HINDRANCES TO SELF REALIZATION

KLESA, a common word in everyday Indian speech, is derived from the root klis, to be tormented or afflicted, to suffer, to feel pain or distress. As an adjective KLISTA, meaning "distressed; suffering pain or misery; faded, wearied, injured, hurt; worn out, in bad condition, marred, impaired, disordered, dimmed, or made faint." And a human being, when the inborn splendor of his nature has been subdued by fatiquing business affairs and cumbersome obligations, is KLISTA.

In the usage of the YOGA-SUTRAS, KLESA denotes anything which, adhering to man's nature, restricts or impairs its manifestation of its TRUE ESSENCE. PATANJALI'S yOGA IS A TECHNIQUE to get rid of such impairmens and thereby reconstitute the INHERCENT PEFECTION of the ESSENTIAL PERSON.

What are the impairments? The answer to this question is one that is very confusing to the Occidentally mind for it reveals the breach that separates our usualy view of the INHERENT VALUES of the human personality from the Indian. Five impairments are enumerated:

Avidya, Ignorance, not=knowing=better; unaware of the truth that transcends the percetpions of the mind and senses in their normal functioning. As a consequence of this impairment we are bound by the prejudices and habits of naiive consciousness.

AVIDYA is the root of all our so-called conscious thought.

2. ASMITA = i AM, THIS OBVIOUS EGO, supporting my experience, is the real essence and foundation of my being.

3. Raga: attachment; affection of every kind.

4. Dvesa: the feeling contrary to raga; disinclination, dislike, hatred.

Raga and dvesa, sympathy and antipathy, are at the root of all the pairs of opposites (dvandva) in the sphere of human emotions, reactions and opinion. They tear the soul unremittingly this way and that, upsetting its balance and agitating the lake-like, mirrorlike surface, thus rendering it incapable of reflecting without distortion the PERFECT IMAGE OF PURUSA.

5. abhinivesa: Clinging to life as to a process that should go on without end; i.e. the will to live.

These five hindrances, or impairments, are to be regarded as so many perversions, troubling consciousness and concealing the ESSENTIAL STATE OF SERENITY OF OUR TRUE NATURE. They are generated involuntarily and continuouslyh, welling in an uninterrupted effluence from the hidden source of our phenomenal existence. They give strength to the substance of ego and ceaselessly build ujp its illusory frame.

The source of all this confusion is the natural interplay of the gunas, those three "constituents, powers, or qualities" of prakrti, namely SATTVA, RAJAS AND TAMAS...

to be continued.......