Vasanas are subconscious tendencies or karmic imprints that influence our thoughts, desires, and behaviors. They are like seeds in the mind, shaping our perceptions and reactions, and can be either positive (pure) or negative (impure). Understanding and managing vasanas is considered crucial for spiritual growth and liberation in yoga and related traditions.

Você já ouviu falar nos conceitos de Samskara e Vasana?

Samskara é um termo originário do Sânscrito, muito conhecido no Hinduísmo, que significa impressão mental, memórias residuais ou conjunto de impressões básicas e fundamentais da consciência e suas respectivas influências que foram acumuladas através de experiências diversas no passado recente ou remoto. São também reconhecidas como as repercussões, tendências ou reminiscências originárias de múltiplos renascimentos anteriores que aprisionam a consciência nos grilhões da ilusão.

Resumindo,  Samskara é o conjunto dos registros armazenados no subconsciente, que podem ser herdados de vidas passadas, ou de caráter hereditário, que causam os condicionamentos ou Vasanas. O termo samskara significa literalmente ‘ativador’. 

Há uma relação interessante. Esses ativadores subliminares ou inconscientes (Samskaras) se ligam para formar uma rede de impressões denominada Vasanas, que é nada mais que uma tendência comportamental ou impressão cármica que influencia o comportamento atual de uma pessoa.

Arunachala - Arunachaleswarar Temple -  Tiruvannamalai

Letter 139                                      10th  September, 1947

REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE

At a quarter to ten this morning, just as Bhagavan was getting up to go for his usual short mid-morning walk, an Andhra young man approached the couch and said, “Swami, I have come here because I want to perform austerities (tapas) and don’t know which would be the proper place for it. I will go wherever you direct me.”

Bhagavan did not answer. He was bending down, rubbing his legs and knees, as he often does before beginning to walk, on account of his rheumatic trouble, and was smiling quietly to himself. We, of course, eagerly waited to hear what he would say. A moment later he took the staff that he uses to steady himself while walking, and looking at the young man, said, “How can I tell you where to go for performing tapas? It is best to stay where you are.” And with a smile he went out.

The young man was confused. “What is the meaning of this?” he exclaimed. “Being an elderly person, I thought he would tell me of some holy place where I could stay, but instead of that he tells me to stay where I am. I am now near this couch. Does that mean that I should stay here near the couch? Was it to receive such a reply that I approached him? Is this a matter for jokes?”

One of the devotees took him out of the hall and explained, “Even when Bhagavan says something in a lighter vein there is always some deep meaning in it. Where the feeling ‘I’ arises is one’s Self. Tapas means knowing where the Self is and abiding in it. For knowing that, one has to know who one is; and when one realises one’s Self what does it matter where one stays? This is what he meant.” He thus pacified the young man and sent him away

Similarly, someone asked yesterday, “Swami, how can we find the Self (Atma)?” 

“You are in the Self; so how can there be any difficulty in finding it?” Bhagavan replied. 

“You say that I am in the Self, but where exactly is that Self?” the questioner persisted. 

“If you abide in the heart and search patiently you will find it,” was the reply. 

The questioner still seemed unsatisfied, and made the rather curious observation that there was no room in his heart for him to stay in it.

Bhagavan turned to one of the devotees sitting there and said smiling, “Look how he worries about where the Self is! What can I tell him? What Is, is the Self. It is all-pervading. When I tell him that it is called ‘Heart’ he says there is no room in it for him to stay. What can I do? To say that there is no room in the heart after filling it with unnecessary vasanas* is like grumbling that there is no room to sit down in a house as big as Sri Lanka. If all the junk is thrown out, won’t there be room? The body itself is junk. These people are like a man who fills all the rooms of his house chokeful with unnecessary junk and then complains that there is no room for keeping his body in it. In the same way they fill the mind with all sorts of impressions and then say there is no room for the Self in it. If all the false ideas and impressions are swept away and thrown out what remains is a feeling of plenty and that is the Self itself. Then there will be no such thing as a separate ‘I’; it will be a state of egolessness. Where then is the question of a room or an occupant of the room? Instead of seeking the Self people say, ‘no room! no room!’, just like shutting your eyes and saying there is ‘no sun! no sun!’. What can one do under such circumstances?”

— Letters from Sri Ramanasramam, by SURI NAGAMMA - Letter 139, pg. 294

https://selfdefinition.org/ramana/Letters-from-Sri-Ramanasramam-vols-1-and-2.pdf

Manuscript of the essay version of Nan Yar? (Who am I?) handwritten by Sri Ramana, reproduced in The Mountain Path, June 1993, p. 45

ॐ

For the mind to subside [permanently], except vicāraṇā [vichara, self-investigation] there are no other adequate means. If made to subside by other means, the mind will remain as if subsided, but will emerge again. 

Even by prāṇāyāma [breath-restraint], the mind will subside; however, though the mind remains subsided so long as the breath remains subsided, when the breath emerges [or becomes manifest] it will also emerge and wander under the sway of [its] vāsanās [propensities, inclinations, impulses or desires]. The birthplace both of the mind and of the prāṇa [the breath and other life-processes] is one. 

