Meditation on Pratyahara: Turning the Senses Inward

Talk in Hindi · 20 min · 10 August 2023 · प्रत्याहार पर ध्यान

Summary

This guided practice opens with Om chanted three times and a bow of reverence, then asks you to let go of everything outside the body and rest your feeling in the principle beyond all — it is that devotion and surrender, he says, that carry you into deep meditation.

The breath is allowed to find its own rhythm, uncontrolled, with attention at the base of the spine and the lower abdomen, until the breath rises to the chest and the posture becomes still, like a statue. With neck, shoulders and chest relaxed, the breath slows until it is barely felt; the gross sense of the body falls away and only the vibration of being alive remains. This is the passage from pranayama to pratyahara and meditation.

The return is part of the practice. Opening the eyes slowly, you rest the gaze on a single point on the ground and watch memory and the psychological ego come back to the front, until your sense of time, place and role returns — the exact reverse of pratyahara. You then go back into the world to function fully, but without expectation.

Key points

• Pratyahara begins with devotion and letting go of the outside.
• Let the breath find its rhythm; do not control it.
• When the gross breath falls away, only the vibration of life remains.
• Watch the ego and memory return — the reverse of pratyahara.
• Function fully in the world, without expectation.

Go deeper

• Meditation — the teaching
• Talk: Pranayama in the Netra Tantra