Anytime you ask people about happy moments in their lives, they have to really think hard. But ask them about unpleasant or sad moments they will come up easily with many. My 94-year-old mother, has now started hallucinating a lot. Most episodes are of fear. Fear of losing her jewellery; getting robbed; a girl child crying and so on. When she is lucid, i have asked her why she is afraid when she is living a good life – why can’t she remember pleasant incidents? She says there are hardly any! It is as if all the pleasant thoughts and memories have simply vanished or have gone so deep into the recesses of her brain that she cannot access it.
What is the basis of such a thinking process? Neurobiology may throw some light on it. There are ample indications that bad/ unpleasant thoughts occupy a major portion of our thinking. There is socio-biological reasoning for it. In order to survive, humans developed strategies to get resources and ward off enemies and predators. This helped in developing the controlling instinct which allowed us to control our environment and hoard resources. All these came with the baggage of bad thoughts of harming others and in turn being harmed by them. These thoughts which lead to traumatic events produce very powerful memories in our brain.
As we age, the percentage of anxiety-driven thoughts increase, since a lifetime of anxieties produce unpleasant memories which somehow overshadow the happy ones. That could explain the fear-driven hallucinations of my mother.
It has also been observed that once anxiety-driven thoughts kick in, more and more negative and angry thoughts start emerging from the brain. It is as if the brain goes into a spiral about negative thoughts. This also starts, in some, episodes of depression.
When the ego goes on overdrive either because of adrenalin flowing or other inputs, then, a large number of random neurons fire and neural pathways associated with existing memories light up. And since anxiety-driven memories are much more than pleasant memories, this could be the reason why we get one bad thought after another, leading to an agitated mind.
Calmness of mind, according to Patanjali, comes when we focus on a single thought for a long time. This process helps the brain to loosen other mental knots and allows the processing power of released neurons to focus on a single thought and helps in reducing traumatic memories. This process gives tremendous happiness to the person. This is also the genesis of viveka, power of discrimination and wisdom which allows the brain to make decisions after looking at all eventualities and helps in minimising painful thoughts.
Naturally, this yogic process is achieved by tremendous discipline and years of practice. A simpler mechanism to reduce production of negative thoughts is to think of happy thoughts. Even Patanjali talks about it when he says, “To be free from thoughts that distract one from yoga, thoughts of an opposite kind must be cultivated.” This is a far better strategy then suppression of thoughts since suppressing them results in increasing the number of psychological knots. Suppression does not allow thoughts to go away but only helps them to form powerful memories.
With continuous effort of cultivating happy thoughts, they can replace anxiety-driven thoughts. That is the basis of all yoga.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Times of India, Speaking Tree, April 26 ,2019
Anytime you ask people about happy moments in their lives, they have to really think hard. But ask them about unpleasant or sad moments they will come up easily with many. My 94-year-old mother, has now started hallucinating a lot. Most episodes are of fear. Fear of losing her jewellery; getting robbed; a girl child crying and so on. When she is lucid, i have asked her why she is afraid when she is living a good life – why can’t she remember pleasant incidents? She says there are hardly any! It is as if all the pleasant thoughts and memories have simply vanished or have gone so deep into the recesses of her brain that she cannot access it.
What is the basis of such a thinking process? Neurobiology may throw some light on it. There are ample indications that bad/ unpleasant thoughts occupy a major portion of our thinking. There is socio-biological reasoning for it. In order to survive, humans developed strategies to get resources and ward off enemies and predators. This helped in developing the controlling instinct which allowed us to control our environment and hoard resources. All these came with the baggage of bad thoughts of harming others and in turn being harmed by them. These thoughts which lead to traumatic events produce very powerful memories in our brain.
As we age, the percentage of anxiety-driven thoughts increase, since a lifetime of anxieties produce unpleasant memories which somehow overshadow the happy ones. That could explain the fear-driven hallucinations of my mother.
It has also been observed that once anxiety-driven thoughts kick in, more and more negative and angry thoughts start emerging from the brain. It is as if the brain goes into a spiral about negative thoughts. This also starts, in some, episodes of depression.
When the ego goes on overdrive either because of adrenalin flowing or other inputs, then, a large number of random neurons fire and neural pathways associated with existing memories light up. And since anxiety-driven memories are much more than pleasant memories, this could be the reason why we get one bad thought after another, leading to an agitated mind.
Calmness of mind, according to Patanjali, comes when we focus on a single thought for a long time. This process helps the brain to loosen other mental knots and allows the processing power of released neurons to focus on a single thought and helps in reducing traumatic memories. This process gives tremendous happiness to the person. This is also the genesis of viveka, power of discrimination and wisdom which allows the brain to make decisions after looking at all eventualities and helps in minimising painful thoughts.
Naturally, this yogic process is achieved by tremendous discipline and years of practice. A simpler mechanism to reduce production of negative thoughts is to think of happy thoughts. Even Patanjali talks about it when he says, “To be free from thoughts that distract one from yoga, thoughts of an opposite kind must be cultivated.” This is a far better strategy then suppression of thoughts since suppressing them results in increasing the number of psychological knots. Suppression does not allow thoughts to go away but only helps them to form powerful memories.
With continuous effort of cultivating happy thoughts, they can replace anxiety-driven thoughts. That is the basis of all yoga.
DISCLAIMER:
The views expressed in the Article above are Author’s personal views and kashmiribhatta.in is not responsible for the opinions expressed in the above article. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing."
Courtesy: Times of India, Speaking Tree, April 26 ,2019