Meditation / Inner Senses Obstruction
If closing or half-closing one’s eyes and remaining visually silent is meditation, then every person can meditate. It all depends on who defines what meditation is. There is a declaration in Bhagavad Gita about failed or pretentious meditation (my translation):
कर्मेन्द्रियाणि संयम्य
य आस्ते मनसा स्मरन् ।
इन्द्रियार्थान्विमूढात्मा
मिथ्याचारः स उच्यते ॥३.६॥
karmendriyāṇi saṁyamya
ya āste manasā smaran
indriyārthānvimūḍhātmā
mithyācāraḥ sa ucyate (3.6)
karmendriyāṇi — bodily limbs; saṁyamya — restraining; ya = yaḥ — who; āste — sits; manasā — by the mind; smaran — remembering; indriyārthān — attractive objects; vimūḍhātmā = vimūḍha — deluded + ātmā — self; mithyācāraḥ — deceiver; sa — he; ucyate — it is declared
A person who while restraining his bodily limbs sits, with the mind remembering attractive objects, is a deceiver. So it is declared. (Bhagavad Gita 3.6)
Krishna’s idea is that if during the attempt at meditation one keeps remembering the sense objects, then that is not meditation. It may be a struggle within the mind to achieve meditation but it is rated as anything but meditation.
Even though many people who attempt to meditate think they are meditating and get credit for being yogis, still by the fine print of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras it is something else.
However anyone who sits to meditate and who in the effort to do so, finds that the mind cannot be stopped from its impulsive imaginative behavior, may benefit from the unruly nature of the mind if that person details what happens in the mind and takes steps to reform the mind’s behavior. But the required changes will not happen overnight.
The senses of the physical body are deprived of their objects if the meditator takes isolation in some place. But the senses of the subtle body are not deprived as easily because these are psychic equipment with psychic reach which can transcend physical limitations. Hence if I sit to meditate in a room which has limited physical access to the environment, I may use my subtle senses to reach subtle objects.
If I shout to the man across the way, I exhibit the power of speech but if I do so mentally without physically repeating the action people say that I exhibit a siddhi which many people, even some who rate themselves as yogis, condemn. According to their censorship, one should not have or use a siddhi or psychic power. This opinion is simplistic because unless there are subtle senses there cannot be physical perception.
First there must be a subtle body before there can be a physical one. Hence the complaint about the use of subtle powers is a silly one. It is absolutely necessary to use subtle powers. For that matter I could not shout to the man across the way without doing so psychically as well. The fact is that the man across the way is physically focused and that is why there is a necessity to make the subtle call echo again as a physical one from the physical speech faculty.
In meditation when the physical senses are denied, the person is left with the active subtle senses. In fact the mind is such that as soon as there is physical limitation, it increases its usage of the subtle ones. This is a problem for those who meditate. How should I turn off the subtle senses during meditation? First of all if one does not recognize the subtle ones, then for sure one cannot turn them off. Denying them will not help the meditation effort.
If I deprived my body of the right to eat a ripe mango and if while doing that I took the opportunity to restrict my body to an isolated room, then will my mind give up the idea of the mango? Or will it visualize the mango or invoke a memory of it? Will it proceed by smelling and then tasting the mango mentally? Is all of this imaginary? Is it possible to eat a mango on the mental plane? Are mangoes physical objects with no subtle register?
