Back in the 1960s psychologist Abraham Maslow drew up his ‘hierarchy of needs’ which quickly became the
accepted standard of human needs. Right at the top was the ‘peak experience’. For awhile no one said much about
that top, number one need ~ now there is an explosion of interest in it, particularly in the field of athletics
and competitive sports, where it has become known as ‘flow’.
The film director, Max Bervy,who filmed the Olympic gold skier, Ted Ligaty described the flow state as:
"…a place where the impossible becomes possible, where time slows down and a perfect moment becomes attainable…'1
The psychiatrist, Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Head of the Psychology Department of the University of
Chicago, has become renowned for his work on the psychology of the peak experience, or flow.
Flow is an altered state of consciousness in which one experiences a euphoric state of bliss and yet a
heightened state of awareness. All kinds of top athletes and sports people, artists and musicians will happily
talk and write about the ‘beyond joy’ experience of ‘flow’, but sadly, we seldom ~ if ever ~ hear about it in
our Yoga classes.
Yet Yoga is the first documented place in history where this 'flow' state was explored.
The Absence of Flow
At an Oxford University study day on meditation, one of my fellow presenters gave a moving account of the
transformative effects of Yoga in prisons. From the floor a questioner became quite agitated and said, “This
was to be a study day about meditation, not yoga.” With that statement from the floor I realised how far our
present understanding of Yoga, has moved away from its original meaning, intention and practice.
Yoga, in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English dictionary, has upward of 150
meanings. If a single word translation is needed, perhaps the word
‘integration’ can be used. As we have seen in our previous
blogs, the Sage Patañjali ~ in his second century BCE sūtras ~
defined Yoga as, “ The stilling of the movement of thought in consciousness” in
order that “We can know the true self”. We live
fragmented lives, seldom with a sense of being complete, sufficient, whole.
Yoga, as first articulated by Yama, the God Beyond Death, in the Katha
Upanishad, and then later codified into a specific philosophy and practice
by the Sage Patañjali, is integration ~ a healing into our
inherent wholeness.
However, I could also understand the agitation of the questioner from the
floor: Yoga has become nothing more than another exercise technique in our
modern parlance and practice of it. Indeed, contemporary Yoga is even being
referred to as ‘Modern Postural Yoga’. People can go through
complex and, no doubt, invigorating vinyasa; contort their bodies into
pretzel-like āsana that take the breath away ~ and yet not be doing
the Yoga of either the God Beyond Death, Yama, or anything Patañjali
would recognise as Yoga. Because, the truth is, for movement to become Yoga
it must also call on our attention in a particular way to create the flow
experience.
Flow
Prof. Mihaly began his work on the flow state by studying how young artists
went about creating a painting. What he discovered was that the creative
work of making a painting, composing an opera, or writing a poem, followed
a discernible sequence that allowed for a change in consciousness that he
called ‘flow’ or ‘the optimal / peak experience’.
Prof. Mihaly in his book Flow,2 freely admits that Yoga
is an ancient system that articulated this state of consciousness, and that
he is articulating it for our time. Both Patañjali and Prof.
Csikszentmihalyi, were quite clear that we cannot make ‘flow’
happen. However, each offered a map to creating the conditions for it happening.
Prof. Mihalyi's map is worth knowing ~ then we can more easily see correspondences between it and the state that the ancient Yogins described.
In the professor’s research, the first step is Loss of Self Consciousness : the activity is so engrossing that
it doesn’t allow other activities or intrusions from past, present or
future. Mihaly is clear, however, that “...
loss of self-consciousness does not involve loss of self... but rather
a loss of consciousness of self
.”
Here, we become so engrossed in what we are doing ~ whether running a race, painting a painting, that the task we are engaged in becomes primary, rather than ourselves engaging in the task.
Next is Transformation of Time : In the optimal experience Mihaly
noted that “... time no longer seems to pass the way it ordinarily does.”
