What is Chitta?
Chitta is the part where all our memories, experiences, and impressions are stored. It is the most important part of the mind (other parts being manas, buddhi, and ahamkara) as the memory of all our experiences either pleasant or unpleasant gets stored there.
Chitta deals with our subconscious patterns. The strong patterns are mostly formed in early childhood or as a response to significant life events. However new patterns are being continuously created in response to all life experiences.
Some of these patterns can be beneficial and help us learn how to respond to the world, whereas other patterns, particularly if they are based on trauma can lead to unwanted unconscious responses. These manifest throughout our lives as repeated trouble in relationships, fears, phobias, aversions, aggressive responses, sadness, self-worth, arrogance, etc.
It can be difficult to look into these objectively as they seem to create the very foundation of our being. We tend to protect these parts of ourselves as there is often shame or embarrassment attached to these feelings making it uncomfortable to shine a light on them. This is why many people find talking about these things with a friend or therapist helpful to get an outside perspective.
The Chitta shapes your entire personality
Understanding Chitta with some examples
Let’s try to understand Chitta with some mundane examples.
Example 1 – Chitta and past memories
Even if you try to consciously forget Chitta keeps the score. Imagine a situation where you randomly meet someone after a long time. You had some bad experiences with this person (a messy relationship, a school bully, an abusive person, etc). Until this meeting, you had put this person out of your mind. But the moment you see them, a lot of memories from the Chitta start coming back changing your energy and emotion. You might re-live those unpleasant experiences you had with the person.
Our traumas, fears, etc all are stored there and might keep coming back as certain similar situations arrive. You are still suffering from your past experiences which might even have happened a long time ago.
Example 2- Chitta and Ideas
Our experiences can also form fixed ideas that might stop you from seeing the situation the way it is. It might also get in the way of future experiences.
Here is another simple example to illustrate the point (these mundane examples might be helpful for you to see how we form more complex ideas).
I had a student in a course where we were having a philosophical discussion about IDEAS. The next day something very eye-opening happened to him.
In our next class, he started sharing his experience of eating Okra (also known as lady’s finger).
** Some background – There are two methods of cooking okra (well there are many more methods I guess but these are the relevant ones for this example). If you cut okra and put it directly in water it goes very slimy. If you cook it then you get a very slimy dish which some people don’t like. Another method of cooking is, you wash the okra, letting it dry, and then cut it so that it doesn’t go slimy, and later you stir fry it with some spices.
Our student had eaten the slimy version somewhere first and didn’t like it at all which created an aversion to okra. During the course, our cook made the dry version, and as soon as he saw and smelled the okra his aversion came up.
But he had remembered our discussion on how we create ideas and how these ideas might stop us from experiencing life. Having this in mind he tried to eat it again and this time he found it very tasty. So “all okra dishes might not be horrible”.
We keep on making these concrete ideas. A bad breakup might create an idea that this might happen again and would stop you from having a new relationship.
What are your ideas? It is something that you have already decided, if you have already decided that ‘it is like this’ then there is no scope for any further learning. While one idea might make sense for a certain situation it might not be correct for some other situation.
How to work on Chitta?
After having understood how the Chitta functions let’s try to explore some methods to work on it.
In Yoga people talk a lot about purification. Physical purification totally makes sense but there is something called mental purification.
Chitta shuddhi (shuddhi means purification) is the process of purifying the Chitta. This means working on the attachments that are making you cling to those experiences. Whereas the memory will always be there but we need to work on our attachment to those memories so that they can come and go without creating any discomfort within.
Here are some common questions that arise in mind from our unpleasant experiences-
- Why did this happen to me?
- They should have acted differently?
- I should have acted differently?
Even though the solution (letting go) to these is simple, the practical application is way more difficult. Whatever the truth about the reasons for your experience, the fact is you now have to find a way to move forward. Someone might argue that they feel some peace or closure if they are able to place the blame, but this blame is an attachment that will never allow you to move forward. Sometimes there is no satisfying reason and this has to become part of the acceptance.
The complexities of Chitta make it difficult to explain as everybody’s life experience is so different. The main thing to understand is that Chitta describes the subconscious patterns created by our life experiences. Changing these patterns can be a difficult process but with the right knowledge and techniques, anything is possible.