How to See the Invisible: Working with Vāsanā
The unconscious patterns that create our reality—and how to dissolve them
The past, still alive in the present, is scripting reality without our conscious consent.
In the previous essay, we explored the tantric map of creation: aroopa → rooparoopa → roopa — the movement from formless awareness into subtle vibration and finally into the solid circumstances of our lives. We saw that what we call “reality” is not fixed or external. It is consciousness condensing into form, again and again.
But this raises a deeper question: if we are consciousness shaping reality, why do the same painful patterns keep arising? Why do we find ourselves repeating the same dynamics in love, the same scarcity in money, the same tension in our bodies — even after years of spiritual practice?
The tantric traditions offer a precise answer: vāsanā.
Vāsanā: The Scent That Shapes Reality
The Sanskrit word vāsanā comes from a root meaning “scent” or “trace” — like the fragrance that lingers after a flower is gone. A vāsanā is the subtle residue an experience leaves in consciousness: the emotional imprint, the conclusion drawn, the patterned tendency that persists long after the original moment has passed.
Over time, these residues knit themselves into the architecture of personality. They shape how we perceive, how we act, and even what we unconsciously create.
Imagine a four-year-old crying alone in a room and drawing the conclusion: I am not important. That conclusion doesn’t remain as an idea. It imprints as a vibration in the subtle body: a hum of “not-importantness” that continues to influence every relationship that follows. Even decades later, that vibration might still be shaping how love is sought, how abandonment is feared, how closeness is avoided.
This is what tantric texts mean when they speak of saṃskāra (impression) becoming vāsanā (tendency): the past, still alive in the present, scripting reality without our conscious consent.
Where Vāsanā Lives: The Rooparoopa Realm
Vāsanā operates in the rooparoopa realm — the subtle space between formless potential (aroopa) and physical manifestation (roopa). Here, consciousness is not yet circumstance, but it is already vibrating with pattern and momentum.
This is why vāsanā is so powerful: it is the energetic blueprint from which circumstances arise. The stories we live out — repeating relationship dynamics, persistent money struggles, chronic health patterns — are not accidents. They are reality organizing itself around a deep, unconscious vibration.
And because vāsanā lives upstream of form, we cannot solve a vāsanā problem at the level of form. We have to meet it where it lives — in the subtle body, in the feeling-tone, in the vibration that precedes thought and circumstance.
The Sponsoring Seed
Vāsanā can be thought of as a seed. This seed does not mechanically “cause” each specific thought or reaction. Rather, it sponsors them by supporting, funding, and authorizing their appearance.
A jealousy vāsanā, for example, sponsors:
Comparative thoughts
A zero-sum view of love and success
Contraction in the presence of another’s beauty
Compulsive checking, measuring, proving
The story of “not enough”
These expressions seem diverse, but they share a single root vibration. That vibration is the sponsoring seed.
Most spiritual work fails because it tries to prune the branches while leaving the root intact. We try to stop jealous thoughts, suppress angry reactions, override shameful feelings. But as long as the seed remains, it will keep sponsoring new forms of the same pattern. Different thoughts, same frequency. Different triggers, same contraction.
Dissolving the Seed at Its Source
How do we dissolve a vāsanā? We don’t do it by attacking it or resisting it, because attention and aversion only feed the seed.
Instead, dissolution happens through three interwoven practices:
Witness It:
When the pattern arises, witness it without becoming it. Each time you see a reaction clearly without identifying with it, you stop creating new impressions that strengthen the seed.
Starve It of Energy:
Withdraw the fuel of belief, justification, and resistance. Let the thought pass without clinging. Let the feeling move without building a story around it. Without constant nourishment, the seed weakens.
Plant a Counter-Seed:
Consistently choose the opposite vibration. Bless beauty instead of contracting against it. Offer compassion where shame once lived. Meet resistance with sustained openness. This is not spiritual bypassing — it is intentional cultivation of a new frequency.
This is why blessing is such a potent tantric practice. It’s not sentimentality; it’s causal work. Blessing dissolves the seed of lack by choosing sufficiency. It dissolves the seed of threat by choosing reverence. It dissolves the seed of separation by choosing recognition.
The Yoga Sūtras (I.50–51) point to this process:
tat-saṃskāro ’nya-saṃskāra-pratibandhī / tasyāpi nirodhe sarva-nirodhāt
“The saṃskāra born of discriminative knowledge obstructs other saṃskāras. When even that ceases, all ceases.”
A new impression counters the old. Eventually, even that dissolves, and awareness rests in itself. The dissolution of the seed is done through sustained recognition and transmutation.
How to See the Invisible: Recognizing Vāsanā in Action
Because vāsanā is subtle, it often operates outside our conscious awareness. These practices reveal where it lives:
Notice Repeating Patterns
When the same scenario arises again and again — the same breakup dynamic, the same financial ceiling — trace the feeling back. Ask: When have I felt this exact sensation before? The thread often leads to an early moment when a conclusion was formed. Seeing that moment drains power from the pattern.
Notice Defensiveness
The things we guard most fiercely often protect a vāsanā. When criticism lands and anger or shame flares, pause before justifying. Ask: What belief would feel threatened if I let their words be true?
