Isolation as a Requirement

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 3 years before Aug 31, 2016

MiBeloved 3 years ago

Julie on LinkedIn wrote:

Is complete solitude necessary for achieving higher consciousness? Do those who hang out in caves for extended periods of time have an advantage?

MiBeloved's Response:

At different stage there are different requirements but for the Patanjali system complete solicitude is requested for the full proficiency. In Bhagavad Gita Krishna uses a Sanskrit term which is ekaaki which means eka or that the ascetic should be alone.

Buddha was alone when he reached what he termed as enlightenment.

The main reason for this is that self-realization concerns the individual self and its psychic adjuncts. It has nothing to do with other persons. It has to be settled within the psyche of the self itself. It is not involved with others. The others must go into their individual psyches to get the proficiency for themselves.

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There are variations to this theme, because in the same Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna was not permitted at the time of the battle to go away to do yoga in solitude. This means then that one cannot get the full proficiency of yoga unless one is released from social responsibilities.

In the life of Buddha he released himself from that by walking out of a marriage, leaving aside a son and abandoning the political responsibilities as a prince. After doing this he was able to focus on how his psyche was connected to trauma.

People like to use the word enlightenment to mean anything but really for Buddha it was used in terms of separating the observing self from trauma. That was his objective. Other yogis had other objectives and their use of the term enlightenment differs from Buddha.

It is not that one has to go into a cave. For some person, the isolation required may be attained in a busy city. It may not be attained for others even if they were taken to Mars and left there by a spaceship.

Isolation is required for sure but it does not work unless the person is ready to use it in a constructive way. The real isolation is not just a social one but it is an isolation of the observing self from its mind creative apparatus. Even if you put me in a cave, still though I will be isolated socially, my mind might chase after psychic communication and during sleep my astral body might break the isolation. This will result in a phony isolation.

The isolation has to be more than just a social cut off because the real problem is not with another person but with the adjuncts which are in the mind.

Is my intellect able to keep me spell bound as it thrashes over the memory of events, and as it creates new desires based on whatever sensual information it received from the external physical world. If that is the case, then no amount of social isolation will bring self-realization.

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Patanjali begins his thesis on yoga by stating that Yoga begins after the cittavrittis have ceased. He does not say it begins as soon as the physical body is put into isolation. The isolation (kevalam) he speaks of is the one between the observing self and its subtle perception equipment which include the intellect psychic mechanism and the kundalini life force mechanism.

There are many people in solitary confinement in prisons all over the world, but hardly any of these individuals become self realized. That gives us some idea about the potential of social isolation.

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Julie wrote:

Interesting what you said about the astral body during sleep. What about when we just dream? We could just take off in any direction and go to any place and unless we are great lucid dreamers, can this break the isolation too?

MiBeloved's Response:

Yes, in contrast to astral projection where a real subtle body operates in a real astral environment, a person who goes into isolation will experience mere dreams where ideas which are mind construction are displayed on the screen of the mind like being at a theatre and viewing a video.

Thus the person can escape from the hollowness of mind and be filled with the images and sounds of the dream.

Patanjali has outlawed these mind construction in his second sutra where the cittavrittis are listed, one of which he says is imagination which is the psychic faculty which operates in dream.

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Julie wrote:

I'm wondering, when our monkey mind becomes more quiet, if our dreams change. Would we dream less? Become more lucid?

MiBeloved's Response:

There is a theory like that, where it is believed that if we make the mind more quiet our dream experiences would change and would no longer reflect our dysfunctionality.

But another way of looking at it is that if the monkey mind is quiet, then if one shifted to a higher level of consciousness, there would be more objectivity and clearer perception and less illusory interpretation of whatever reality one enters on those higher planes.

This does not mean the end of the monkey mind, because as soon as one descends again voluntarily or involuntarily to the level where the monkey mind operates, we will be subjected again to its schemes, unless somehow or the other we can no longer shift back to the lower levels, which is hardly likely because the lower planes seem to be the default configuration of the psyche.

Over time in meditating and repeatedly being elevated to higher planes of consciousness, there will be a carry-over effect when we return to the lower planes, where we will gain the ability to cease the self-destructive habits which are natural on the lower levels.

In so far as dreams are based on the catalog of images and events which are in memory, we can eliminate dreams if we can shut down those memories but so long as the reserve of memories is active, dreams cannot cease.

Patanjali listed imagination and memory as two of the five cittavrittis which are unwanted features of the mind.