Brian Rose says his affirmations out loud on the way to the tube every morning. He knew they worked, he tells Dandapani in this 2016 London Real clip, but had never understood why. The former Hindu monk’s answer is a clear, practical explanation of how monks use repetition to shape the subconscious mind, and the step most people miss.
It’s under six minutes, with one of the most memorable examples on the channel: apples.
▶ Watch the full episode: Dandapani – Master Your Mind
Mantra beads
Monks have always used affirmations, Dandapani says, under the Sanskrit name of mantras. He holds up a string of beads. People call them prayer beads, he explains, but they are really affirmation beads: there are 108 of them, and a monk repeats the same short phrase, such as “I am happy” or “I am confident”, once on each bead. Repeated day after day, it programmes the subconscious.
Three ingredients
The key point of the clip is that words alone aren’t enough. An effective affirmation, he says, needs three things: a concise choice of positive words, clear visualisation, and a corresponding feeling. Most people only do the first.
The apple test
To show why, he uses a simple sentence: “I love apples.” The mind understands “I” and “love” immediately. But “apples” sends it searching through everything it has ever stored: red apples, green apples, Fuji apples, and every Apple laptop, phone and watch. “What apples is he talking about?”
Visualisation solves that. If you picture one specific, bright red apple as you say the words, your mind knows exactly what you mean. Then comes the third ingredient, feeling, which Dandapani calls the most important, because in his words, emotion is energy.
Energy, frequency and vibration
Here he moves into Hindu philosophy. He quotes a line often attributed to Nikola Tesla: to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Everything, Dandapani says, is energy vibrating at its own frequency. Emotional patterns in your subconscious vibrate too, and in his view they attract things of a similar vibration. He is careful to add that the numbers he uses to illustrate it are made up.
Why you date the same person again
His example is one many people will recognise. A couple date for two years and break up. After months of recovery, she starts dating again, and meets a different man who is somehow just like the last one. Dandapani’s explanation is that the emotional experiences from the old relationship are still active in her subconscious, so she attracts someone similar. Energy, he says, doesn’t distinguish between what’s good for you and what isn’t.
That’s why he thinks it’s worth deliberately programming the subconscious with positive patterns, rather than leaving it to old experiences.
What to take from it
Whether or not you accept the idea of vibration, the practical method is easy to try: keep your affirmation short and positive, picture it precisely, and feel it as you say it. Dandapani’s point is that the feeling is what makes it stick.
Who is Dandapani?
Dandapani is a Hindu priest, speaker and entrepreneur who spent 10 years as a monk in a traditional monastery in Hawaii, studying and practising concentration under his guru, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. He now teaches focus and the mind to individuals and companies, and is the author of The Power of Unwavering Focus.
In the full 2016 episode, he talks with Brian Rose about understanding the mind, concentration and living with intention. You can also watch his later London Real interview: Dandapani – How To Raise Your Consciousness.
See everything Dandapani has done with London Real on his guest page: Dandapani on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Dandapani – How To Reprogram Your Subconscious: The Three Ingredients Of An Affirmation
0:00 Brian Rose: I found them really powerful. I said mine out loud on my way to the tube this morning; I do it every day. So I know they’re powerful, but I’ve never thought about why, or how the whole subconscious works. I wonder if I could get your thoughts on that.
0:13 Dandapani: Sure. Monks have been using affirmations forever. Mantras, as they’re called in Sanskrit. We use these beads to chant on, and a lot of the time people say they’re prayer beads. You could say that, but they’re actually more like affirmation or mantra beads. We use them to programme our subconscious. As we chant on each bead, we chant an affirmation: “I am happy,” or “I am confident,” and we repeat the same chant over and over again. There are 108 beads, so you can imagine how your subconscious gets programmed.
0:45 Brian Rose: You memorise 108 different chants?
0:47 Dandapani: Just one chant, over and over again. “I’m happy,” or “I’m confident,” repeated 108 times. With an affirmation, three ingredients are necessary: a concise choice of positive words, clear visualisation, and a corresponding feeling. Most people don’t understand this. They just say the words, with no visualisation and no feeling.
1:10 Dandapani: So for example, if I say, “I love apples”: a concise choice of positive words. When I say the word “I”, my mind knows I’m talking about me. When I say “love”, my mind knows he likes it, enjoys it, adores it. When I say “apples”, my mind gets confused, because it’s searching my entire hard drive, my entire subconscious from the day I was born, for every occurrence of the word apple. Red apples, green apples, yellow apples, Honeycrisp apples, Fuji apples, Washington apples, Apple MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad. What apples is he talking about? No idea. So words alone are not enough.
1:53 Dandapani: That’s why we have visualisation. When I say, “I love apples,” and I visualise a bright red apple, my mind goes, oh, that’s what he’s talking about. He loves bright red apples, this particular type of apple. So words and visualisation are important. And then feeling. Feeling is emotion, and emotion is energy.
2:22 Dandapani: You know the famous scientist Tesla? He had a beautiful saying, which encapsulates Hindu philosophy really well: to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Everything is made up of energy vibrating at its own frequency. A chair has molecules and atoms vibrating at a certain frequency, binding it together, creating matter.
2:55 Dandapani: So what we believe is that your subconscious is filled with patterns vibrating at certain frequencies. Anger could be vibrating at 20 kilohertz, happiness at 30 kilohertz. I don’t know what the numbers are, I’m just making them up. But everything vibrates at a certain frequency. And if you can go into your subconscious, create a pattern and infuse it with energy vibrating at a certain frequency, you can attract things of a similar nature to it.
3:25 Dandapani: So if I repeat an affirmation with a concise choice of positive words and clear visualisation, and infuse a feeling into it, it starts to vibrate in my subconscious at that frequency, and it attracts anything of a similar vibration towards it. A very simple example: boy dates girl, they go out for two years, they have a great, intimate relationship, they break up. The boy hangs out with his friends to get over it. The girl does chocolate, shopping and wine therapy with her girlfriends for six months, and finally says, “I’m over him.” She starts dating again. Who does she attract? Quite often a similar guy. A different person, but the same vibration, the same type of person.
4:18 Dandapani: So many people come up to me and say, “I keep attracting the same type of person into my life.” Why? John dates Sue for two years. Sue has emotional experiences in her subconscious vibrating at the frequency of John. They break up, but those experiences are still vibrating at the frequency of John. Now she goes to date, and who does she attract? Another John, called Peter, of a similar frequency.
4:57 Dandapani: Energy doesn’t know how to discriminate between what’s good for you and what’s not. It’s just energy. Anything of a similar frequency gets drawn to you. So if you know how the subconscious works, and how to programme it using affirmations with a concise choice of positive words, clear visualisation and a corresponding feeling, the feeling being the most important component, because it’s the actual energy that attracts, then you can bring into your life anything you want.
