4. ROLE OF MAJOR ATTITUDES.
Now let us see how kleshas influence our major attitudes and consequently our minor attitudes, how they underlie and pervade our everyday efforts and activities. Let us first consider the major attitude towards oneself. Because of avidya, or inability to realize our identity with the Supreme Reality and to experience total bliss, unity and harmony, and because of asmita, or I-feeling which has its roots in avidya, we identify ourselves with a tiny piece of reality and call this tiny piece of reality "I". This identification leads to innate feeling of separation and being different from the outer world as well as to the feeling of loneliness, abandonment, insignificance and self-loss in the huge manifested world. But at the same time our true nature remembers the state of extensive unity and harmony of the Supreme Reality. That is why we constantly try to get back to that state but mistakenly we try to get these feelings from the outer world. So we try to expand our "I" and find unity by means of the outer world. That is why we are constantly in search of love, appreciation and recognition by other creatures. We try to find our beloved and make a family. We try to make friends and find people who appreciate our ideas, our qualities, our achievements. We want to make our "I" more significant trying to become famous, to get a high-ranking position, to get power, to be an authority. We like to have pet-animals because they love us and accept us without any conditions. If someone is more successful in his efforts (we can't say totally successful because failures and disappointments always come into the picture if we try to find love, peace, unity and harmony in the outside world), he feels more or lest satisfied with his life, he experiences feeling of transient happiness from time to time, he employs all his efforts to experience happiness again and again and in this way he is busy in his activities throughout his life, and usually in our era of Kali Yuga these people, who are usually strong in character, active and energetic, rarely think about yoga, self-realization and enlightment. However on the contrary if someone fails more than succeeds, he feels definitely dissatisfied, offended, frustrated, in other words unhappy with his life. If periods of dissatisfaction last for a long time they can lead to depression, neurosis, psychosomatic disorders. In our era of Kali Yuga usually these people, who are weaker in character, less active and energetic, are attracted to all sorts of spiritual teachings including yoga.
Another consequence of avidya, asmita plus deep social influence and conditioning in respect of major attitude towards oneself is that everyone has a certain self-image. Usually it is an overestimated self-image of a very good man with quite a number of virtues and good qualities without taking into consideration one's weaknesses. What a good man and good qualities exactly mean depends on the epoc, the period in the history, as well as society and culture. Another side of the phenomenon of self-image is that most of people create an ideal image of oneself to reach and put double standards for them selves to reach it.
Another cause of self-hatred is very widespread nowadays. It is hatred towards one's body. Many people hate their too fat or too skinny body, the form of their nose, lips, eyes, buttocks, breast. This particular piece of material world which they consider themselves does not satisfy them at all. Even beautiful (from the socially accepted standard of beauty) people start to get frustrated about their bodies when bodies start to get old. Even in this very material respect people are hostile towards their nature what in some cases can lead to depressions, neurosis, psychic disorders. In some cases it is connected with attempts to copy someone who is considered the ideal person, i.e. the movie-star, a political leader, a successful businessman. People try to copy their bodies, their voices, their manners, to reach the same levels of power, fame, to make the same huge amount of money. In other words people do not want to be themselves, they do not even know who they are as a personality, they do not know and respect their nature, leaving apart their true nature. Now the some measure of success or failure can be applied to this situation. If people are successful in their attempts of building up and maintaining their self-image, they feel more or less happy and satisfied. However in many cases the outer world breaks our self-images into pieces. And in this case of failure ultimate frustration and dissatisfaction leads to 2 possible variants of reaction. In the first case people become aggressive and angry with the outer world. It is usually the case with quite egoistic, but not that much assertive and strong people. They still believe that their overestimated self-image is correct, and they blame the outer world, people, system, etc. that this world, people, system do not understand, accept, appreciate their knowledge, intellectual capacities, virtues, good qualifies, etc. They are angry with the whole world and are burning inside with the desire to revenge which is usually let out to people who are weaker than they. In the second case people become aggressive and angry with oneselves. Usually this is the case with sensitive people who are prone to self-analysis. In many cases they are religious people. They observe their emotions, thoughts, behaviour and find that they are often far from desired moral and ethical standards. They try self-control and discipline combating "bad" thoughts, emotions and reactions but with little success. Even on the contrary the more they fight the more "bad" thoughts, emotions and reaction arise. This causes auto-egression and deep suffering. Swami Muktibodhananda in his commentary to Hatha Yoga Pradipika writes: "Often we observe that when we try to practice self-control and discipline, we create more mental problems in our mind and personality. If we were to take the statistics of patients in mental hospitals, we would find that most of them are religious, because self-discipline and self-control split the personality. Therefore before you try to practice self-discipline and self-control, you must also prepare yourself."1 However not necessarily religious people suffer from hatred towards oneselves. Most of us suffer and tend to be frustrated blaming ourselves if our performance at school, university, work is not as high as we expected it to be, if people let us understand in direct or indirect form that our knowledge, behaviour, manners are not perfect. Thoughts "I am stupid, I am boring, I can't speak clearly, etc." come from time to time to our heads causing suffering. In some people these thoughts become chronic and lead to low self-estimation, aversion towards any actions which constantly remind them about their inabilities. In many cases this low self-esteem is subjective and sometimes it is even difficult to understand why this particular person thinks that he is stupid, boring, generally bad, etc., while his behaviour, appearance, communication suggest different understanding.
