[QUOTE=WakingUp;33212]The Scales, I was wondering if you have an opinion on my experience based on maybe some of your own experiences with pratyahara? I think it will help me understand better. I probably should have asked for that in my original post up there, and not definitions or quotes, which in all honesty, kind of are going over my head in these early days of my learning.
Also, with all due respect, I kindly ask you and Surya carry on in your own threads please. Thanks guys:)[/QUOTE]
I will not elaborate on the signs because people can then run around with them blithering on like they are in the know. Which can be harmful to the integrity of yoga. Which I will not stand for. Thats why The Sun God is my new buddy.
I think perhaps your experience on the verge of sleep relates simply to mind and senses receding / introverting back into the subtle body and your awareness just catching a glimpse of the instruments losing contact with thier organs on the way back.
The form being your hearing shut off.
This is pratyahara in the sense of withdrawling the senses - yes. But awareness/presence was not maintained.
No maintence of awareness - No dharana/dhyana/Samadhi. No singlepointed concentration/contemplation/meditation/absorbption.
It is written in several upanishads and I’m sure the vedas about sleepy time.
Dreams CAN occur when the mind and it’s subtle instruments are in the pranamayakosha/subtle body/astral body/transmigrating body. The dreams can arise because the subtle body is the seat of stored impressions and or samskaras. It is these impressions and or samskaras which [I]usually[/I] shape the dreams. Thus the display.
In Dreamless sleep mind and its sublte instruments reside in the causal body which I [I]think[/I] holds no samskaras. Thus no display.
It is said that if awareness is maintained one can shape their dreams through will. See books on Dream Yoga if this interests you. I haven’t fiddled around with Dream yoga.
If the self is uncovered dream yoga is cake. I.e easy to do. Maybe a nice diversion while the body is at rest… Could be possible, more correctly probable to do other things while the body is a rest. But this can also be done through the sitting. I.e meditation session.
So anyway back to pratyahara concerning a phase of the meditation session. …
There are no trumpets. Angels do not give you high fives. There are signs though…very specific.
Think of pratyahara as jumping over the lower mind system.
Lower mind system being that aspect of mind with it’s incessant half thoughts, ramblins, musings, mutterings and thinkings.
This does not mean when withdrawl occurs that lower mind system shuts up with all its babble. Its a gradual throttling down. It may babble at you in the background some…
The more you sit and do the process the better you’ll get at it, and the quiter the lower mind system will get.
The clue is given in the Danielou quote.