Relationship Memory

Relationship Memory

Here I go again trying to explain the unexplainable, the inexplicable, the abstract. However, this is significant on the path of inSelf Yoga™, where the burden of proof, the application of method and the integration to higher planes of consciousness are with the practicing yogi. While for some spiritual paths, the details have little or no importance, and are ignored, on this one path they are required to be perceived and integrated.

On March 23, 2020, Rishi Singh Gherwal entered my subtle head as I did the meditation session immediately after doing an intense breath infusion under his tutorship. He went down into the trunk of my subtle body during the meditation. Soon after he came into the head again with two strands, one grey and one black. These were like two hairs. He released these. They went into the trunk of the subtle body, disappearing from the head of it.

When I saw this, simultaneously, I noticed that I was in a memory from my juvenile years when my body was eight years of age. It was a live scene in a one-bedroom house in Guyana during the year of 1959. Present were my paternal grandmother, and paternal aunt. I was that adolescent without an adult identity. I looked through that body trying to find a relationship identity and did not find it.

What was I looking for?

It was for a relationship with the two women but it was based on a relationship need in my psyche, where there was this unexpressed need for a maternal relation which could not be matched because neither woman was the biological mother. From that experience and in retrospect, I assume that the maternal relationship need cannot be fully satisfied or matched with anyone besides the biological mother.

Of interest is the fact that after that meditation session, I could not recall this experience of this memory. I tried and tried because I wanted to note it and publish the information but I could not recall it, except for the part where Rishi came into the subtle head with the two stands and then released them.

However, on the following morning, on March 24, 2020, the memory of the incidence surfaced as soon as Rishi entered my subtle head. Rishi said that these relationship memories ruin meditation. That applies even if they are unknown to the yogi. So long as they enter the intellect, they affect meditation negatively. Patanjali listed memory as one of the nuisances of meditation.

However, there are different types of memories. Even instinct is a memory. As I explained here relationship is also a memory. This does not mean that one can eliminate memory forever because that is no possible. But it does mean that during meditation by all means the various aspects of memory need be suspended except for special transcendence memories which facilitate higher perception and help to propel the yogi to higher planes of existence.

During meditation on the following day March 24, 2020, Rishi went into the trunk of the subtle body. He emerged with another memory. This one showed scenes of a friend and myself when I lived in Trinidad during 1966. It shows us going into and then exiting a movie theatre. It showed that I paid the taxi fares, the ticket cost and purchased the snacks. It shows that my friend’s elder brother appreciated that I did this. It shows this person’s happiness when he heard that I regularly did this. For him it fulfilled a relationship need and causes a particular type of memory deposit in his psyche.

A strange thing happened prior during the breath infusion session, where Arthur Beverford, who was present, said that he had to leave. As he was leaving, I said to him, “Stay and complete the session. What you desire to do is not as important.”

Beverford then looked at Rishi. Rishi gave him permission to depart. I then said to Beverford. “No, do as I say because I am the teacher. He is the parent. As the parent he has no choice but to indulge you. That is what parents do. Stay and finish the session. There are only two more postures with breath infusion left.”

Beverford then stayed. Rishi remained silent.

For Beverford that was a relationship memory interference in his yoga practice, an interference of relationship memory. How does this work?

Beverford was attacked by a memory impulse which caused him to appeal to Rishi as a son would to a father. When he wanted to leave, his mind remembered the relationship he has with Rishi such that it invoked that relationship memory and compelled him to appeal to Rishi to be excused from the session.

However, the rest of the story is that even though Beverford is my first asana teacher, he is my pranayama student. Yoga is not stereotyped. One can learn one aspect from one person and can also teach another aspect to the same person. Yoga is not for the narrow-minded.

Because Rishi referred Beverford to me for pranayama instructions, Rishi has the position of being a parent to Beverford when Beverford is being instructed by me. Hence Rishi even though he is the teacher of myself and Beverford, cannot supersede my authority when I teach pranayama to Beverford.

After Beverford left, which was as soon as the pranayama session was concluded, Rishi came up from the trunk of the subtle body with another memory from my childhood. This was a memory from my adolescence, from when I was eleven years of age. I was in Guyana and I was looking at a bicycle, examining the license tag and the serial number which was a metal stamp on the main frame. What has this to do with yoga?

That is an excellent question!

The bike itself has nothing to do with yoga but my examination of it has everything to do with skill memory. This is another type of memory which is subtle and hard to control. It affects the efforts for deep meditation because skill is an exploitive quality in the psyche.

As one can take rebirth based on being addicted to sex intercourse, so one can take rebirth all the same due to addiction to the cultivation and expertise developed in certain skills. Making a detailed note of a skill application, as I did to the bike, creates an indelible memory which may deter deep meditation (samyama). It is one manifestation of the memory vritti which Patanjali condemned.

Even though my body was eleven years at the time, it noted the design of the enameled license tag, the signature stamp of a serial number on the metal tubing of the main frame and some other technical features. But each of these memories is a danger to higher meditation. For this information, we must express appreciation to Rishi Singh Gherwal.