I have briefly reviewed how kleshas affect one of our major attitudes, namely attitude towards oneself, and how this attitude can influence our life. Now let us take a closer look at another major attitude, i.e. attitude towards process and values of life. All five kleshas influence this attitude. Because of avidya and asmita a person acts in the manifested world as a separate piece of the manifested world. Remembering within his true nature eternal peace, bliss and harmony of being the Supreme Reality of Brahman, the person tries to find happiness in the outer world rather than within himself. He is involved in his worldly activities through raga and dwesha seeking for pleasures, which to his mind must bring him happiness, and trying to avoid what cause suffering. So the process of life for him is constant seeking for happiness without a positive result as pleasures and sufferings take one the other's place like two sides of the same coin. Swami Satyananda writes that each individual "becomes aware of his identity, his ego, and automatically feels different from the other people and objects around him. He becomes the ego moving among other things. In gross or subtle ways everything outside himself becomes subservient to him, to be used to bring more happiness, comfort, etc. to him. In this way likes and dislikes arise. Things or people who make him feel good, happy, who inflate his ego, attract him. Things that tend to make him feel unhappy, uncomfortable, etc., become things of repulsion or dislike."2 Driven in this way by raga and dwesha in search of happiness, an individual tries to acquire as many things as possible, i.e. to make a lot of money, to buy a big beautiful house, car, expensive and fashionable clothes; it is difficult to list all things which we try to acquire in hope that they will make us happy. Another goal in this context is to achieve a high social status, a high-ranking position, to get people's recognition in the form of fame, authority, awards, and power. The whole life becomes a process of acquisition and achievement. If a person more or less successful in his attempts he feels relatively happy and spends the whole life in further attempts to get more and more desired things, recognition, comfort, and very rarely thinks about taking a yogic path. However much more people tend to fail more than succeed. And in this case there are two possible ways of reaction. They are called an optimistic attitude and a pessimistic attitude, which if taken can make people happier or unhappier in the same situation. The optimistic attitude is like a program in the mind which make the person to pay attention to and take to his heart mostly positive sides of any situation, even hopeless situation from somebody's else point of view. The optimistic attitude by itself can make a person happy with minimum success in acquisitions and recognition. The pessimistic attitude on the contrary programs us to notice mostly negative sides in any situation and leads to feeling unhappy even in a situation which can be considered excellent by others. Swami Satyananda writes: "Happiness lies in the mind, not in manipulating the world to suit our desire… Our mind accepts and acts on only that information which is compatible with our present programming. In other words, if we now feel, if our mental program dictates, that everyone outside hates us, then our mind will only accept and give access to information that reinforces this attitude. Other information will . If we feel our mental program dictates that everyone loves us, then again our mind will interpret information to reinforce this belief."3 So optimistic and pessimistic attitudes towards the process of life are real forces which make people happier or unhappier in their everyday life.
Another aspect in attitude towards process and values of life, which builds up due to kleshas which affect our unconscious and subconscious mind, is attachment to objects in the outer world, i.e. things, people, as well as to one's reactions to the outer world situations which become habitual. Through raga we become attached to things, people that give us pleasure. We cling to them and try to keep them in our possession forever, or at least as long as possible. If we can't possess we try to be as closer as possible to the objects of our desire. We get upset and frustrated if we lose our favorite ball pen. We'll be sad about it for a few days. We'll be upset for much longer period if our car is stolen. And we'll suffer bitter pain and agony may be for years if our beloved mother, or husband, or wife dies.
