Haphazard Dharana Meditation

The hint from Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras is that if one can stop the reactive mindal activities, one can make headway doing yoga meditation. These reactive forces bombard the attention of a self and keep the self occupied with trivial mento-emotional operations.

Before even elementary meditation can be done, one has to complete the fifth stage of yoga which is pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal. This interest retraction from the world takes time to achieve. Many yogis stall with this. Many others succeed in some way and think that this is an easy achievement.

To find out if one achieved this, one should check as soon as one sits to meditate to see if the interest energy courses outward. If when one meditates, one finds that the energy does not on its own, recede inward into the center of consciousness then one knows that one did not achieve pratyahar. In that condition of failure, one should do a practice to make the interest energy lose its enthusiasm to course away from the central consciousness.

After repeatedly doing this, a time will come, where when one sits to meditate, one finds that the impulse or demand for looking outward, ceases entirely. Then the consciousness remains like a dangerous criminal who is arrested and put in solitary confinement. He is no longer a threat the society. He lost his freedom to do as he likes, to harm others.

When one finds that again and again, the interest energy of the self, does not course outwards in meditation, then one can have some confidence that pratyahar sensual energy retraction, was achieved. And yet, even at that stage the practice is not complete. There will be retrogressions where in meditation, one finds that the central consciousness finds itself seeking either physical or psychic disturbances.

However, when in the majority of meditation sessions, that interest energy remains internally interested and has no urge or compulsion to go outwards, one should either remain in that state or apply oneself to the dharana transcendence focus. This is not an easy practice. For one thing, how does one know what one should focus on which is transcendental. And also, what should one do if the focus does not adhere to the selected focus.

The achievement of pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal for all it is, is no guarantee that the yogi can do dharana transcendence focus. Many yogis do dharana in a sloppy inefficient way. The majority of these persons have no idea that the methods they use will not cause the achievement. This is not their fault because the stillness of the consciousness during pratyahar does not guarantee that the yogi will know what to do to become proficient in dharana transcendence focus.

There are many ways of practicing dharana transcendence focus from the pratyahar achievement completion stage. Yogeshwarananda mentioned two practices; short ray, and slot focus. These are done with help from naad sound resonance or with no assistance from naad. The mandatory requirement is that the mind environment must be with no hunting interest or arising memories. Look at this.