Divine Eye / Shift of Focus
Under the supervision of Yogeshwarananda on the astral side of existence, I currently work on the development and use of the divine eye. I worked on this for fifty years now. Recently however Yogeshwarananda and myself worked conjointly to derive a definite and tested method for those who use the Patanjali ashtanga yoga process.
In that procedure there are three highest of eight practices. These three as a collective or sequence of development are termed as samyama, which can be translated to be meditation in the English language. These are dharana focus of attention, dhyana spontaneous focus and samadhi prolonged and spontaneous focus. Besides this samyama, there are the five lower processes of which the highest of these is pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal. That is a psychological action just as the higher three are, but it is not considered to be meditation by Patanjali, because it is an aggressive practice and it is preliminary to meditation.
If the withdrawal of interest to things outside the psyche is not achieved before meditation, then the meditation will be sporadic. Hence the yogi should have a radical but effective method of achieving the interiorization of interest before meditating.
For instance, if a yogi spends thirty minutes sitting to introspect, and if twenty-five minutes of that time is spent retracting interest in internal and external distractions, then only five minutes of that session was used for meditation, for samyama. This means that one must distinguish meditation from the retracting of interest in external things.
It is best that one not regard pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal as meditation. Follow Patanjali diagram and regard pratyahar as being preliminary. The classic method of doing pratyahar is to use pranayama breath infusion to put the psyche in a state of internal focus. Then when one sits to meditation, pratyahar would be achieved because of the breath infusion practice, and one can proceed for the whole session with dharana focus, or with dhyana spontaneous focus, or with samadhi prolonged spontaneous focus.
Yogeshwarananda is of the opinion that unless the psyche already affords the yogi a supernatural or spiritual portal, he should apply a focus to the frontal part of the subtle head, to the area of the brow chakra or to any other area. That focus should be held steady with no shifting.
If, however when the focus is applied, there is shifting, where the yogi cannot halt the shifts, then the yogi may apply some method to stabilize the focus. He may use a mantra which is sounded mentally only. He may anchor part of his focus to the naad sound resonance. As soon as he realizes that his focus shifted, he should slowly gather it and refocus it. This may happen repeatedly during a session.
In some sessions, the energy of the mind will be such, that this rarely happens while at other times, it will happen regularly, and a struggle will be required in the mind.
Suppose the yogi does breath infusion, then sits to meditate. In meditation he applies a frontal focus to the center of the eyebrows. This focus remains with his attention being on a tiny spot of color or on a small area of scattered color. Then he remains in that focus for only fifteen seconds. He then finds that he shifted downward to the right where his focus dropped about two inches down to the right. He should retrieve the focus and bring it back to the center where it was an originally placed.
In that session of meditation, this should be done repeatedly with the yogi noting what happens on each readjustment. This is the way to work on developing the divine eye. For that, one must hold the steady focus.
