Page 136 - Wisdom Unfurled

very difficult process to implement in practice indeed for the sadhaka whose mind is already ill disciplined and unregulated and ill prepared to dwell on the contrary food as suggested above. We find that the Master’s system starts from this step of Pratyahara, wherein the mind is offered the alternate food of the divine light without luminosity for meditation. As we have seen earlier that the mind accepts readily anything related to the divine and the suggestion that it thinks of the divine light as mentioned suits its real nature and it is able to hold the idea. Further the Master does not insist that the light should be seen and experienced unlike in the ashtanga yoga; it is only a suggestion and the presence of the object is not insisted upon as light is not the goal according to the Master.
This coupled with the Master’s advice that the thoughts, other than the object of meditation, are to be ignored as uninvited guests facilitates the process of meditation greatly and imparts a great deal of confidence to the seeker trying to find his feet on the path of yoga.
All along it has been dinned into ears of seekers that the perfect state to be attained is the absolutely thoughtless state of nirvikalpa samadhi and many a practicant is always confronted by thoughts even after much progress in the path. We will see more of this aspect when the practice of meditation proper is discussed. Similarly there are significant differences in the interpretation of the processes of control and concentration of mind and the states of samadhi as compared to the understanding of these states in Patanjali yoga, which will be brought to attention at the appropriate stages in our discussion of these aspects in SRRY.
Role of the Central Force in Pranahuti aided meditation
The mind of ordinary men has been spoilt by its habituation of running after sense objects. In the leisure moments the mind seems to take wings with the thoughts of diverse things crisscrossing the mind leaving impressions upon our emotive feelings and senses. The senses have thus been spoilt and adopt a wrong course. The marks made on the indriyas turn them solid like a rock depriving them of wisdom resulting in coverings to be formed over the soul so that we can not even peep into it not to speak of realizing it. The soul has become like a silk worm in a cocoon, implying that the soul itself is responsible for creating the various coverings through the wrong use of its faculties and under which it now remains enmeshed. If the message of Rajayoga, a subtle method of evolution, is recommended to persons who have built up solidity as above, they do not feel inclined to follow it and some of them do not even want to hear it. In the process of meditation advised in the system, we make use of the central force within us, though it has been marred by our wrong doings. It disperses the overwhelming clouds which are greatly