FREUD says: all your thinking is association. If you see a dog in the street, you start thinking about all the dogs you have seen from childhood. Then you remember your childhood, you remember a teacher when you were a child. There is no logical connection.

When you start verbalising you miss reality. Every day the sun rises; every day the sun sets; every day something new happens. To you it’s one more Friday, one more Saturday, another Sunday. The moment you label it as Friday, you think you know everything about that day. You just take it for granted. Because you take people for granted you don’t enjoy your relationships. You judge people first and collect arguments to support your judgement.
You can never step into the same river twice, because by that time it has moved. People also move, they change, they are not the same as who you met before. By the time you meet them again your husband/wife has changed; something is added to them; either intelligence or foolishness. But you don’t agree. You hold on to the same mental setup.
Sushruta wrote 5,000 years ago. He talks about open heart surgeries and transplants. He was a great enlightened Master. He said: every six months your liver replaces itself completely. Not even one part is same. Once in 21 days your intestine replaces itself. Modern day physiologists agree. Every cell is replaced continuously.
Sushruta says: your mental structure plays a major role when these changes take place. A disciple asks him: why do we carry diseases over a number of years? Why does the new liver carry the same disease? Sushruta replies: you don’t believe you have changed, that’s why. You carry the same mental frame despite body change. That mental frame retains the disease. You don’t let go of that frame, you don’t let go of that disease. You don’t let go of your samskara. Samskara is the powerful mental root that drags you to travel the same path.
Like Pavlov’s dogs which came running and salivated even when no food was served but the bell was rung, whenever you remember that past situation or person you react the same way, you move in the same rut. In the morning you worry about office, by evening you worry about your wife and children, unconsciously, without reason. The mood remains low even if you do not realise why. You do not live based on intelligence, you live based on information.

• SRI PARAMAHAMSA NITHYANANDA