciousness field there.” And even hearing that one might think, “Well, that’s what they think of me, but I’m really just actually little old me. I’m just little old me with all my regular little old me thoughts.”

And so what happens is that over a period of time, and we can convert it from being decades to being just years or even months, if we take a very pointed approach to correcting our intellect, it can’t be, if you keep experiencing this unboundedness over and over again, which we do when we practice Vedic Meditation, it can’t be that actually the best descriptor of you, the best definer of you is things you experienced in thought clusters. It just can’t be. It just can’t be.

And so what will happen is that, in a graded fashion, the unboundedness will begin to assert itself as your true descriptor, your true identity, and sometimes the individuality, the saṃskaras may attempt to reassert their dominance as your identity.

This is a Vedic idea in Vedic psychology that our ignorance and our stresses don’t want to be neutralized. They want to grow just like everything else in the universe wants to grow, our negativity also wants to grow. Negativity means that which negates. That which negates what we actually are.

[32:27] Universe Having a Human Experience

So let’s go back to Shakya Muni again, sitting under the Bodhi tree. He wasn’t yet in nirvana. He was on his way and his saṃskaras began to embody themselves.

First of all, he experiences, and there are various descriptions of this, all leftover echoes of his own descriptions of it from 2,600 years ago. But, first of all, he experiences the headless bodies raining down on him, and hitting him.

These are supposed to be the bodies of soldiers that were slain by his father’s armies during his upbringing and supposedly offering themselves up as the karma that he should be bound by. And he could feel the bodies whacking against his own body, and yet he retained the Unboundedness.

Next, the severed heads themselves began landing on him, pummeling his body and splashing him with blood, and yet he retained the Unboundedness sitting under the Bodhi tree. Next, his individual saṃskaras all united into a being that looked exactly like him and appeared before him and said, “I am your very self. Look at me. I’m beautiful. Look at me. I’m beautiful.”

And although he saw it, he retained his primary identity as the Unboundedness. And then the saṃskara shapeshifted into a scary rakshasa, a demon, and roared at him like it was going to destroy him. And yet he retained his unboundedness. He retained his primary definition as Universe having a human experience.

And then with a great roar and a cry and a scream, all of the saṃskaras melted away, and all that was left was the Unboundedness. Now, could the Unboundedness remember things that had happened in his life. Absolutely. Universe, having a human experience.

[34:54] Aham Brahmasmi: I am Totality

The moral of the story is, if you don’t want to have a dramatic event, you can defeat these saṃskaras one at a time. Anytime you find yourself that your self definition is possessed by saṃskaras, possessed by past events and the thought clusters that are in orbit around them, anytime that you, as a meditator, find that your individuality has decided that, “I’m a one of these,” or “I’m a one of those,” and it’s trying to use relative statuses and structures as your identity, you’re setting yourself up for a Bodhi Tree experience.

It’s not necessary to go through that. All we have to do is one of our Vedic techniques: Aham Brahmasmi. Aham means I am. Brahmasmi means Brahman, Totality.

Aham Brahmasmi is, I am Totality. Not, I am the Totality. The is separate. I am Totality. I’m Totality. A reminder of what I am and who I am because for anyone who’s becoming illuminated, it’s very uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable to live in the thought-cluster mentality.

“I am the thoughts that I’m having. I’m definable as events that occurred to me.” I am Totality is very, very comforting. Very, very comforting.

And so there’s an advanced Aham Brahmasmi, which is, “Oh, come on, Aham Brahmasmi.” Come on. As if. I’m Totality. I’m Totality. And how is Totality? Totality has the biggest and most vast perspective, the largest context in which to view content.

Content viewed from the largest possible context, now is smriti. Content viewed too close up and without unbounded perspective is saṃskara. And so saṃskara, very uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable.

We can watch what it does to our breath. It makes us breathe in a ragged fashion. [Mimics dramatic breathing] All that stuff. Dramatic breathing. Dramatic breathing is saṃskara breath. And when we find ourselves heaving sighs, “Aaahhhhh!” and all that stuff. All you did was sit down in a chair, “Aahhhhh!”, like you’ve just run a mile or something. You’re being gripped by saṃskara consciousness.

Whereas illuminated consciousness, just quiet, very settled breath all the time, very quiet settled breath all the time. One knows who one is. One is no longer being squeezed into these boundaries of thought clusters that identify me.

“I can’t be identified by events. I can’t be identified by thought clusters. There were events, but they’re not me. I am the Totality field.”

[38:32] Snap Out of It

And so then when we don’t do our regular resolute intellect practice, making our intellect resolute, we don’t do it a bit at a time and remind ourselves of that regularly, then what happens is drama. Dramatic phenomena occur.

Some big lump appears on the knee or something because that saṃskara is printing out and it’s basically saying, “Look what you’re becoming.” Very often it happens in our body. Our body begins to display forms and phenomena that are foreign to the frictionless functioning of the body. This is our saṃskaras printing out in our physiology.

And so this is really Nature saying to us, “Get your intellect resolute about this, Aham Brahmasmi, about this I am Totality field. You’re starting to move back into relativity and there’s a question of relevance beginning to appear. What’s the relevance of this form and function that refuses to go universal?”

The refusal to go universal ends up being a dramatic way of having to gain enlightenment by some dramatic kind of experience. We can do without the drama. All we have to do is every time we feel a lack of bliss, every time we feel a little lacklustre, we go into that Aham Brahmasmi consciousness, back into the “I’m Totality.”

Or we can use the advanced technique. “Oh, come on. I’m Totality. Oh, come on. Aham Brahmasmi.

Snap out of it. Snap out of it