Total pratyāhāra

 Outward w.r.t. body, [1]

 has 3+ levels:

- mānasik

- vācik

- kārmaṇik 

in traditional terms, or, 

using Babuji's sequence [2]:

- ideas

- thoughts

- words

or, combined:

- śruti

- manasa

- vāca

- karmaṇa

or, in English:

- vibrational

- mental or by inner instruments

- verbal

- physical

Physical may be 

further subdivided into 

prāṇik and kārmaṇik.

Also, "inner instruments" 

may be expanded as

the kośās of 

the subtle and causal bodies.

This expansion seems unnecessary 

beyond manas and buddhi [3]

because the discussion here

is only about 

what can be 

wilfully turned 

inward or outward.

pratyāhāra means 

reversing that which eats 

(āhāra - ingests or takes in,

 prati - reverse or oppose) -

from the outside to the inside.

That is, 

turning all our 

physical, 

energetic, and 

inner sensors 

from 

outer sensations, 

outside energies, and 

crucially, also from

inner representations of 

the outside world.

Normally, one cannot turn 

one's physical sensors 

inward completely.

An obvious example is 

the eyes, 

which cannot look inward.

But closing the eyes 

more or less pauses 

visual sensations. 

Inner sounds can be heard, 

but the ears cannot be closed 

physically at will. 

Ditto the nostrils - 

needed anyway to breathe. 

khecari mudra 

with the tongue

explicitly aims at 

an inner taste, 

but that is still physical, 

while we want to reach 

levels beyond even śruti!

pratyāhāra of prāṇik sensors 

refers to inward flow of prāṇa. 

This cannot be 

directly controlled 

by the body, 

but physically 

āsanās, mudrās, and bandhās,

like checkdams and canals,

can recirculate prāṇa and

reduce or prevent 

its outward flow. 

With this background, 

it is obvious that 

total pratyāhāra, 

or better 

total prati sañcaraḥ, or 

returning to 

the state of 

total unmanifestedness or 

ultimate potentiality 

requires much more than

simply closing one's eyes and 

performing assorted mudras and 

bandhās (clenching inner muscles).

Thus, by sitting in 

a nice closed-loop āsana, 

one may not be 

outwardly oriented 

physically or even prāṇik-ally. 

But one's mental and 

ideational 

orientation 

is still outward. 

(śruti is always manifestative or 

outward and 

anyway beyond 

individual control. 

It may be safely ignored in 

pratyāhāra or prati sañcaraḥ.)

Sahaj Marg meditation is therefore 

a complete pratyāhāra 

because the attention is placed 

on an idea 

(and so the ideational or abstract level) -

of light without luminosity, 

of the idea of light.

But, Heartfulness meditation 

extends that even further 

by thinking that 

the Ultimate Source 

(from which that abstract idea manifested)

itself pulls the attention inwards.

So we turn 

whatever levels of attention 

we do control 

inward, or 

at least pause 

their outward orientation, and 

let attention 

beyond our subtlest level of volition 

be drawn inward.

Drawn inward by?

By a presence 

subtler than 

our individual selves, 

but yet a presence that 

manifested us, 

sustains us, and 

unmanifests us.

prati sañcaraḥ _/|\_

NOTES

[1] manifestative,

      engrossening,

      sañcaraḥ (from tattva samāsa sūtra)

      away from oneness, centre (centrifugal?)

[2] Per Br V. Ramabhadram, 

      abhyasi since Babuji's time,

      Babuji has mentioned śruti - 

      the timeless or eternal flow of vibrations - 

      in this sequence 

[3] ahaṁkāra or I-me-my activity 

      also cannot be wilfully controlled,

      it can only be paused or

      ultimately, relinquished

Evolution and witnessing

sākṣi bhāva, I think,
is misunderstood -
it is not just passive observation. [1]

Instead it is "objective" [2] 

witnessing
of external and internal events
so as to allow the inner instruments
to learn optimally from them and 
become better,
be transformed,
easily,
effort-less-ly

(sāttvik-ally).

To be precise,
if the 

inner instruments or
inner processes --
egoic activity,
thinking-emoting activity, and
discriminating activity 

(ahaṁkāra, manas, buddhi) --

change,
haven't one's 
behaviour and responses 
also changed?

