Yogis have said that everything we perceive, experience and desire in our life creates an impression. Everything creates a conditioning, an imprint in the field of consciousness. These impressions or imprints are known as pratyayas. When you write something on a piece of paper, the imprint is there for a long time. In the same manner, an impression in the mind is retained by the mind for a long time, both the good and the bad. Those impressions are known as pratyayas.
Pratyaya and impression are the same. These impressions on our consciousness create a particular type of behaviour and the behaviour becomes part of our expression. If one has negative impressions in the mind, the behaviour will always be different. It may be negative, restrictive, doubtful, cynical. If the impressions are negative, those negative feelings will take over. If the impressions are positive, positive impressions will take over. Going through relaxation, sensory control and then observation of our own behaviour and connection with the positive, we change this basic tendency of the mind to indulge in those behaviours which restrict its creativity and potential.
In today’s society, when we are subject to or aware of the internet, our life revolves around that, especially the life of the young people. People who have lived without mobile phones live a better life. The mental samskara or conditioning of people who continuously look at the phone, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter is different to people who have not exposed themselves to this type of social medias. We have seen people who are efficient in front of a digital device, yet when you take it away from them for ten minutes, they have no clue on how to interact with people. They feel threatened when this security is taken away from them. This is one aspect. Today even psychoanalysts say that different types of mental disorders are on the rise, due to the influence of social media.
In our time before social media, friendship was special, unique and intimate. In today’s time, in one instant you can become a friend with anybody or you can de-friend a person, with just the push of a button. The whole relationship between people has changed drastically. In our time, communication was important and there was a common ground to achieve it. In today’s time, communication is disappearing and abbreviations are appearing. Lol, omg, and if you are not aware of what these things mean, you are totally lost. It is a new language, like any computer language. The first time somebody said lol to me, I had no idea what he was talking about. First time somebody said omg, I had no idea what was being said. Our communication is now reduced to just a few syllables.
There is also a sense of insecurity; we feel that we are not getting enough attention, affection or love. All these things create ‘tsunamis’ in the mind. In nature tsunamis have been happening for thousands of years, yet only in the last twenty years the word has become common; prior to that tsunamis also happened. We did not know that they were happening, as that concept and understanding was not there. In the same manner, a tsunami happens within us at unconscious and subconscious levels and many times at the conscious level. Whenever these upheavals happen, we find that we are sucked in by them to deeper depths of darkness and we do not know how we can come out of it.
Pratyahara is the starting point to clear the impressions, in the field of our consciousness. Once the mind has been cleared of all its impressions which cause disturbance and agitations, whether it be emotional, mental, intellectual, an expectation, a need, interaction or relationship, whatever it may be once we have attained that freedom from the impressions, the pratyayas, concentration comes. If you are sitting out in the open, between five and six, at the time of dusk, with your eyes closed, meditating, you will find that hundreds of mosquitos will come and start buzzing around you. Why should a little mosquito disturb your meditation? It does disturb, even though it may not bite you, yet if it buzzes around your ear, you will be disturbed. In the same manner, in our meditation, it is the little things that disturb. Big things you know about and you try to manage them, but little things you do not know. These little things are known as pratyayas. Clearing of pratyayas is the purpose of pratyahara. Then comes focus, concentration, where there are no distractions and dissipations, and you are self-contained. That stage is known as dharana.
In the ancient texts, pratyahara has been identified as withdrawing the senses from outside to inside. That may be an understanding that yogis in the past developed. Now we have to apply that concept, theory and practice in our life appropriately to see how we can withdraw ourselves without disconnecting from our life and society. That is an important aspect today. Even as sannyasins, we have to learn how to disconnect yet remain connected, to disconnect from the negative and remain connected with the positive. That is the challenge of sadhana in yoga. The tools are all there, now we have to learn how to utilize them.
First, focus on different aspects of pratyahara, learn how to relax, clear, and then move into dharana, focusing. You will do this not from a yogic perspective. Of course the foundation is yogic, yet not as meditation, but more as a practical participation, something you can use in your daily life instantly to help you manage the negative. That will give you a glimpse into mind management that yogis speak of and prepare you to experience dhyana or meditation, where you can easily go deep, with a good counterbalance to the negative. If you can build a good counterbalance to the negative, then you have become a yogi. Then you do not need raja yoga, hatha yoga or any yoga. For what is the purpose of yoga anyway? Some people say self-realization, others say samadhi, some say other things, yet everything which has been said, has been far from you in real life. Samadhi is a nice carrot to dangle in front of you; the problem is that the stick is long, so you can never eat the carrot. You see the carrot, yet you can never eat it. Samadhi is something that out of billions of yoga practitioners, maybe one person has experienced; similarly, with self-realization. To say that you are super or a super soul is not self-realization. We do not even know what makes us tick. We do not know what our strengths, weaknesses, ambitions are or what life is or is not. We have no clue. Even that concept seems unattainable, unless we put ourselves through a process where we completely change the quality of the mind.
My guru, Sri Swami Satyanandaji, has always said, ‘Your life is what you live in your mind. If your mind is negative, life is negative. If your mind is problematic, life is problematic. If your mind is happy, your life is happy. If your mind is jealous, you will have jealousy throughout your life. If your mind is angry, you will be always angry.’ It is that nature which is controlling human behaviour. If our life is what we live in our mind, then an attempt can be made to make the mind a better mind and that better mind will evolve. Right now our mind is not evolving. Technology is evolving, not the mind. Mind has come to a standstill, as humans are unable to use their intelligence. They have started to develop AI, artificial intelligence, to replace their own intelligence. That is an indication that evolution or the development of mind has come to a standstill. The skills which are inherent in the mind are not being sharpened.
4 April 2023, Pratyahara and Dharana Training, Ganga Darshan, Munger