Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic

by Darren Main

  Step Three

  The third step in practicing pratyahara is complete sense withdrawal. It is in this phase of the practice that pratyahara’s true rewards are experienced. At this level the yogi pulls the senses in to such a degree that he or she is completely unaffected by external things.

  I have heard this phase of the practice being compared to a turtle that has withdrawn into its shell, and this is a very apt metaphor. That is exactly what the experience feels like. When we shut down the sense organs, we move the awareness out of external projections into the inner realm where all those projections originate.

  When I first heard about this pratyahara practice, I was going to a lot of twelve-step meetings and the word denial was tossed around quite a bit. So this practice of shutting out the outside world seemed to be no more than a glorified form of denial. It seemed more like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand than a spiritual practice. But this is not the case at all; it is quite the opposite.

  As we have noted over and over, the illusion of Maya, which makes up our external world, is based on the projections of our collective and individual egos. The ego creates this illusion in order to prevent us from looking at and transcending its erroneous thought system. This is why the ego is so insistent on having us stay in an outwardly focused mode.

  There is a Buddhist story about a man running into a burning house and rearranging the furniture rather than help people escape. This is what the ego would have us do. Rather than look at the real cause of our suffering, the ego has us rearrange the details of Maya. When we do this we are living in denial of the true cause of suffering.

  From this point of view then, withdrawing the senses and moving into the final stage of pratyahara is the opposite of denial. We are in denial when we look outside for answers and solutions. When we stop looking without and go completely within, we get to look at the real issues that cause suffering.

  The first time I experienced this level of sense withdrawal, I was in the middle of a week-long fast. The first few days of any fast are always difficult, but I had made it through and was finding it easier and easier.

  During this fast I had cut back my workload and lengthened my daily yoga and meditation practice. On day number five, while sitting to meditate during my afternoon practice, I was confronted with waves of hunger. These hunger pains were unexpected because I thought I was through the worst of it. They were so strong, however, that I almost left the meditation to go to the kitchen.

  Somehow, perhaps by grace, I managed to stay. Rather than avoid the hunger, I decided to meditate on it—bringing my attention to it while at the same time not allowing my mind to sink into drama about it. It was hard, but it allowed me to do something with the hunger rather than simply dwell in it. Over time the hunger changed forms and became less intense. I was able to smile at it, and its bite was not so sharp.

  Then something happened. The hunger stopped altogether. But it wasn’t just the hunger; it was also the sounds of the room; they had always been in my peripheral awareness, but now the sensation of the air touching my skin, the light hitting my eyelids, the smells of the room, all were gone. They weren’t just in the distant background; they were gone. You would think that I would have been frightened by this event, but it never occurred to me that it was anything but natural. I was very much at peace with the experience, and I was in no hurry for it to end. In fact, time had very little meaning that afternoon.

  For the first time in my life I started to see how much my definition of myself was based on sensory experience, and in this new space none of that external self-definition was available to my ego. I had to be me, in and of myself; it was quite liberating.

  A few years earlier I had had a dream that I was in my childhood home. As I walked through the living room, I noticed a door that I had never seen before. It struck me as odd, even within the dream, that I could live my life in this house and overlook the most obvious door. I walked through the door to find many rooms and corridors that were new to me. There was so much to explore and find, but I woke up before I could really map out this newfound wing in my home.

  My experience with pratyahara that day was a lot like this dream. I had spent my whole life led by my senses, never really noticing that they were a doorway into a vast inner world. I never even knew the door was there, but once I found it and walked through, I began to see just how big and vast my mind really was. Just as my childhood home seemed so small after that dream, my little external world shrank that day I experienced pratyahara.

  Many of the great yogis can enter at will into a state of complete sense withdrawal, and can shut out the external world without much effort. I am not always able to enter into this deep level of pratyahara. I wouldn’t even say that I go there often. But once I found that door and walked through it, something changed for me, in that my focus in life became decidedly more inward.

  This door is not an exit; it is an entrance. When we walk through it, we are ready to move fully and consciously into the upper three limbs of yoga. This is where the deep work begins. Up to this point we have been working to find the mind and delve into it more consciously. Now that we have entered the realm of the mind, the clutter that has been molding our physical health, emotional stability and mental sanity can be addressed directly, and we can do this each time we walk through pratyahara’s door.

  Chapter Ten

  Dharana • Concentration

  Concentration locks consciousness on a single area.

  —The Yoga Sutras 3:1

  Concentration

  He who binds the breath, binds the mind. He who binds the mind, binds the breath.

  The breath dissolves where the mind dissolves. The mind dissolves where the breath dissolves.

