Object and Distractions
Normal State of Mind
The complex relationship
between mind, senses, thoughts and subconscious mind was explained in the
previous articles fast mind slow brain, the mysterious driver, the secrets of subconscious
mind and five types of thoughts. The ordinary state of mind of any normal human
being is very turbulent. Different types of thoughts keep coming and going in
the mind. You might be thinking about of your work and suddenly a random
thought related to some other object will come and it will trigger an another
random thought of some other object and so on these random thoughts keep coming
in your mind. This process is automatic and you can’t turn it off and already
has been well explained in previous articles.
Principally these thoughts can be
categorized in two types- external thoughts and internal thoughts. While our
five senses are accountable for external thoughts like eyes keep recording the
events. Nose smells, ears keep listening, tongue works in association with eyes
and nose and skin keeps sensing. Suppose you are thinking about your work and
someone goes in front of you with a pizza your nose will instantaneously refer
the thought (mental image) of pizza to your mind and you will be deviated from
what you are thinking. If by somehow you control your senses by closing the eyes,
sitting in a quiet and isolated place doesn't mean that random thoughts will
stop coming in your mind. Internal thoughts are more dominant than external
thoughts. Memory is the source of internal thoughts and mental images of random
thoughts will keep coming.
The diagram explains the normal state of mind.
A,B,C,D etc are different type of random thoughts. If we want to focus only on
one thought then that thought is called the object of the meditation and all
other thoughts that keep coming in our mind are called distractions. The whole
purpose of the concentration and meditation is to eliminate those distractions.
Step 1: Concentration
(Eliminate the distractions)
Concentration is the first
step towards meditation. So the meditation is all about converging on one
thought by elimination other thoughts (distractions) since functioning of mind
is automatic and you can’t control it so your mind keeps processing random
thoughts continuously without discontinuing so we can also say meditation is
all about converting this automatic mind into controlled mind. Those who are in
advance stage of meditation can control their mind easily and they can focus on
one thought of their choice effortlessly and without their consent no other
thought can intrude in their mind. Just imagine the power of those persons and what
type of wonders they can do. They are sitting in a bone chilling place with
minimum cloths where temperature is in minus degree centigrade and their skin
is referring thought of coldness to the mind but they are focusing on fire and
their body starts to sweat. This is just a small thing that meditation can do.
Meditation is an art of obtaining the knowledge and when you can get the subtle
knowledge (Swarupa) of any thing you can certainly control that thing.
Let’s back to the procedure,
to perform meditation you need an object on which you are going to focus. The
object can be a physical object like a photo of god or candle or sun or water
or it can be an imaginary object. In physical object you need to keep your eyes
open and keep seeing that object and in imaginary object you need to keep your
eyes close and keep visualizing that object. I used to do meditation on a photo
of Goddess Gayatri with open eyes.
When you have selected the
object then sit in relaxed position in a lonely place (Sukhasan is the easiest position
to sit). Now in the stage of concentration we try to focus on that object by rejecting
other distractions. Initially it is very difficult. You concentrate on object
for some seconds and suddenly other thoughts arise into mind as you realize you
again bring back your attention on object but after some seconds another
thought arises in your mind. It’s an erratic pattern explained in below image
where A B C D etc are different thoughts while A is the thought on which we are
trying to focus. B C D etc are distractions thoughts. Suppose you try to focus
on object for 2 minutes may be your attention was on object about 1 minutes and
1 minutes there were distractions in your mind. Your duty is keep practising and
keep improving focus time and reduce distraction time. With the practice other
distraction thoughts B C D will be eliminated and there will be only one
thought A in the mind.
How long it takes to reach into Meditation
stage and Samadhi stage depends upon individual to individual. That’s why
Patanjali put the stage of concentration on at step no 6 in his astang yoga. If
you go step by step from 1 to 5 then it becomes very easy. Yama and Niyama
eliminate the disturbances which are caused by uncontrolled emotions and
desires. Asana and Pranayama eliminate the disturbances arising from the
physical body. Pratyahara, by detaching the sense organs from the mind, cuts
off the external world and the impressions which it produces on the mind. But
frankly saying it’s very difficult in our routine life to follow from step no 1
to step no 5 so if you want you can directly go to step no 6 of astang yoga for
the meditation.
Concentration is
preliminary stage of meditation and you can’t go into meditation without it and
some people mistakenly take concentration as meditation. Meditation is more
advance stage of concentration. Here one thing to notice is that the concentration
explained here can’t be compared with the concentration explained in western psychology.
The definition of concentration is bit different in eastern psychology. According
to Eastern psychology concentration begins with the controlled movement of the
mind and it can reach a state in which all movement or change stops. In this stage
the mind becomes one with the essential nature of the object concentrated upon
and can thus move no further while western psychology simply believes mind can’t
be controlled.
In the concentration
stage the mind is confined in a limited sphere defined by the object of
concentration. A limited freedom of movement is possible when the mind is being
concentrated upon a particular object. In this stage keep the mind continuously
involved in the consideration of the object and to bring it back immediately as
soon as the connection is broken. But concentration is not all about
eliminating the distractions it also aimed to complete focus of mind on object.
If you are meditating on virtual object by closing eyes then unclear and blurred
mental image should be replaced by sharply defined mental image in the process
of concentration.
So the purpose of
concentration stage is that practitioner should aim at eliminating the
intruding thoughts which are called distractions and should see that such interruptions
are reduced in frequency in a progressive manner. When he succeeds in eliminating
the distractions completely and can continue the concentration on the object
without any interruptions for as long as he decides to do so he reaches the
stage next stage - Meditation
........................................to be continued
No comments:
Post a Comment