Thought alone is the svarūpa [the ‘own form’] of the mind. 

The thought called ‘I’ alone is the first thought of the mind; it alone is the ego. 

From where the ego arises, from there alone the breath also starts. 

Therefore when the mind subsides the prāṇa also subsides, and when the prāṇa subsides the mind also subsides.

(*) “However in sleep, even though the mind has subsided, the breath does not subside. It is arranged thus by the ordinance of God for the purpose of protecting the body, and so that other people do not wonder whether that body has died. When the mind subsides in waking and in samādhi [any of the various types of mental absorption that result from yōgic or other forms of spiritual practice], the prāṇa subsides.”

The prāṇa is said to be the gross form of the mind. Until the time of death the mind keeps the prāṇa in the body, and at the moment the body dies it [the mind] grabs and takes it [the prāṇa] away. Therefore prāṇāyāma is just an aid to restrain the mind [or to make it subside temporarily], but will not bring about manō-nāśa [the annihilation of the mind].

ॐ

Translator’s note: 

(*) The three sentences that I have italicized in this “Paragraph Eight” were not in the original essay version written by Sri Ramana, but were interpolated afterwards, either in the mid-1930s or later. They were not in the manuscript of this essay handwritten by Sri Ramana, which was reproduced in The Mountain Path, June 1993, pp. 44-47, nor were they included either in the essay version in the first edition (1931) of ஸ்ரீ ரமண நூற்றிரட்டு (Śrī Ramaṇa Nūṯṟiraṭṭu, his Tamil collected works) or in the 1932 editions of either the thirty or the twenty-eight question-and-answer versions. I also could not find them in any of the versions published prior to that that I have seen, or in any of Sivaprakasam Pillai’s notebooks. The earliest edition in which I have seen them included was the 1936 edition of the twenty-eight question-and-answer, so it was probably added first in that version and later in this essay version.

According to the central teachings of Sri Ramana, the body and world are both mental creations, so they seem to exist only so long as we experience them, and hence they do not exist when our mind is subsided in sleep. For those who are willing to accept this teaching, the idea that ‘in sleep, even though the mind has subsided, the breath does not subside’ is not an issue, because if the existence of the body (and hence of its breathing) is dependent upon the activity of the mind, it is clear that in sleep ‘when the mind subsides the prāṇa also […] subsides’, as Sri Ramana stated explicitly in the previous sentence. Therefore, if these three interpolated sentences were something that Sri Ramana actually said, he presumably said so as a concession in reply to someone who was unable or unwilling to accept (even tentatively as a possibility) his teaching that the body, prāṇa, world and everything else seem to exist only in the self-deluded view of the mind, and hence cease to exist whenever the mind has subsided, as in dreamless sleep.

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi - WHO AM I?, Paragraph Eight

Sri Ramana Darsanam (pdf) - Sadhu Natanananda

Sri Ramanopadesa Noonmalai - Ulladu Narpadu - Anubandham, V.25 pg.132 (pdf)

When the consciousness ‘I’ rises mixed with adjuncts as ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’, it is the ego, mind or individual soul; but when the same consciousness ‘I’ remains devoid of all adjunct as mere ‘I am’, it is Siva, the supreme reality or Self. 

Since all attachments beginning with the dehabhimana or attachment to the body because of the mixing of the adjuncts with the pure consciousness ‘I’, and since adjuncts become mixed with the consciousness ‘I’ only because of one’s failure to keenly scrutinize and know that pure consciousness as it is, in this verse it is taught that one should destroy all attachments by meditating with love upon the pure adjunctless consciousness ‘I’, having the firm conviction that, that consciousness is Siva. 

JOHN MCINTOSH 

The false self, ego, devil, Vāsanās, evil or conditioning ALL mean the same thing. They are the ‘bundle’ of ‘tendencies’ that together MAKE UP the body-mind-identity as well as the world-universe dream. This manifest based on the belief in separation, which states that everything is an individual entity or circumstance rather than the ONE WHOLE or SELF – Who You Really Are. These tendencies are ‘owned’ as the ‘me’ that most believe they are, or they are ‘projected out-there’ onto so-called ‘others’ or circumstances. Neither is True since they are only illusory aspects of a Grand Dream.

 When this finger-pointing occurs, responsibility for ‘What Is’ is assigned to so-called ‘others’, luck/chance/coincidence [good or bad], or God [by any name – again, good or bad]. This too is NOT true. One’s entire dream experience is uniquely their own, sculpted out of their ‘tendencies’ that the sleeping God-SELF has acquired through eons of lifetimes dreams within the Grand Dream.

 The remedy is simple but NOT easy … dissolve the tendencies [conditioning] and what remains is the ever-Present Real YOU, which is Love, Freedom, Joy, Abundance and Peace … not what you have but Who YOU Are.

  YOU ARE GOD: It's Time To Shine

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017O16J8Y

 BOOKS by John McIntosh