Higher Meditation Failures

Higher meditation is when after repeated efforts, one realizes that meditation is an ongoing challenge which is filled with uncertainty. Due to the design of the mind, it is unlikely that anyone in the current global atmosphere will develop a definite failsafe method of doing higher meditation to achieve supernatural perception.

We know that in the modern era, there are many machines which can accurately detect abstract energy. These machines can sense, catalog and determine the quantities of such energy which is in the atmosphere. For that matter even some objects in outer space which a human body cannot perceive can be reported on by the modern gadgets.

Hence there are problems with having a limited psyche which rarely detects supernatural and spiritual objects. If one cannot detect such an object, how will one ascertain it, catalog it, objectively or subjectively enter it, and focus on it?

Patanjali listed eight features for the yoga process, with the five higher ones being psychic operations. Even the most basic of these five, which is pratyahara sensual energy withdrawal, is difficult to pin. What is it? How is it done? It means retraction from what one is attracted to. It means reversal of the normal behavior, which is to sense, pursue, acquire, taste and consume physical or psychic stuff.

For beginners, it applies to external objects but as a person practices that and gains proficiency, he/she realizes that there is a need to achieve it in reference to much which is psychic. Since the psyche is designed for finding and consuming physical objects, the initial achievement of pratyahar concerns the attraction that person has to physical objects. These things are accessed through the senses which are like windows into the physical world.

The pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal stage begins by physically turning away from some desired and unwanted sense objects. The entire physical body becomes involved in these turning-away actions. As for example, the man who likes liquor but who decides to go in another direction, anytime he saw and was attracted to a liquor establishment. He operated his physical body, training it to reverse itself from its natural attraction to alcohol.

That is physical pratyahar. The discipline begins with physical rejection and physical repulsion which is instilled in the mind so that it creates for itself a reverse response of undesirability.

Later when he gained proficiency at this, he understood that the physical action was insufficient. It did not cause the subtle part of the attraction to go away. He turned and went in the opposite direction but his psychic need for the beverage remained the same. In fact, he noticed that in some instance, it was increased, where he felt a stronger need for the alcohol.

His turning away from the liquor shop resulting in an increased need on the psychic side of his being. He achieved physical mastery so that he stamped out the tendency for going physically to the drinking place, but that did not close his psychic appetite for it.

Realizing that the psychic side was increased by the physical repulsion which he cultivated, he decided to ignore the response he developed which was to turn his physical self (body) away from the liquor shop. He decided to study the psychic force which promoted his need for the alcohol.

He sat in meditation. He studied it. He located the need energy. He examined it. He asked other yogis about their practice of this. He began to realize that his psychic attraction to the alcohol had to do with an innate need to acquire a freedom-from-responsibility state of mind. The alcohol, though a physical substance, had a psychic counterpart. That is what he pursued. He then questioned himself about a method to rid the self of that need. If he could rid himself of the freedom-from-responsibility need, then the physical and psychic need for the liquor would dissipate.

This is the application of pratyahar sensual energy withdrawal in the full application of it. Except, that there are so many needs which must be exposed, where effective methods of their removal are applied during meditation.