what the point is of studying them. Sleep is sleep, imagination is imag
ination, and as regards the first two, well, sometimes I'm right, and
sometimes I'm wrong. Yet from the yogic standpoint, there is a huge
value in understanding them. Their misuse when they are defective can
lead to endless trouble. They affect both the quality of our life and the
actions we perform in it. The consequences of our actions endure. The
implications are karmic. "As you sow, so shall you reap." This is a uni
versal understanding. Yoga does not limit consequences to this life
only. How does someone who is wrong about everything, lives in fan
tasies, sleeps badly, and misuses memory conduct himself? Hitler truly
believed that the Jewish people were subhuman and acted accordingly.
This was wrong knowledge or misperception, total delusion. The con
sequence in his lifetime was his death and his country's destruction
along with much of the world. If the chain of causality does survive the
grave, would anyone like to exchange places with Hitler now?
It is definitely worth looking at these five forms of consciousness
in both their beneficial and deficient aspects. Their study can help us
to follow a certain way of life and adopt a right way of thinking. They
show us a direction and enable us to channel the thinking process. Our
aim is not to arrest or restrain them but gradually to transform them.
They are not separate but intertwined like threads in a cloth. One af
fects the others. The dullness of poor quality or tamasic sleep degrades
the clarity of the four other modifications. Sharp analysis for right
knowledge becomes impossible. When you are tired, it is not easy to
remember things. We also depend on memory to recall all other states.
It links and underpins them.
In the past chapter, we looked at the two aspects of memory, one
damaging, the other liberating. We saw that the "painful" form of
memory brings bondage in psychological time, condemning us to re
live the past in endless, meaningless permutations. We are like a cart in
the monsoon, its wheels bogged down in mud. The "painless" form is
discrimination (viveka), essential for our growth.
II K S IV 1'. N (i 1\ It