The five mental states of the consciousness

(Excerpted from Journey to Self Realization - Paramahansa Yogananda)

We judge our condition as desirable or undesirable by the degree of happiness therein, or by the lack of it. Accordingly, there are five mental states: happiness, sorrow, indifference, peace and true joy.

Waves whipped up in the middle of the ocean by a storm rise high, recede into a hollow, and then rise again, one after the other, until the storm ceases and the waves dissolve in the sea. Likewise with the mind. The mental peaks are life's alternating joys and sorrows; the hollows in between are indifference and boredom. These are the first three mental states.

You can usually recognize a person's mental state by his face. If you ask a person whose face registers happiness what has made him happy, you will find that some desire had been satisfied - he got a raise, he accomplished something he wanted to do, or was otherwise gratified. A desire fulfilled gives joy.

When you see a person with a glum or sour face, his expression tells you that he has met with some disappointment. A desire contradicted produces unhappiness by pain, the desire for money is contradicted by poverty, and so on.

Then there are the people in between. Ask them, "are you happy?" "No" "Are you sad?" "No" They are in the middle, neither on the crest of the wave of happiness, nor on the clashing wave of sadness; they are in the intermediate hollow. That is the neutral state of indifference.

One cannot remain indefinitely on the crests of either buoyant happiness or turbulent sorrow, or in the dumps of boredom. In this world of competing dualities, the ordinary being is tossed up and down - rising on a wave of joy, sinking into the trough of indifference, and then getting tumbled by a wave of sorrow. They little know anything beyond these states of consciousness. They little know anything beyond these states of consciousness. To be thus jostled about is to surrender free will to a seemingly capricious destiny.

What man needs in order to live a successful and satisfying life in the evenness of mind. That can be attained only by concentration, mastery of the mental faculties. Even the most terrible sorrow is healed by time, nothing is gained by reliving it every day. Sorrowing for someone who is gone does not help him or yourself, nor does it change that sad fact. Making yourself miserable by nurturing inferiority complex or punishing yourself for past mistakes or failures will not get you anywhere; it paralyzes your mental faculties. Never allow yourself to get into negative mental ruts. And do not be bored with life either. That is a very uncomfortable state. It slowly stews you. Don't bake yourself and your potentialities in the over of indifference.

Beyond the first three conditions of the mind - happiness, sorrow, and indifference - is the state of peace. Very few people reach that plane. Those who have money and health and satisfying relationships - everything they really need or want may say: "I am not happy or unhappy or indifferent. I am contented; I am peaceful" After a period of turbulence, such a condition is welcome. But if for a long time one has peace that is merely the absence of joy and sorrow, he will say "Please knock me on the head so I can feel if I am still alive!" Such peace, being a negative state in which excitation has been neutralized, is not lastingly satisfying. 

So now comes the positive aspect, the last or fifth state of consciousness: the attainment of ever new joy. The state is found only by contacting God in deep meditation, through the practice of such techniques as those given by the masters of India. That all-fulfilling joy will never grow stale. How to describe it? If for ten days you were not permitted to sleep, but were forced to stay awake, and then allowed to fall asleep, the joy you feel at that moment, compounded a million times over, would not being to express the joy that I am speaking about.  Jesus and other divine ones spoke of that joy. Saint Francis and Sri Chaitanya knew that joy. Why else would saints deprive themselves of material gain except that they found something greater? This path of Self-Realization doesn't tell you to cast aside everything of this world, but it does urge you to give up lesser, obstructing things for the superior, lastingly fulfilling true joy in life.

The time has come for you to know and understand the purpose of religion: how to contact that supernal joy, which is God, the great and eternal comforter. If you can find that Joy, and if you can retain that Joy all the time, no matter what happens in your life, you will stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds.

So that is the first law of retaining youth: You must have a happy state of mind, a state that is untouched by the events of life. In that joy, not even death can shake you. How could Jesus say, in the face of crucifixion, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do". unless he had that inner joy which even the tortures of the flesh could not take from him? In that steadfast mental foundation, he could, with his dying breath, express love for those who were the instruments of the death of his body. That is the invulnerable state you must strive to cultivate

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