Kleshas: The coloring of the mind Part 1/3
This article is an excerpt from my book The Yoga Sutras Illuminated: Unraveling the mysteries of life, death and liberation (published in May 2025).
The word klesha means “tainted” and the words colored (klishta) and not-colored (aklishta) are derived from it.
Klishta thoughts, images, emotions and desires are colored with fear, aversion and attachment.
Aklishta thoughts, images, emotions and desires are those mind patterns that are not-colored and lead away from fear, aversion, attachment. They help you see clearly and respond wisely to all situations.
Colored mind (Blog Photo by Juna Carlos Trujillo, Unsplash)
Understanding kleshas
All the thinking and emotional habit patterns are collectively called mind patterns. All mind patterns are: colored or not-colored. Let’s consider a few examples to understand the meaning of colored and not-colored mind patterns. Imagine, you are afraid you might lose your job. This fear makes you nervous, as a result of which you repeatedly make mistakes, so that you do indeed lose your job. This is how colored thoughts affect you. Now that you have lost your job, you have to look for another one. However, you have developed an aversion to searching for jobs, because you think you are not good enough. This is another coloring. Due to this aversion you are unable to see the many opportunities you are missing out on. These were examples of klishta mind patterns.
Parents are unhappy when their adorable children turn into difficult teenagers and sometimes wish they would remain children forever. They are attached to the images of the past. These thoughts, images, emotions and desires are colored; they too are klishta mind patterns.
Not-colored mind patterns are strengthened in those who purify their colored mind patterns in deep meditation until they are uncolored. If somebody takes your pen, you might say “Make sure you return my pen.” On the other hand, if somebody would take your smartphone, you would immediately ask, “Why are you taking my phone?” Your thoughts are not so colored about the pen because it is just an ordinary pen, but the thoughts about the smartphone are heavily colored. If I take away your smartphone and throw it out of the window, you’ll get very angry. As you read this, you are thinking,“Yes, of course, I’d be angry. My phone is expensive and I need it.” Whatever the reason may be, your mind patterns related to the smartphone are heavily colored.
Ahamkara, one of the four modifications of the mind, is made up of many identities. Each of us has different identities. The same person is a daughter, sister and wife and maybe even mother or grandmother. You have different identities and related to each of these roles you have different mind patterns. These too are colored.
Let ’s take another example to understand the difference between colored and not-colored thoughts. You are worried because your child is late returning from school. You try to reach your child and you cannot get through. The worry turns into panic with irrational images of accidents and kidnapping – these are klishta mind patterns. Why are they colored? Because it is MY child. You are attached to the child. Now let us say the neighbor’s child is late. Would you be as affected? You’ll empathize with your neighbor and offer your assistance, but you’ll not panic, because it’s not “MY child.” That small word MY makes all the difference. This identification creates coloring.
(Credit: Radhikaji)
Cornerstone of systematic practice
The whole purpose of meditation practices is to make these colored mind patterns into not-colored mind patterns. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love your child anymore. In fact, you enjoy your relationship with your child even more when you are able to uncolor your attachment to your child. Now you can see what is really good for the development of the child and not let your attachment and irrational emotions influence all your decisions and behavior. Extreme attachment and identification lead parents to be unhappy, especially when the children grow up.
You experience this identification and attachment in many aspects of your life: attachment to your family, your job, your home, even to your car. The entire process of systematic practice is about uncoloring these colored mind patterns.
The five categories of kleshas
The colored mind patterns are known as kleshas; there are five main categories of kleshas. They are:
Ignorance (Avidya)
False identity (Asmita)
Attachment (Raga)
Aversion (Dvesha)
Clinging on to life (Abhinivesha)
Kleshas are the filter through which we look at the world.
Avidya: Mother of all kleshas
The mother of all kleshas is avidya. Avidya, the breeding ground for all other kleshas, is generally translated as ignorance. However, the word ignorance has a strong negative association and is not useful for understanding the role of avidya in our daily lives. Avidya has been defined in The Yoga Sutras (Fig.1: Avidya defined).
