Impressions (Samskaras)

Divine Life Society Publication: The Successive Processes of Analysis – Psychological, Moral and Spiritual

by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Most of our actions are impulse-driven. They are done at the spur of the moment by an impulse, as we say, a mood of which we had no predisposition or previous knowledge, but which took possession of us with such vehemence that we did a particular act without deliberation. This is how we take sudden steps in certain directions which sometimes, more often than not, are for our misery and suffering.

All our actions of our conscious life cannot be called deliberate or voluntary in the strictest sense of the term. We are slaves of our own inner reservoirs of perceptual possibilities, and we appear to be exercising freedom of choice when this unconscious impulse comes to the surface of our consciousness. We mistakenly think that we embark upon a conscious activity which assumes the role or form of a deliberate, voluntary, free exercise of will, while really it was a stir that took place in the subconscious and unconscious layers of our personality causing the conscious level to act, as the rumbling of waters at the bottom of the ocean may come up to the surface through a vibration and create a stir in the form of waves, etc.

Psychoanalysts, especially of the Freudian kind in the West, tell us that man is not free merely because of this kind of analysis which they have made, namely, that man is a bundle of impulses, instincts, hidden desires and frustrated longings which have been submerged into the bottom of the layer of the mind but which rise up to the conscious level when opportunities arise, whatever be the distance of time between the present activity and the previous origin of the impulse or the impression. A patient who is hypnotised by a physician does not know that he is hypnotised and thinks that his actions are deliberate or voluntary, notwithstanding the fact that he has been hypnotised to act in a particular manner by the physician’s will; similarly, psychologists tell us that we are not entirely free, at least not as free as we imagine ourselves to be. We are impulse-ridden, forced to act in a particular manner by the samskaras or impressions that are already embedded in our mind on account of perceptions of the past. It is the conscious aspect of our activity that makes it appear as a freedom of choice. Our ahamkara, or egoism, is directly connected with our conscious life. So the personality, which is nothing but an embodiment of our ego, assumes the role of freedom of will and choice – deliberate, voluntary action – and we go scot-free, as it were, imagining that everything has been done by us wantonly, purposely, with predetermination of the course of action. But we are deeper within ourselves than we appear from the outside. Psychologists have compared our mental apparatus to an iceberg in an ocean, of which a little crest is visible outside as our conscious life and the larger part is underneath as the subconscious and the unconscious.

Thus, perceptions play an important role in our life. We are a bundle of perceptions. This is the conclusion we will arrive at if we psychologically analyse ourselves thoroughly, down to the very bottom. Perhaps this is the reason why Buddha held his doctrine that all the world is nothing but a movement of perceptions. There are no substantialities behind things; there are only perceptions which cause our experiences. This was a great doctrine of Gautama Buddha. These perceptions are momentary; they come and go, though they leave a chain of impressions behind them as a causative factor of further impressions, further perceptions and activities. In Buddhist philosophical parlance, this is called the pratityasamutpada, which means to say, the causation or the causal chain of perceptions and cognitions, finally ending in the misery of the human being.

The art of yoga is the remedy that has been discovered to free the human individual from the clutches of this series of impressional perceptions. This is really yoga:  yogaś citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ (Y.S. 1.2). Yoga has been defined classically as the complete restraint that is exercised over the various modifications, such as the impressions of the mind.

Excerpts from: Impressions (Samskaras) - The Successive Processes of Analysis – Psychological, Moral and Spiritual by Sri Swami Krishnananda