There is an exact parallel 
in the Montessori method -
a "prepared environment"
for evoking 

effort-less learning
from or within children, 

within students put into 

such an environment.

Humans and
human children, particularly,
have a natural
abstractive or 
generalising or
pattern recognizing ability,
mathematical ability,
spatial ability,
task completion ability.

For the prepared environment 
to work, 
the teacher or facilitator must
- explain/demo a task
  from beginning to end,
- allow the students to 

  choose, do, and 

  repeat a task
  until they are 

  satisfied or satiated, and
- keep them engaged
  in multiple tasks 

  throughout the school day.

Their brains will be happy and
function optimally!

Similarly with sākṣi bhāva,
as applied to human adults.

The entire endeavour is to
remove encrustations,
untwist twisted pathways,
speed up or reset energy flows,
to restore adult human faculties
to a 
process or 
posture or
attitude of
optimal
learning,
integrating, and
negating or potentising.

Why?

Consider that, 

from 

a particular potential 
can manifest 
a certain quality.

From a greater 

potential or potency 
can manifest 
a better quality and 
possibly greater quantity.

And vice versa from a lesser potency.

Evolution in simple terms is
being able to do
more and more
with less and less.

(C.f. Babuji's
"more and more of less and less"!)

Evolutionarily,
more output or
better output
with lesser input.

But keep in mind that
input to, and
output from,
a biological system
will not be the same.

A mango tree's output is
oxygen and mangoes, not
water, carbon dioxide, or manure!

And if a mango tree 
can sustain multiple grafts 
of different types of mangoes?

Multiple mango varieties are output.

Again, this 

more potent mango sapling
is the result of 

sākṣi bhāva by humans,
not just as 

observation alone,
but also by learning and
experimenting and
doing -
marketing, selling, 
training, supporting, etc.

In this case, another being 
--a mango tree-- 
has evolved or 

has been made to evolve 
as a result of 

human evolution 
by learning.

Thus natural evolution 

is supported.

In sum, 

change or evolution occurs 

relentlessly, daily, 
in Nature, 
not just as 
a one-way straight curve, 
but in cycles.

And sākṣi bhāva is also actively, 
if effort-less-ly and sāttvik-ally,
evolutionary or transformative, and 
not just a mindless, passive, 

tamasik activity or 

even a mindlessly frenetic 

rajasik activity.

NOTES

[1] Nor is it defeatist fatalism,

       passively submitting to let

       some other being totally 

       control your life.

[2] By letting go of 

       "meta" activity or

       egoic activity,

       a subjective activity or

       an inner and inward activity,

       paradoxically becomes 

       an objective activity,

       usually an outer and outward 

       activity.

Sandhya and the swing

In Sanskrit, sandhya comes from the same root as sandhi or joining. 

A related perspective is two lines segments joining like so: 

/ \  

or 

\ /

Extend a bit further and you get 

.../\/\/\... or 

...\/\/\/..., 

or even further .../\/\/\......\/\/\/... 

or, finally, ..../\/\/\/\/\/\/...

This is a wave of sandhis or sandhyas, or 

a cycle, a closed set of waves.

Now think of a sandhya of light - sunlight and darkness. 

Where darkness changes to sunlight is a sandhya, udayam.

Where sunlight changes to darkness is another, astamayam.

Another sandhya - of heat.

Light and heat from the sun's infrared rays rises to a maximum at noon. On either side of noon, just before and after, is a rise in received heat and and a fall in received heat, respectively.

(This is not necessarily the same as the earth's heat at your location which may keep rising for a few more hours. [1])

Again, /\.

Perhaps counterintuitively, though logically, the opposite sandhya of minimum ambient heat is just before dawn when the heat of the daytime sun has had maximum time to dissipate. [1]

So udayam or uṣas has two kinds of sandhyas - 

darkness to light and coolness to heat, both expressible as \ /. 

Astamayam, though, has only one - light to darkness.

But, udayam has one more sandhya too, a more abstract one - a sandhi of jāgrata or waking state and nidrā or sleeping state. At udayam the conjunction is between sleep ending or reducing to zero and waking starting or increasing from zero. This sandhi occurs the other way at bedtime.

Yet another sandhi - attention outward to inward at bedtime and inward to outward at dawn. Using that same logic, an inward activity like meditation is best done in an ambience of darkness that supports inward attention and prevents outward attention. Therefore Babuji in Maxim 1 asks abhyasis to start and finish their meditation before sunrise.