Fig.1: Avidya defined (Credit: Radhikaji, Sreeram Ramamoorthy)
Avidya is mistaking:
the transient for the eternal
the impure for the pure
the painful for the joyous
the non-Self for the Self
We shall discuss these four criteria in the paragraphs to follow.
You have associated with the transient
The word transient refers to everything that is not permanent. The world is constantly changing and everything as you know it now will eventually be destroyed. The body, the senses and the breath are impermanent. The conscious and unconscious mind also keep changing. Nobody wants to think about impermanence and death and so we behave as if we are going to live forever. This is the first aspect of ignorance. We forget that the only thing that is eternal is Individual Consciousness. The real you, that is, Individual Consciousness, has associated with the nashvar, the transient.
Longing for Unity
Another quality of ignorance is that we consider the impure to be pure. With respect to The Yoga Sutras, the use of the word purity has nothing to do with religious or moral values.
When the Individual Self associates with the transient mind, it separates from Universal Consciousness. The separation of the Individual Self from Universal Consciousness is the beginning of the coloring in the mind. This coloring is referred to as an impurity. This separation is the birth of longing for unity. Like an infant that wails in response to the pangs of separation from its mother, the aspirant longs for the pure state of unity. The only way to restore the state of purity is to uncolor the samskaras and reunite Individual Consciousness with Universal Consciousness.
Atman is Individual Consciousness; its nature is Pure Consciousness. Jiva is the combination of the active unconscious and latent unconscious mind (Fig. 2: Jivatman). All the action that you do in this world with your conscious mind, body and senses is stored in the active and latent unconscious mind. This jiva is like a bed for the Atman. The association of the Individual Consciousness with the unconscious mind in this manner is referred to as jivatman.
Fig.2 Jivatman (Credit Radhikaji, Sreeram Ramamoorthy)
Due to its association with the jiva, Individual Consciousness is separated from Universal Consciousness, which creates a state of impurity. All beings appear separate, yet we are all united in our essence. When we purify the mind, in other words, uncolor the kleshas we can experience this unity of being (Fig. 3: Purity). This is our original state of pure being. Please note with reference to Fig.3 that the proportions of the conscious mind as well as the active and latent unconscious minds in the different beings are only indicative. These proportions cannot be quantified accurately.
Fig 3: Purity (Credit Radhikaji, Sreeram Ramamoorthy)
Pain and Joy
Avidya has a third quality. We mistake the painful for the joyous. The innocent child you love becomes an adolescent and makes you miserable. The partner, whom you love so much, leaves you. The body to which you are so attached gets sick. Only upon contemplation do you see that what you think of as joyful actually brings you much pain. However, it is important you do not neglect your body or family based on the fallacious presumption that neglect or cold indifference is non-attachment. Instead become aware of your colored mind patterns.
The Self is not the mind
The final and most important aspect of avidya is that we consider the non-Self to be the Self. You may think there is nothing beyond the mind and body. You may be identified with your job, as a doctor, lawyer, musician, writer or manager. You define yourself in your relationships as a parent or a child. You may even identify yourself as a home owner. But this is not who you are. You are not the mind, the senses, the breath or the body. You are the Self, the Individual Consciousness. The Self is resting on the bed of the active and latent unconscious mind, but it is not part of the unconscious mind. It is not of the mind at all.
Spirituality vs Spiritual Lifestyle
Though mentioned first in The Yoga Sutras, avidya is the last klesha to be uncolored. It is mentioned as the first because it is the breeding ground of the rest of the kleshas; all the other kleshas spring forth from the ignorance of your true nature, the Self. It is unfortunate that many aspirants who do not practice systematically understand the scriptures only at an intellectual level; for this reason, they start believing they can overcome avidya by adopting a distant approach to life. In reality, they have only strengthened ahamkara by wearing a yogic persona. Wearing the mask of a spiritual person will likely thwart your spiritual progress as it has very little to do with uncovering your spiritually. There is a great difference between spirituality and spiritual lifestyle, and it could well be that an aspirant leading a spiritual lifestyle is in greater ignorance than one who has no interest in spirituality at all (Table 1 Spirituality vs Lifestyle).
Table 1 Spirituality vs Lifestyle (Credit: Radhikaji)