We can get attached to things and to people even through dwesha. Very often our mind is fixed on the object of our hatred that causes real pain. We do not even want to think about it but it comes again and again into our mind again and again we find ourselves mentally in the painful situation which happened to us. It haunts us and we can't relax. Similarly we get attached to reactions. If our child or husband does not do what we asked him to in time, most probably we'll get angry. And this behavioral pattern will manifest again and again if similar situation comes up. So attachment is another aspect in our attitude towards life which can cause unhappiness.
Raga and dwesha along with attachment lead to the further aspect in our attitude towards process and values of life. Most of people live either in the past or in the future ignoring the present moment. Many old people live in their memories, and where past is ever brighter and happier for them than their present, especially moments of their fame, success, positive emotional upheavals. Some of old people even claim that nowadays nothing is good and everything good is in the past. In their opinion, everything starting from political regime and ending with manners of young people was much better in the past, and now everything is just disintegrating. Due to this approach people can't feel happy in the present moment and if are not really unhappy, but constantly in bad, negative mood.
The other tendency, which is more widespread among people of different ages, is constant living in the future and being ever full of expectations, either positive or negative. Our mind is very rarely involved in the present moment; it is constantly making plans, trying to organize our future in the most comfortable and enjoyable way for us as individuals. We are constantly driven by raga and dwesha in our future and forget about even enjoying in the present moment that was the aim of our efforts in the past. Constructing mentally our future we base all our programming on certain expectations, we think that circumstances must be like that, people must react like that, our performance must be like that, the result of our efforts must be like that. But our mind cannot take into consideration all the aspects, all outside influences, all inside flows which can affect the situation we are planning to happen. And as a result in many cases the outcome of our expectations is very far from our expectations. Usually people tend to expect things to happen and people to react in a way which will being them a lot of pleasure; these are somehow positive expectations. And people become very happy and enthusiastic if their expectations come true. However unfortunately in many cases reality in our everyday life breaks our expectations and appears much less pleasant than we expected it to be. In this case we tend to become angry, or / and frustrated, or /and sad, or/ and upset, or/and depressed with people who behaved in a "wrong" way, with circumstances which built up in a "wrong" way, with ourselves who react in an unexpectedly "wrong" way, and generally with the whole life and world which is created in a "wrong" and "unfair" way. We get offended with the life, and in many cases this offence is projected into people who were not involved into the situation which caused our pain. For example, a man whose wife or girlfriend was not faithful to him can start revenge all women considering that all of them are like that. This is what can happen if our positive expectations do not come true.
However some people live in the future expecting mostly negative things to happen to them. They are afraid of all sorts of failures which can trap them tomorrow, all sorts of illnesses which can damage their health, all sorts of disasters which can devastate their financial, social, family situation. They pick up the phone receiver and you can hear anxiety in their voice as they are expecting something unpleasant to befall. Usually these people are not active in their life and attached to their present conditions of life being, afraid of any changes which they consider potentially harmful to them. They are generally very unhappy people as you can hardly be happy being haunted by fear and anxiety.
Our more aspect in the major attitude towards the process of life is trying to ignore that one day death will come. Most people live their lives doing things, suffering and being temporarily happy about things which have completely no meaning in the face of death. They do so because of the fifth klesha of abhinivesa. Swami Satyananda Saraswati describes it in the following way: "From one's attachment to objects and people and one's feeling of egoism comes a deep attachment to life and the aversion to death. One does not like to lose one's identity and the things or people who make the ego happy. Kleshas cause suffering by making the individual identify with things that are transient."4 People are afraid even to think about death and push this fear into their subconscious and unconscious mind. They try to avoid thoughts about death continuing doing things as if they will live in this world forever. But thoughts come sooner or later. Swami Satyananda Saraswati writes that fear of death is dormant in childhood. "When we grow older and see others dying it becomes an alternating factor. It may crop up some time or other. This happens between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five and becomes strong during the later part of life."5 However if someone is suffering from a lethal desease, abhinivesa manifests immediately in full. People are brought into a panic in the face of a close death. They thought that it is still far away and preferred to ignore it following the way of life they are accustomed to. And the fact of a close death drives them into dispare, what cause sometimes much more suffering than the disease itself.