Now, think of a child's swing, a seat with two vertical ropes that are tied to a horizontal base, and moving invariably in a truncated arc, or a short to and fro arc, instead of a full 360° all the way around the base.

If you think of the vertical movement of the swing away from its lowest point closest to the ground, there's a little wave starting from that zero point that rises to a maximum height and then falls back to zero. Then, on the other side, again the height goes from zero to a maximum and back. In other words, a wave. And a sandhya, of rising height followed by falling height.

What is the best way to go faster and higher in a swing? The least effort comes from a little pull at the maximum height going backwards and a little push at the maximum height going forward. An expert swing-er tucks back the legs going back and extends them going forward. And uses the core muscles to go up at both ends.

After that long, involved, yet hopefully clear description of such a simple childhood activity, how does that fit into sandhya upāsana or sandhya worship in Sahaj Marg/Heartfulness? 

(Please note that, in keeping with the stripped-down, simple and spare nature of Sahaj Marg, conjunction worship is a set of simple and entirely mental activities.)

Babuji put together three core practice elements, one for each of the sandhyas above - darkness-light & sleep-waking & coolness-heat & inward-outward attention, light-darkness, waking-sleep. Respectively, morning meditation, evening cleaning, and night prayer contemplation. [2]

Babuji's personal research in spiritual practice builds upon an ancient tradition of sandhya worship to accelerate the inner journey. He discovered that simple, effort-less, meditative practices at particular times were much more effective for subtilization and expansion of the brain and mind than long hours of strenuous physical and mental practices.

NOTES

[1] The earth temperatures can vary based on latitudinal location and the interaction between Earth's received heat and the heat it radiates. For a nice discussion, see this ThoughtCo article.

[2] In Commentary on the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg, in the discussion on Maxim 1, Babuji also mentions, but does not enjoin - given the heat and discomfort, sandhya upaasana at noon. Daaji remarked once that his best meditations were at noon - "took off like a rocket"!

Maya and the tree

māya is a complicated concept.

But there is a graphic and direct analogy 

from the Indian oral tradition 

that drives home the concept practically.

First, a lovely story. [1]

>>

One day I said to my master,

"Sir, I have been taught that 

avidya [ignorance] and 

māya [illusion] 

are one and the same. 

But I do not 

really understand 

what māya is."

He often taught

by demonstration, 

so he said, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I will show you 

what māya is."

I could not sleep that night.

I thought, 

"Tomorrow morning 

I am going to meet māya."

The next day we went 

for our morning ablutions as usual. 

Then we met again afterwards. 

We bathed in the Ganges.

Afterwards I did not feel like 

I could sit for meditation 

because I was so excited 

by the prospect of 

the mystery of māya 

being unveiled.

On our way back to the cave 

we came upon 

a tree with a big, dry trunk.

My master rushed up 

to the tree and 

wrapped himself around it.

I had never seen him 

run so fast before.

He called out, 

"Are you my disciple? 

  Then help me!"

I said, 

"Huh? You have helped 

  so many people, and 

  today you need my help? 

  What has happened to you?"

I was afraid of that tree.

I wouldn’t go near it 

because I feared 

it would trap me 

as well.

I thought, 

"If the tree traps me also, 

  then who will help us both?"

He cried, 

"Help me! 

 Take hold of my foot and 

  try your best to pull me away."

I tried with all my might, but 

I could not separate him 

from the tree.

Then he said, 

"My body has been caught 

  by this tree trunk."

I exhausted myself 

trying to pull him 

from the tree.

Finally I stopped to think and 

I said to him, 

"How is this possible?

  The tree trunk 

  has no power

  to hold you. 

  What are you doing?"

He laughed and said, 

"This is māya."

<<

Next, more pithily, from one of Babuji's letters: [2]

>>

We are not in a prison cell.

Instead, 

the human state 

is such that 

people themselves 

are holding onto 

a tree and 

shouting that 

the tree 

is not letting go 

of them!

<<

māya is not outside us and 

attacking us 

like a malevolent yakṣi. 

 

It is inherent 

to us, 

to our nature 

as hu-mans,

beings who do mananam, 

who think, conjecture, and imagine. 

 

The human brain 

can be fooled by, 

still consider as real, 

optical illusions 

even after it understands 

their illusoriness. 

