Meditation Ruined

There are many factors which ruin meditation, where day after day, the yogi cannot consolidate the practice because of interruptions in the quest for psychic penetration in the meditation effort.

Patanjali did a favor by giving the syllabus of yoga but as in every type of learning completing the course is not as easy as reading of the requirements. One factor which ruins meditation is memory. Fortunately for us Patanjali listed that as one of the five vrittis interferences. Memory is hardly discussed in books on meditation. We rarely hear of it in lectures by teachers.

,This is perhaps because memory is a secretive saboteur, a guerrilla fighter whose tactics are unknown and who attacks and escapes before he can be targeted by the yogi.

Memory has a barrage of weapons such as

• recent events
• past events
• long past events
• dream events
• triggered events
• choice events
• disliked events
• subconscious events
• unconscious events
• blank events

Any of these when conjectured by memory and illustrated in the mind by the intellect may cause the yogi to be distracted for a moment, for several seconds, for minutes. One memory may assist another to arise in the mind, so that the yogi finds himself/herself hypnotized into viewing the events, leaving aside the objective of the meditation. This may happen in a flash. It may be in slow motion. It will hold the attention of the yogi, keeping him/her in a trance.

The yogi meditated for half hour, or so we thought because he sat for that long. How much of that time was he engaged in viewing displays of memory?????? I wonder!