I have explained how kleshas influence the major attitude towards process and values of life and how this major attitude manifests in our everyday life causing relative "happiness" or suffering. Now I am going to take a closer look at the major attitude towards the goal of life which is definitely closely related to the previous major attitude.
Most people, whose perception is clouded by all five kleshas, see the goal of their lives in expansion and establishment their ego as a separate piece of manifested world by means of outside world cherishing concepts of "Me" and "My" according to social standards provided by their contemporary society. People can see a goal of their lives in achieving prosperity, which includes making as much money as possible plus acquiring as many objects considered prestigious by the society as possible in order to lead as much comfortable and prestigious life as possible. Or people can see the main goal of their lives in achieving recognition at the as higher level as possible blowing up their name through fame, power, authority, awards, connections, influence. Even the goal of life seen in creation of a family becomes a tool for expansion the concept of "Me" and "My" but in a smaller scale than establishing "Me" through global fame and "My" through acquiring property all over the world. If people succeed in achieving their goals they feel happy temporarily and place another goal higher up according to social standards. Society is ever ready to provide a standard which is considered as "American" dream, or "Russian" dream, or "Indian" dream first at the level of the local community of a village or town, then that of a nearest big city, then that of the larger area like state, then the capital and the whole country and then at the international level. The whole life is spent in attempts to climb up these stairs. "The winner takes it all" but the losers take the toll of frustration, suffering and depression feeling themselves useless, unfairly treated, abandoned, helpless, unworthy. However even winners at a certain stage and especially at the highest stages of achievement start feeling that they are not happy with all of what they have or, in other words, all this does not make them happy anymore. The happiness was in achievement and now everything is achieved but there is no happiness. At this stage some of achievers start to get interested in spiritual matters or start to think, about suicide in case if unhappiness culminates (we can think of suicides committed by famous actors and actresses and other famous people). Taking into consideration these examples it is possible to say that the goal of life as it is seen by most people cannot lead to ultimate happiness which is so much sought by any of human beings.
In conclusion of this chapter I would like to point out once again that most human beings are affected by kleshas and cannot see the Supreme Reality of their True Self. They cannot perceive and identify themselves with the Supreme Self which is all the bliss, light, harmony and unity, in other words total transcendental unbroken everlasting happiness. However their true nature remembers this overwhelming state of happiness and guides the individual self to search for this lost happiness. Unfortunately kleshas reorient the search of an individual into the outer manifested world rather than inside, into the depths of his being. Kleshas built up first attitudinal structures in our unconscious and subconscious mind and manifest in the major attitudes towards oneself, process and values of live and the goal of life. Awareness of these major attitudes depends on the person, but most people are not aware of them. They are aware of the lower levels of attitudinal pyramid, which always dwell in the conscious mind and are determined by the standards of the society. Finally attitudes manifest in our everyday life guiding us through a chain of transitory happiness and unhappiness which never ends and which by itself can be seen as a process of ceaseless suffering.
1. "Hatha Yoga Pradipika", commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda, p.5.
2. Swami Satyananda Saraswati," Meditations from Tantras" p. 64.
3. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Meditations from Tantras," p. 50.
4. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Meditations from Tantras," p.64.
5. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Four Chapters on Freedom", p.154.
Another consequence of avidya, asmita plus deep social influence and conditioning in respect of major attitude towards oneself is that everyone has a certain self-image. Usually it is an overestimated self-image of a very good man with quite a number of virtues and good qualities without taking into consideration one's weaknesses. What a good man and good qualities exactly mean depends on the epoc, the period in the history, as well as society and culture. Another side of the phenomenon of self-image is that most of people create an ideal image of oneself to reach and put double standards for them selves to reach it.