The things we usually use to tell the passage of time ~ night and day, the
hands of a clock ~ seem to fade into the background as our attention is
taken by the activity we are engaged in.
We have all had an experience of this, maybe reading a particularly engrossing book, engaged in a particularly absorbing task, where we are surprised by the passage of time that has passed because we were not aware of it.
Finally, An End in Itself : The key to the optimal or creative
experience is that it is an end in itself. Even if the activity is
undertaken for some other reason, the professor noted, the activity itself
becomes the all-consuming thing. He quotes a surgeon who said, “
The work is so engaging that I would do it even if I didn’t have
to
.” Whatever its origin, the activity becomes one from which
expectation of any future benefit is removed ~ the reward is in the doing
of it.
How Does Flow Happen?
The optimal experience occurs when the skills required are sufficient to meet the challenge.
The challenge has to be great enough to overcome boredom or apathy, but not so great that our skills cannot match it. At the beginning of learning a new activity, for example, we might only go into 'flow' infrequently. However, as our skills improve this becomes more frequent, provided the challenge still remains high enough to grip our attention.
The sportsperson will speak of it as‘being in the flow’ or ‘in the zone’; the artist might speak of it as ‘ being lost in her work’. Both are trying to indicate, to articulate, that optimal, bliss experience.
"Everything else goes away. It almost happens in slow motion, even though you're doing things at the correct time. Nothing else matters; it's just an eerie, eerie feeling and nothing can take you out of focus."
Back to Yoga
Our ancient Sage spoke of the peak experience using various synonyms, among
them, samāpatti.
kṣīṇa-vṛtter-abhijātasya-iva
maṇer-grahītṛ-grahaṇa-grāhyeṣu
tat-stha-tad-añjanatā samāpattiḥ || 1:41 ||
When (through practice) the mind has been restrained, it becomes as
clear as a pure crystal, reflecting ‘the knower’ and
‘the known’. This state of mind is known as samāpatti.
(41)
tatra śabda-artha-jñāna-vilkapaiḥ
saṅkīrṇā savitarkā3
samāpattiḥ
|| 1:42 ||
In this state of mind there is still the word, its object and its
conceptualisation of reality, therefore it is called savitarka 2 samāpattiḥ. (42)
Samāpatti means unity; it comes from three words: ‘sam’ =
together; ‘ ā’ = unto; and ‘patti’ from the
root verb ‘pat’ = to fly or fall. There have been various
translations for this word ~ usually as variations of
‘joining’,‘union’, ‘at-one-ment’ or
‘fusion’.
The Sage Patañjali seems to be indicating that the ‘new
mind’ that emerges from this state of consciousness ~ samāpatti
~ is one more receptive to samādhi. It it is difficult to find a word
or phrase in English that is a precise synonym for samāpatti, so I
leave it in the original Sanskrit. However, it is the closest to what is
now being termed ‘flow’: an altered state of consciousness in
which the practitioner is aware of themselves, the task they are
performing, the objects they are using ~ and yet all merge into a state of
blissful wholeness.
Patañjali also gave us what is probably the first map tocreating the conditions for flow to happen, and in the next blog we will be exploring that map.
🕉
References
1. 1. http://www.80percentmental.com/blog/0percentmental.com/2014/03/achieving-rise-of-flow-interview-with.html
2. Flow ~ The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness’ by Milhaly
Csikszentmihalyi, publ. by Rider, 2002.
3. savitarkā (f. sing): accompanied by thought and reason. In this
savitarkā samāpattiḥ consciousness, the mind, thought, and
the idea-of-I ( the ahamkara) are all still present, but mastery is gained
by the inner observer: the awareness and knowledge begin to have clarity
(described as word, meaning, and object being brought together). Again,
this is synonomous with the modern description of the flow state or peak
experience. It is not yet the samadhi state of consciousness that
Patañjali explores.
©Swami
Ambikananda, May 2022