  —Hatha Yoga Pradipika 4:21-22

  Once we have learned, through the practice of pratyahara, to pull the mind back in, we begin the next limb of our practice. The sixth limb, dharana, is about learning to focus the mind. For many of us, this is the most difficult part of the whole practice, because here in our Western culture, concentration is not something that is taught from a young age. When it comes to dharana we are like that proverbial old dog trying to learn new tricks. Ours is a culture that over stimulates the brain with the flashy and the neon. We plop our kids down in front of programs like Sesame Street, which use bright numbers and colorful symbols to maintain the attention of the young minds that watch it. Of course, some children’s programs do help their education tremendously, but the constant flashiness of our society makes it hard to stay focused on the small and mundane.

  Consequently, most of us have not learned how to focus the mind or live in the present moment. Our urban lives often involve a sense of rush and hurry that make it all too easy to overlook the simple and small things. So many of us view life at such a rapid pace that it streaks past in a blur.

  Learning to concentrate is key, because if we don’t, the ego will distract us again and again. The ego loves to distract the seeker from her purpose. As long as we hop from one thought to the next without ever knowing how that thought entered the mind, we will not be able to cut through the underlying misperceptions of the ego and experience Atman.

  The mind is often compared to a beam of light, and this image works very well when we explore the practice of dharana. There are really only two ways we can use light. The first is in a beam, such as the light of a flashlight. This beam of light starts at a single point and grows wider as it leaves the source. The other way, a laser, is just the opposite. Unlike a flashlight, which starts at a small point and then diffuses as it travels outward, the laser is focused light. It keeps moving inward towards a point, and thus maintains its strength and focus. This is what gives it the ability to do everything from reading a compact disk to correcting the vision in many people’s eyes.

  When we practice dharana, we are shifting the way we use the mind. Like pratyahara, we are completely inverting the way the mind works under the ego’s reign. The ego would have us use
the mind in flashlight mode, while Spirit would have us focus the mind and use its incredible power as a very precise tool to cut through illusion.

  In previous chapters we have used the image of the river, but as we look at the practice of dharana, this image becomes even more meaningful. The practice of concentration brings the banks of our river closer together. Prior to engaging in this practice, the mind somewhat resembles a great swamp filled with stagnant water. As we begin to move the banks of the river inward, the waters of consciousness move more swiftly, providing a powerful force that can be used to mold and shape our external world while at the same time speeding up our journey toward Self-realization.

  Dharana brings order to the jumble of thoughts and judgments that clutter the conscious and unconscious mind. It’s like looking at a very messy and disorganized room. Initially, there is the temptation to sit in a state of overwhelm and ignore the chore of organizing. But when you focus and you put things in place one at a time, the job gets done quickly and effectively. Cleaning out the mind is no different. The task can be quite daunting, but when we concentrate and focus, the work moves swiftly. Without that deep level of concentration, however, it is unlikely that much will change.

  There’s No Time but the Present

  There is the form and expression that we call ‘past’, and the form and expression we call ‘future’; both exist within the object, at all times. Form and expression vary according to time past, present and future.

  —The Yoga Sutras 4:12

  Just as pratyahara offered us a doorway out of the physical by moving more consciously into sensation, the practice of dharana offers us a similar door. This door does not lead us out of the physical, but rather out of time.

  As you may recall, one of the essential aspects of Atman is its timeless nature. Like God, each of us is an eternal being; yet we have been deluded into believing that we are finite. Each of us has bought a piece of real estate in the world of time, and it has been a very bad investment.

  We live our lives as if there were a beginning and an end to who we are, and we live as if death were the only thing certain in this world. Indeed, from a bodily point of view, we live very much in the world of time. This is understandable, since we can see time marching on. People are born, age and die empires rise and fall everything in this world is limited by time.

  We go to great pains to measure time. We have calendars and clocks to mark the days and minutes, and we give great significance to dates that mark the passage of time, such as birthdays, anniversaries, New Year celebrations and new millennia. Time is so much a part of our lives that the thought of stepping outside it seems impossible. In many ways time is the bedrock on which the rest of Maya is built.

  This is why it is exceedingly difficult to transcend time. Time is so much a part of our psyche that one may wonder why we would even want to transcend it. But time, when used by the ego, is a weapon that keeps us in fear. When the ego uses time, our experience of it is based solely on the judgments of the ego. We never seem to have enough time, but when it moves slowly we can’t wait for it to pass.

  As a matter of fact, time was a key part of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. He was once asked to explain this complex theory in terms that the common person could understand. He said, “One minute with your hand on a hot stove would seem like an hour, whereas one hour kissing the woman you love will seem like one minute. That’s relativity.”