Another cause of self-hatred is very widespread nowadays. It is hatred towards one's body. Many people hate their too fat or too skinny body, the form of their nose, lips, eyes, buttocks, breast. This particular piece of material world which they consider themselves does not satisfy them at all. Even beautiful (from the socially accepted standard of beauty) people start to get frustrated about their bodies when bodies start to get old. Even in this very material respect people are hostile towards their nature what in some cases can lead to depressions, neurosis, psychic disorders. In some cases it is connected with attempts to copy someone who is considered the ideal person, i.e. the movie-star, a political leader, a successful businessman. People try to copy their bodies, their voices, their manners, to reach the same levels of power, fame, to make the same huge amount of money. In other words people do not want to be themselves, they do not even know who they are as a personality, they do not know and respect their nature, leaving apart their true nature. Now the some measure of success or failure can be applied to this situation. If people are successful in their attempts of building up and maintaining their self-image, they feel more or less happy and satisfied. However in many cases the outer world breaks our self-images into pieces. And in this case of failure ultimate frustration and dissatisfaction leads to 2 possible variants of reaction. In the first case people become aggressive and angry with the outer world. It is usually the case with quite egoistic, but not that much assertive and strong people. They still believe that their overestimated self-image is correct, and they blame the outer world, people, system, etc. that this world, people, system do not understand, accept, appreciate their knowledge, intellectual capacities, virtues, good qualifies, etc. They are angry with the whole world and are burning inside with the desire to revenge which is usually let out to people who are weaker than they. In the second case people become aggressive and angry with oneselves. Usually this is the case with sensitive people who are prone to self-analysis. In many cases they are religious people. They observe their emotions, thoughts, behaviour and find that they are often far from desired moral and ethical standards. They try self-control and discipline combating "bad" thoughts, emotions and reactions but with little success. Even on the contrary the more they fight the more "bad" thoughts, emotions and reaction arise. This causes auto-egression and deep suffering. Swami Muktibodhananda in his commentary to Hatha Yoga Pradipika writes: "Often we observe that when we try to practice self-control and discipline, we create more mental problems in our mind and personality. If we were to take the statistics of patients in mental hospitals, we would find that most of them are religious, because self-discipline and self-control split the personality. Therefore before you try to practice self-discipline and self-control, you must also prepare yourself."1 However not necessarily religious people suffer from hatred towards oneselves. Most of us suffer and tend to be frustrated blaming ourselves if our performance at school, university, work is not as high as we expected it to be, if people let us understand in direct or indirect form that our knowledge, behaviour, manners are not perfect. Thoughts "I am stupid, I am boring, I can't speak clearly, etc." come from time to time to our heads causing suffering. In some people these thoughts become chronic and lead to low self-estimation, aversion towards any actions which constantly remind them about their inabilities. In many cases this low self-esteem is subjective and sometimes it is even difficult to understand why this particular person thinks that he is stupid, boring, generally bad, etc., while his behaviour, appearance, communication suggest different understanding.
I have briefly reviewed how kleshas affect one of our major attitudes, namely attitude towards oneself, and how this attitude can influence our life. Now let us take a closer look at another major attitude, i.e. attitude towards process and values of life. All five kleshas influence this attitude. Because of avidya and asmita a person acts in the manifested world as a separate piece of the manifested world. Remembering within his true nature eternal peace, bliss and harmony of being the Supreme Reality of Brahman, the person tries to find happiness in the outer world rather than within himself. He is involved in his worldly activities through raga and dwesha seeking for pleasures, which to his mind must bring him happiness, and trying to avoid what cause suffering. So the process of life for him is constant seeking for happiness without a positive result as pleasures and sufferings take one the other's place like two sides of the same coin. Swami Satyananda writes that each individual "becomes aware of his identity, his ego, and automatically feels different from the other people and objects around him. He becomes the ego moving among other things. In gross or subtle ways everything outside himself becomes subservient to him, to be used to bring more happiness, comfort, etc. to him. In this way likes and dislikes arise. Things or people who make him feel good, happy, who inflate his ego, attract him. Things that tend to make him feel unhappy, uncomfortable, etc., become things of repulsion or dislike."2 Driven in this way by raga and dwesha in search of happiness, an individual tries to acquire as many things as possible, i.e. to make a lot of money, to buy a big beautiful house, car, expensive and fashionable clothes; it is difficult to list all things which we try to acquire in hope that they will make us happy. Another goal in this context is to achieve a high social status, a high-ranking position, to get people's recognition in the form of fame, authority, awards, and power. The whole life becomes a process of acquisition and achievement. If a person more or less successful in his attempts he feels relatively happy and spends the whole life in further attempts to get more and more desired things, recognition, comfort, and very rarely thinks about taking a yogic path. However much more people tend to fail more than succeed. And in this case there are two possible ways of reaction. They are called an optimistic attitude and a pessimistic attitude, which if taken can make people happier or unhappier in the same situation. The optimistic attitude is like a program in the mind which make the person to pay attention to and take to his heart mostly positive sides of any situation, even hopeless situation from somebody's else point of view. The optimistic attitude by itself can make a person happy with minimum success in acquisitions and recognition. The pessimistic attitude on the contrary programs us to notice mostly negative sides in any situation and leads to feeling unhappy even in a situation which can be considered excellent by others. Swami Satyananda writes: "Happiness lies in the mind, not in manipulating the world to suit our desire… Our mind accepts and acts on only that information which is compatible with our present programming. In other words, if we now feel, if our mental program dictates, that everyone outside hates us, then our mind will only accept and give access to information that reinforces this attitude. Other information will . If we feel our mental program dictates that everyone loves us, then again our mind will interpret information to reinforce this belief."3 So optimistic and pessimistic attitudes towards the process of life are real forces which make people happier or unhappier in their everyday life.
