In Yog Sutras 1:30, Patanjali delineates nine antarayas, impediments, that we encounter in life: illness, mental laziness, doubt, misplaced priorities, inattention, excessive craving, confusion about the ethical, the tendency to give up, and inability to maintain stillness.
These antarayas result from extant mental states. The overarching idea is that when our minds store unpleasant thoughts, memories, and experiences, it spews psychological stress. A mind thus challenged will create anatrayas that will keep you tethered to your limited identity.
Notice when you are stressed or anxious, how you begin to doubt unnecessarily and incessantly. And this samshaya, doubt, then strikes at the heart of self-identity and self-actualisation. Similarly, comfort-eating when confronted with challenging emotions is the mind creating the impediment of avirati, impulse satisfaction. Avirati is at play when we indulge in bingewatching, or create negative mental loops in our mind, disregarding the important things we need to get done. The antaraya of bhrantidarshan has a close associate in modern psychology: cognitive bias. It is a tendency towards an emphatic avowal of one’s world-view as apt and the other as contrarian. Bhrantidarshan is the genesis of rigidity and stagnation. Such false avowal of the Self also engenders the related yet distinct antaraya of pramad, the proclivity towards the futile while keeping in abeyance all that could be life-enriching.
Styana has many ramifications yet its most impairing modern acolyte is procrastination: the repeated tendency of the mind to steer away from what it perceives as challenging or emotionally enervating. While styana underlines the ordeals posed by mental laziness, the antaraya of alasya delimits physical inactivity. The Yog Sutras posit that both alasya and vyadhi, illness, occur when the mind is fraught with negativity and despondence.
Sloth and disease, in yogic philosophy, stem from a mind contaminated by all that is life-draining and exhausting.
‘Anavasthitatva Chittavikshepa’ alludes to the abjection of anxiety that the modern mind is commonly subject to. It is the constant agitations and vexations of the mind towards what was and what will be, ignoring the tactility and the ephemerality of the present moment.
Another debilitating antaraya is alabdhabhumikatva, the tendency to give up when confronted with perceived failure. Discouragement towards what we seek often stems from a feeling of stagnation, a belief that what we seek cannot be attained either because we are insignificant, or incapable. But aren’t significance and capacity functions of the mind? That is, we will be as significant or as capable as we see ourselves to be. But the antaraya of alabdhbhumikatva will block any perception of the best possible you. It forces you to operate from a place of fear.
Each of the nine antarayas stem from how your mind is trained to think – conditioning. That is, the root of our distress is within us, as is the capacity to identify and rectify it. So, let’s learn to listen to the mind and discern, when it is working for us and when it is creating antarayas on our path. This will become the basis of our capacity to change with time and lay the foundation of ever-lasting success.
Authored by: Hansaji Yogendra
Start a Conversation
Post comment