 

The world is uncertain and 

incompletely understood. 

Many, perhaps most, decisions 

are made 

without a full understanding or 

appreciation 

of the situation. 

When filling in the gaps 

becomes incoherent and 

inconsistent with 

objective, outer reality, 

māya becomes ineffective and 

actively harmful (like a yakṣi!).

māya is simply 

the human tendency 

to hold onto things mentally 

while thinking that 

those things themselves 

are holding on to one. 

A little Sufi teaching story expresses this precisely:

 

A rabbit escapes into her burrow from a fox. 

A safe distance inside, she turns around and asks, 

"Why do you constantly chase me?"

Replied the fox,

"Why are you so appetizing?"

 

Of course, hunger is more basic 

than obsessive liking and 

the fox may well starve 

if he doesn't catch the rabbit. 

 

For human beings, though, 

being "yet but slaves of wishes" [3] 

over and above meeting their basic needs 

make them go obsessively after 

the objects of their wishes or desires.

In sum? Let go of illusory trees and rejoice - 

tena tyaktena bhuñjītha! [4]

 

NOTES

 

[1]  Swami Rama. 1978.  Living with the Himalayan Masters, pp. 61-62. Ch: Maya the Cosmic Veil.

[2]  Ram Chandra (Babuji). 2025. Complete Works of Ram Chandra (Babuji) Vol. 7, p.91, Ch: Practical Wisdom.

[3] From the Sahaj Marg prayer:  "... we are yet but slaves of wishes ..."

[4] īśavāsya upaniṣad 1.1

Wavicles and Bit-lets

Imagine you are made up of an incredibly large number of tiny, tiny particles.

Further imagine that each of those particles are actually not tiny spheres, but tiny wavicles, field-lets --little fields-- of energy.

Boggle your imagination even further and imagine that each wavicle, each field-let, is actually made up of teeny-tiny bit-lets of consciousness.

A few more boggles and your imagination can flop down gasping and panting :-)

The tiny wavicles are part of a universe of energy, a oneness of energy, but ranging from near-zero magnitude in empty space to  your daily living energy flows to raging infernos of tsunami-size waves inside billions of blazing stars.

Imagine consciousness bit-lets to be exactly like the energy wavicles - part of one single undivided universe, one wholeness, but immensely dense in many places or in many beings and near-zero in others.

The consciousness in or of your body and mind compared to beings of immense awareness, of immensely dense consciousness, is like the energy in your body versus the inferno in a living star.

Imagine consciousness bit-lets, now wavicles, become, manifest as, energy wavicles. 

Difficult? Impossible?

No more difficult or impossible to imagine than to understand that your body is made up of subatomic particles, in turn made up of energy wavicles. 

Congealed energy wavicles make up subatomic particles. 

Congealed consciousness wavicles make up energy wavicles.

Natural and man-made evolution

It is very easy to accept many seemingly contradictory historical facts or claims if a simple idea is understood - there is a continuous eternal natural flow which includes living and evolving.

On top of that natural flow is an artificial or man-made flow of living and evolving. 

Most man-made elements are less energy efficient, where not actively wasteful of energy, and more emotionally stressful and so detrimental for natural evolution. That flow also drastically and short-sightedly prioritises humans at the expense of Nature evolving as a whole. [1]

Evolution is defined as greater optimality and generality and simplicity, by any measure, of a system. Here, Nature herself is a system.

Consider also that purity = directness.

Thus, one's silent inner meditation or attention 

with eyes closed 

is more simple and general and directly beneficial 

than other religious or spiritual practices such as

audible prayer in groups in a specific, 

usually little-understood, language with open eyes and 

with expensive rituals conducted by an other or others.

This silent inner meditation or focus is the highest level of practice in all religions. 

All, bar none.

Intermediaries of any religion who claim otherwise do so only to exert control over the adherents.

This self-directed silent inner attention is where Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg starts and ends. This is why it is simple, pure, and light.

With one's own inner focus or attention comes understanding of, and cessation of, those parts of one's man-made flow that are out of sync with the natural flow. Those parts neither extend nor support the natural flow, and in fact, they actively disrupt that flow where they do not reverse it.