Another aspect in attitude towards process and values of life, which builds up due to kleshas which affect our unconscious and subconscious mind, is attachment to objects in the outer world, i.e. things, people, as well as to one's reactions to the outer world situations which become habitual. Through raga we become attached to things, people that give us pleasure. We cling to them and try to keep them in our possession forever, or at least as long as possible. If we can't possess we try to be as closer as possible to the objects of our desire. We get upset and frustrated if we lose our favorite ball pen. We'll be sad about it for a few days. We'll be upset for much longer period if our car is stolen. And we'll suffer bitter pain and agony may be for years if our beloved mother, or husband, or wife dies.
We can get attached to things and to people even through dwesha. Very often our mind is fixed on the object of our hatred that causes real pain. We do not even want to think about it but it comes again and again into our mind again and again we find ourselves mentally in the painful situation which happened to us. It haunts us and we can't relax. Similarly we get attached to reactions. If our child or husband does not do what we asked him to in time, most probably we'll get angry. And this behavioral pattern will manifest again and again if similar situation comes up. So attachment is another aspect in our attitude towards life which can cause unhappiness.
Raga and dwesha along with attachment lead to the further aspect in our attitude towards process and values of life. Most of people live either in the past or in the future ignoring the present moment. Many old people live in their memories, and where past is ever brighter and happier for them than their present, especially moments of their fame, success, positive emotional upheavals. Some of old people even claim that nowadays nothing is good and everything good is in the past. In their opinion, everything starting from political regime and ending with manners of young people was much better in the past, and now everything is just disintegrating. Due to this approach people can't feel happy in the present moment and if are not really unhappy, but constantly in bad, negative mood.
The other tendency, which is more widespread among people of different ages, is constant living in the future and being ever full of expectations, either positive or negative. Our mind is very rarely involved in the present moment; it is constantly making plans, trying to organize our future in the most comfortable and enjoyable way for us as individuals. We are constantly driven by raga and dwesha in our future and forget about even enjoying in the present moment that was the aim of our efforts in the past. Constructing mentally our future we base all our programming on certain expectations, we think that circumstances must be like that, people must react like that, our performance must be like that, the result of our efforts must be like that. But our mind cannot take into consideration all the aspects, all outside influences, all inside flows which can affect the situation we are planning to happen. And as a result in many cases the outcome of our expectations is very far from our expectations. Usually people tend to expect things to happen and people to react in a way which will being them a lot of pleasure; these are somehow positive expectations. And people become very happy and enthusiastic if their expectations come true. However unfortunately in many cases reality in our everyday life breaks our expectations and appears much less pleasant than we expected it to be. In this case we tend to become angry, or / and frustrated, or /and sad, or/ and upset, or/and depressed with people who behaved in a "wrong" way, with circumstances which built up in a "wrong" way, with ourselves who react in an unexpectedly "wrong" way, and generally with the whole life and world which is created in a "wrong" and "unfair" way. We get offended with the life, and in many cases this offence is projected into people who were not involved into the situation which caused our pain. For example, a man whose wife or girlfriend was not faithful to him can start revenge all women considering that all of them are like that. This is what can happen if our positive expectations do not come true.
However some people live in the future expecting mostly negative things to happen to them. They are afraid of all sorts of failures which can trap them tomorrow, all sorts of illnesses which can damage their health, all sorts of disasters which can devastate their financial, social, family situation. They pick up the phone receiver and you can hear anxiety in their voice as they are expecting something unpleasant to befall. Usually these people are not active in their life and attached to their present conditions of life being, afraid of any changes which they consider potentially harmful to them. They are generally very unhappy people as you can hardly be happy being haunted by fear and anxiety.
