A single pointed mind is a prerequisite for advanced stages of Yoga practice. The initial steps of Yoga namely Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama are meant primarily to take you to that state. A state where your mind does not wander around.
But you probably will be surprised if I tell you that a single pointed mind is not good for ‘normal’ mundane life. Most of our day-to-day activities expect us to perform multiple tasks and we need to switch between them.
If you practice the focusing techniques that I discussed in the previous episodes for a prolonged duration, you will end up in a single pointed mind which is good from Yoga point of view, but not so good from a layman’s point of view.
Buddha explains an incident that happened when he reached an almost single pointed mind. Buddha was living all alone in a forest, quite secluded from people. He was busily engrossed in his meditative practices.
It was rainy season. One night it so happened that there were thunder storms and lightening in that area. The lightening struck some trees near the area where Buddha was living. The trees were burnt in no time.
People who lived close by, came to know about this lightning and were worried about Buddha since he was all alone. They rushed for his help.
When they reached Buddha’s hut, they found Buddha busy with his practices, totally unaware of whatever had happened! He had no idea that there was lightning just outside his hut!
That is what happens as you approach a single pointed state of the mind. You become totally unaware of whatever is happening around!
Though it is listed as the 5th step of Yoga, it is actually a state of the mind where the incoming signals from the sense organs don’t get cognized by the mind. The eyes see, but what is seen is not perceived by the mind. Ears hear but what is heard is not comprehended by the mind and so on.
‘Ahara’ means input and Pratyahara is blocking of these inputs. And these inputs are inputs from sense organs.
Incidentally, some Gurus interpret ‘ahara’ as the food that we eat and give a long list of food items that are good for a Yogi or otherwise. Yes, the word ‘ahara’ also means food, but if you look at the simile given by Patanjali, that is not the meaning in this context.
Some Gurus even interpret Pratyahara as willful control of the senses. If you read the commentary of Yoga Sutra, it is clear that that is not the meaning as per Patanjali. The bee simile also makes it further clear. There is no forcible control of the senses but an automatic withdrawal from the sense inputs.
How does one reach that state?
That information passes through several stages in the brain, through different brain regions called vision processing regions.
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| Visual processing regions in the brain |
The first one tries to understand where the object exists and the second one tries to identify the object. In both these processing, various other regions of the brain are accessed to aide in the processing.
For example, when you want to identify the object, the brain has to access information stored in various memories about the object. So, they need ‘non local access’ to other brain regions. Any access to non-local region needs a connection to be established between the region that needs the information and the region that has the information.
Establishment of such a connection needs the intervention of the attention system in the brain. But if the attention system is engaged in something else, the connection does not get established and hence the processing activity would die down eventually over a period of time.
The images enter the brain, but they don’t get fully processed. So, they do not enter our conscious awareness. And go unnoticed.
This is roughly what happens when the attention system does not attend to incoming sense inputs whether it is from the eyes or some other sense organ. ‘The person does not see, even when his eyes see, he does not hear even though his ears hear… and so on’
That is Pratyahara.
Supposing you want to go further in the Yoga ladder. What next? We will see that in the next episode.
A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2019-2020
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