All religions and spiritual paths only strive to return to the natural flow of living and evolving. But they have varying degrees of success in teasing out only those in-sync man-made elements and applying them simply, directly, lightly. [2, 3]

In particular, they have failed to understand, accept, or welcome an even simpler idea and rule - each and every one of their adherents, bar none, must evolve naturally through natural+in-sync living if natural evolution is to occur! 

This natural and effective evolution can occur only if each one lets go of out-of-sync elements through their daily, nay, moment-by-moment, living.

Natural evolution + in-sync man-made evolutionary activities - simple in practice, but ridiculously complicated in theory. 

Learning is natural and simple - babies are the best learners! At the other end of intellectual maturity are the self-realised, again with little ego. They also learn incessantly and daily.

Societal, cultural, and school education is complex - the vast majority of students fail to remember what they are forced to memorise in school.

Experience, facts, and memory are simple. Putting facts into, and taking them out of, a man-made conceptual framework is complex and partially, where not totally, wrong. And, of course, partially right.

Humans are mentally flailing around uselessly and counterproductively most of the time. That leads inevitably to physical activities out of sync with natural evolution.

"Let go and rejoice", says the Isha Upanishad. Nature herself will take care of your evolution!

But then, which son listens to his mother?! Especially a silent, and seemingly ever-forgiving, Mother Nature?

In sum, regain the natural living flow first. Then, carefully, cheerfully, and respectfully, infuse your own man-made flow - light, simple, direct - into it.

NOTES

[1] Extending the prioritisation further leads to a specific group or groups of humans evolving at the expense of other humans. And finally, only if others do not evolve.

[2] The Sufis claim, e.g., that each person's practice must be prescribed by a Sufi according to the contexts of time, place, and people.

[3]  J. Krishnamurti states that each person's life must be a unique and unprescribed flow through individual understanding and acting. This, his "Truth is a pathless land."

Brahman and Atman made simple

TL;DR: Brahman outside the body == Atman inside the body.

Everything manifests from Brahman or Bhuma, and unmanifests, dissolves back into it.

Everything is real or existent.

But, the time duration of existence and non-existence of things varies.

Thus, a planet, say Earth, exists longer than a mosquito on Earth.

Non-existence precedes an individual existence and

non-existence again follows that existence. [0]

 

Space is an ill-defined and ill-definable substance or field.

Per science, space is unaffected [1] by matter - that which occupies space.

Unaffected by or unchanged by both the existence and non-existence of matter.

Matter is similarly unaffected by space.

Brahman is like space with respect to manifestation.

It is not affected by  its own manifestations.

It stays the same every-where and every-when because

space and time themselves manifest from Brahman.

And since it is the ultimate cause by definition, it is itself uncaused. [2] 

The space-matter relationship is bidirectional, i.e., space to matter and

matter to space relations.

But, neither is a cause-effect relation.

Matter does not do anything to or affect space in any way. [3]

Neither does space do anything to matter.

Consider:

1. Brahman or Bhuma is the subtlest or finest cause.

2. The gross or dense body (schoola shareera) is 

a gross or dense effect.

3. Brahman that is encapsulated or infused into, or 

Brahman that has manifested

grosser/denser bodies either 

directly - causal body or kaaraNa shareera, or 

indirectly - subtle body or sookSHma shareera,

is now termed aatma or jeeva-aatma.

Is the manifested or encapsulated (in-carne-ated, emln-fleshed) Brahman,

the jeeva, the effect, different from the cause?

Yes.

But is there any transfer in the opposite direction?

No.

NOTES

[0] Something unaffected by time, that exists independent of time, may be called eternal -

existing for every given value of time in the past, present, or future.

There may also be something existing from some particular time onwards, but

never becoming non-existent thereafter.

E.g., an extremely subtle idea or concept.

Its converse may also occur - something may have existed from the beginning of time,

but stops existing.

[1] At normal human-perceivable dimensions - neither cosmically huge nor

subatomically small, quantum.

[2] Or, trying to posit a cause leads logically to infinite regression:

Brahman manifests from Brahman Zero - B0.

B0 manifests from B-1.

B-1 manifests from B-2.

And so on.

What is the difference between Brahman and B0? 

Or B0 and B-1?

Nothing intrinsic. 

There is only a supposed or assumed cause-effect relation. 

So this infinite regression is without any benefit by way of greater simplicity or abstraction.

[3] Again, in dimensions as in [1]. Gravitational waves and

the uncertainty principle work at exponentially different scales.