  Because our true nature is eternal, the ego needs to fence the mind off from eternity in order to keep us searching for peace without possibility of success. In order for a person to be separate, he or she must have a beginning and an end. Likewise, in order for us to be limited, time is a prerequisite. In this sense, time is the glue that holds the illusion together.

  Just as in every other aspect of yoga, we cannot transcend time by denial. People try to escape the effects of time by using cosmetics and buying fast cars. Of course, none of this works. In effect, when we try to deny the seeming reality of time, we simply make it appear more real.

  To a yogi, time is not bad. Actually, time is very useful while we are here in this illusion. Time creates a space for evolution to take place, and offers each of us the opportunity to keep on trying things out until we finally choose the peace of our true nature over the insanity of the ego. Again, time is not bad; it is simply not real.

  Rather than make time good or bad, yoga helps us to let go of the need for time. This can only be done in the present moment. Just as sensation was the door that led from the external world to our inner world, the practice of dharana leads us through the door of the present moment into the realm of eternity.

  The ego seeks to have us live in the past or in the future because we will never find eternity there. That’s why every mystical tradition places such strong emphasis on staying present. The present moment is the only time when we can enter into eternal bliss. Enlightenment is not something that comes after many lifetimes; it is a decision we make now.

  Bringing our attention to the present moment is exceptionally difficult when we live in such a fast-paced society. Learning to sit still for even a moment can seem almost impossible. That’s why so many people have a hard time maintaining a seated meditation practice. For many of us, our lives seem to move at warp ten [ten times the speed of light] and sitting still can feel too overwhelming.

  This is one of the greatest benefits of a hatha yoga practice, which requires that we sit still. Many of us find that this is not a realistic option in the beginning. The mind twists and turns so much that it’s very difficult to stay present. The yoga poses and breathing are a bit more active, and this makes it easier.

  Life in our modern world often moves like a runaway train. For most of us, it would be too much to jump from this fast-moving train onto a meditation cushion. I see yoga as a truck that pulls up alongside the train and moves at the same speed until we can safely jump off. Then yoga slows down with us on board. In this way, we can gradually move back to the present moment. Once we have slowed down a bit, many of us are also able to start a seated meditation practice.

  A second reason why hatha yoga brings the mind to the present moment so effectively is because the body can only be in the moment. The mind can wander into the past or future and will likely spend a good deal of time in one or the other. The body, however, is always in the present. When we bring attention to the body, we have no choice but to bring the mind back to the moment as well. The body can actually act like an anchor, holding the mind in a very present space.

  Of course we don’t need to wait until we are on our yoga mats or meditation cushions to bring the mind to the present moment. Everything in life can be a meditation. But because most of us are choosing to live in the modern world rather than run off to a cave in the Himalayas, our lives can easily get filled with things that take the mind away from the present moment. Rather than get distracted by these things, we can work to use them as a meditation.

  For example, I was at the post office the other day, and as usual, the line was about fifteen people long. To make the situation even more frustrating, there was only one clerk working while two others stood in plain view chatting about something other than work. I could feel the frustration in the air. The woman in front of me shifted anxiously back and forth, and the man in back of me muttered obscenities to himself. I found myself getting sucked into this drama. I could feel tension in my face and neck, and my back molars were pressing firmly against each other. Interestingly, I wasn’t in a rush. It was my day off and all I had on my schedule for the day was sitting at a café with my laptop. There was no reason for me to be in a rush, but I was acting as if I had a deep flesh wound and was trying to get to the emergency room.

  It took me a few minutes, but I was able to return to my breath. It was not easy; my ego wanted so badly to be angry and upset. But I turned that time of waiting into a meditation. By breathing deeply and bringing my mind to the present moment, I was able to calm down and find my ce
nter.

  Each of the people in front of me took turns attempting to make the clerk feel bad. One man slammed his mail down. The next person refused to talk. By the time I got to the window, I was very centered and present. Not only that, I was able to see the clerk as a hard worker who had the unpleasant job of working alone and dealing with lots of frustrated people. Rather than subtly or overtly insulting her, I decided to thank her for working so hard. The look of complete surprise on her face quickly gave way to a big smile.

  The practice of dharana begins in the present moment. The present starts now. We don’t need to wait till we are on the yoga mat to arrive in the now. A line at the post office, a red light or a delayed flight are all invitations to practice dharana. When we do this we start to see things as they are in Truth, and every breath becomes a spiritual practice. There is no time where Spirit is not, yet the only way we can realize this is by being in the now.

  Haven Trevino summed this idea up beautifully in his book, The Tao of Healing, when he wrote “Consider it, in this present moment, God chooses to be you.” [13]

  Choosing Reality

  Reshape yourself through the power of the will; never let yourself be degraded by self-will. The will is the only friend of the Self, and the will is the only enemy of the Self.