Our more aspect in the major attitude towards the process of life is trying to ignore that one day death will come. Most people live their lives doing things, suffering and being temporarily happy about things which have completely no meaning in the face of death. They do so because of the fifth klesha of abhinivesa. Swami Satyananda Saraswati describes it in the following way: "From one's attachment to objects and people and one's feeling of egoism comes a deep attachment to life and the aversion to death. One does not like to lose one's identity and the things or people who make the ego happy. Kleshas cause suffering by making the individual identify with things that are transient."4 People are afraid even to think about death and push this fear into their subconscious and unconscious mind. They try to avoid thoughts about death continuing doing things as if they will live in this world forever. But thoughts come sooner or later. Swami Satyananda Saraswati writes that fear of death is dormant in childhood. "When we grow older and see others dying it becomes an alternating factor. It may crop up some time or other. This happens between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five and becomes strong during the later part of life."5 However if someone is suffering from a lethal desease, abhinivesa manifests immediately in full. People are brought into a panic in the face of a close death. They thought that it is still far away and preferred to ignore it following the way of life they are accustomed to. And the fact of a close death drives them into dispare, what cause sometimes much more suffering than the disease itself.
I have explained how kleshas influence the major attitude towards process and values of life and how this major attitude manifests in our everyday life causing relative "happiness" or suffering. Now I am going to take a closer look at the major attitude towards the goal of life which is definitely closely related to the previous major attitude.
Most people, whose perception is clouded by all five kleshas, see the goal of their lives in expansion and establishment their ego as a separate piece of manifested world by means of outside world cherishing concepts of "Me" and "My" according to social standards provided by their contemporary society. People can see a goal of their lives in achieving prosperity, which includes making as much money as possible plus acquiring as many objects considered prestigious by the society as possible in order to lead as much comfortable and prestigious life as possible. Or people can see the main goal of their lives in achieving recognition at the as higher level as possible blowing up their name through fame, power, authority, awards, connections, influence. Even the goal of life seen in creation of a family becomes a tool for expansion the concept of "Me" and "My" but in a smaller scale than establishing "Me" through global fame and "My" through acquiring property all over the world. If people succeed in achieving their goals they feel happy temporarily and place another goal higher up according to social standards. Society is ever ready to provide a standard which is considered as "American" dream, or "Russian" dream, or "Indian" dream first at the level of the local community of a village or town, then that of a nearest big city, then that of the larger area like state, then the capital and the whole country and then at the international level. The whole life is spent in attempts to climb up these stairs. "The winner takes it all" but the losers take the toll of frustration, suffering and depression feeling themselves useless, unfairly treated, abandoned, helpless, unworthy. However even winners at a certain stage and especially at the highest stages of achievement start feeling that they are not happy with all of what they have or, in other words, all this does not make them happy anymore. The happiness was in achievement and now everything is achieved but there is no happiness. At this stage some of achievers start to get interested in spiritual matters or start to think, about suicide in case if unhappiness culminates (we can think of suicides committed by famous actors and actresses and other famous people). Taking into consideration these examples it is possible to say that the goal of life as it is seen by most people cannot lead to ultimate happiness which is so much sought by any of human beings.
In conclusion of this chapter I would like to point out once again that most human beings are affected by kleshas and cannot see the Supreme Reality of their True Self. They cannot perceive and identify themselves with the Supreme Self which is all the bliss, light, harmony and unity, in other words total transcendental unbroken everlasting happiness. However their true nature remembers this overwhelming state of happiness and guides the individual self to search for this lost happiness. Unfortunately kleshas reorient the search of an individual into the outer manifested world rather than inside, into the depths of his being. Kleshas built up first attitudinal structures in our unconscious and subconscious mind and manifest in the major attitudes towards oneself, process and values of live and the goal of life. Awareness of these major attitudes depends on the person, but most people are not aware of them. They are aware of the lower levels of attitudinal pyramid, which always dwell in the conscious mind and are determined by the standards of the society. Finally attitudes manifest in our everyday life guiding us through a chain of transitory happiness and unhappiness which never ends and which by itself can be seen as a process of ceaseless suffering.
1. "Hatha Yoga Pradipika", commentary by Swami Muktibodhananda, p.5.
2. Swami Satyananda Saraswati," Meditations from Tantras" p. 64.
3. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Meditations from Tantras," p. 50.
4. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Meditations from Tantras," p.64.
5. Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "Four Chapters on Freedom", p.154.
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