Notice Disproportionate Reactions
When the response outweighs the event — panic over a late text, bitterness at someone else’s success — it’s a vāsanā flaring. Trace the charge back to its root. A childhood memory often sits at the origin.
Notice Hidden Payoffs
Every vāsanā has a function. Scarcity might feel miserable but protect us from arrogance. Illness might limit us but win care. Seeing the payoff reveals the deeper fear the pattern guards.
Notice the Body
Vāsanā lives in tissue. Chronic shoulder tension may hold “I must carry everything alone.” A tight throat may guard “I can’t speak my truth.” Numbness in the belly may protect from feelings once too overwhelming to bear. Feeling these places without fixing them lets the contraction release. As the subtle body changes, life circumstances often shift too.
Notice Dreams
Dreams bypass the conscious mind’s defenses. Being chased shows a vāsanā of threat. Failing a test shows “I’m not prepared.” Losing what matters shows “I can’t hold what I love.” Dreams reveal the patterns shaping waking life.
Listen to Trusted Mirrors
Sometimes others see what we cannot. Trusted teachers or friends can reflect patterns we’re too close to perceive. If feedback lands as recognition (“Ah, yes”), it’s likely true. If it lands as violation or confusion, it’s likely projection.
Recognition as Liberation
A vāsanā is consciousness forgetting itself. Recognition is consciousness remembering. As remembering deepens, the same energy that once hardened into pattern becomes free creative potential again.
The Yoga Sūtras affirm this:
II.12: kleśa-mūlaḥ karmāśayo dṛṣṭādṛṣṭa-janma-vedanīyaḥ — “The karmic deposit has its root in the afflictions and is experienced in seen and unseen births.”
IV.8: tatas tad-vipākānuguṇānām evābhivyaktir vāsanānām — “Only those vāsanās manifest whose fruition corresponds to the circumstances.”
The past continues shaping the present until the root dissolves. Our task is not to fight the forms but to meet the seed with awareness until it remembers its source. Then form reorganizes naturally, not through struggle but through the intelligence of consciousness recognizing itself.
Daily Practice: Planting a New Seed
Choose one contraction — jealousy, shame, scarcity — and work with its opposite vibration for one week.
If jealousy arises, bless the beauty you see:
May this beauty flourish. May it awaken more beauty in me.
If shame arises, place a hand on your heart and speak:
I am worthy of love exactly as I am.
If anger arises, breathe openness into the resistance:
I welcome this moment as it is.
Do this not once, but again and again. Each repetition plants a new seed in the subtle field. Over time, the old seed loses nourishment. What once ruled you becomes compost for new creation.
Go Deeper: Dissolve the Seed, Reclaim the Source
This is the essence of tantric practice: to meet the subtle causes of suffering at their root and dissolve them in the fire of awareness. It’s what we do in my retreats and online courses — learning to sense and shift the field at the rooparoopa level, where reality is still fluid.
If you are ready to rewire the patterns that shape your life at the deepest level, this is the work. Join me in these immersive practices, and we will walk together into the heart of creation itself, where consciousness remembers its freedom and form follows suit. Retreats, events and courses at christinemariemason.com
Notes:
These sutras describe how past actions create impressions (saṃskāras) that accumulate in the karmic storehouse. These impressions form deeper tendencies (vāsanās) that continue across lifetimes and manifest according to circumstances. The key insight in IV.9 is that memory and saṃskāras have the same form, creating continuity even across time and space—essentially, the past patterns continue to shape present reality automatically.
Book II (Sādhana Pāda), Sutras 12-15:
II.12: kleśa-mūlaḥ karmāśayo dṛṣṭādṛṣṭa-janma-vedanīyaḥ “The karmic deposit has its root in the afflictions and is experienced in seen (present) and unseen (future) births.”
II.13: sati mūle tad-vipāko jātyāyur-bhogāḥ “As long as the root exists, it ripens into birth, lifespan, and experience.”
II.14: te hlāda-paritāpa-phalāḥ puṇyāpuṇya-hetutvāt “These have pleasure or pain as their fruit, according to their cause being virtue or vice.”
II.15: pariṇāma-tāpa-saṃskāra-duḥkhair guṇa-vṛtti-virodhāc ca duḥkham eva sarvaṃ vivekinaḥ “To one of discrimination, all is suffering due to the suffering inherent in change, anxiety, saṃskāra, and the conflict of the guṇas.”
Book IV (Kaivalya Pāda), Sutras 8-11:
IV.8: tatas tad-vipākānuguṇānām evābhivyaktir vāsanānām “From these [karmas], only those vāsanās manifest whose fruition corresponds to the particular circumstances.”
IV.9: jāti-deśa-kāla-vyavahitānām apy ānantaryaṃ smṛti-saṃskārayor ekarūpatvāt “Because memory and saṃskāras are identical in form, there is an unbroken continuity [of cause and effect] even though separated by birth, place, and time.”
IV.10: tāsām anāditvaṃ cāśiṣo nityatvāt “And these [vāsanās] are beginningless because the desire for existence is eternal.”
IV.11: hetu-phalāśrayālambanaiḥ saṃgṛhītatvād eṣām abhāve tad-abhāvaḥ “Since [the vāsanās] are held together by cause, effect, support, and object, they disappear when these disappear.”
