Pratyahar Stages
Pratyahar which is sensual energy withdrawal, the 5th part of yoga, has many stages such that it is not completed in the initial accomplishments. According to the self-conception one practices sensual disinterest in a certain way and even if one does that to completion, when one advanced further in meditation abstraction, one realizes, or is shown, that one has to apply pratyahar in a totally different way which involves some type of specific and not general retraction of interest.
Initially there is the assumption that the self is one cohesive reality, something which is simultaneously subjective and objective. Then pratyahar or sensual energy withdrawal means to pull in the interests which courses out of the self or psyche. However as one pulls in more and more and as the self becomes stabilized and less dependent on sensual feeding in the external physical environment, that self realizes that it is a fictional entity. It is not one cohesive something. It is a composite of an observing I-consciousness with adjuncts and random energies.
This requires a total reconstruction of what the self is and what pratyahar should be. If the fingers are retracted into the palms of the hands, are those fingers retracted into the lungs as well?
If the sensual interests are retracted into the senses, are those interests retracted into every part of the body evenly?
The point is that whatever is retracted or withdrawn into a specific part or adjunct folds into that part only and may not affected other energies which are shooting out of the psyche. The psyche or subtle body is not a confusion. If it were it would not operate with specific functions for specific parts. The organized nervous system of the physical body is indirect evidence that the psyche of self must be an organized psychic body which has specific parts carrying out particular functions.
A yogi, as he advances must repeatedly go back to the pratyahar practice as soon as he gains more clarity about what the psyche is and about how the various adjuncts interact. It is not sufficient to recall the interests in the self because each interest must be withdrawn in a particular way so that it returns into the particular adjunct or energy which emitted it. One may begin meditation with a general method but one should hone in on specifics as one advances.
An example is the five senses. How did these senses outshoot in the first place. From which adjuncts or which part of the self did they emit. If they are to be withdrawal and if there is to be an effective mental command to retract them, it has to be given to the specific adjunct or part of the psyche which emitted them.
Relationship is important, to know which adjunct is related to which other one and how their interaction contributes or fractures meditation attempts. For this information, even though there are five senses and many subtle variations of these, still there is one interest that is emitted from the sense of identity. That one interest is split to energize the five senses. Hence if the one interest is retracted, that may disable the five senses causing them to cease their pursuits of objects.
We must also consider levels of operation of interest. Is the interest expressed on the physical, astral or inner memory-consciousness domain?
