Last week I reprinted something I wrote almost 20 years ago about Shiva Rudra Bala Yogi who I knew at that time.
I noticed when I reread it last week that I got several things wrong. Here’s my most important misunderstanding.
I was bothered at that time because SRBY calls himself a yogi and Ramana warned people away from yoga.
Ramana meant Patanjali yoga. I assumed that SRBY also means Patanjali yoga. (Patanjali was the author or compiler of the Yoga Sutras.)
Patanjali yoga is based on the technique of keeping the attention focused on a chosen object. You pick an object and artificially, voluntarily, keep that object present in awareness.
In fact SRBY doesn’t mean this. His method isn’t based on keeping the attention focused in that way. His method is, “Watch the space between the eyebrows. Just watch. Don’t imagine, don’t analyze, don’t picturize, don’t think. Just watch. No matter what thought arises, if any, just watch it.”
I thought he was saying, “Focus attention on the space between the eyebrows in the same way Patanjali says focus attention on some particular object.” He wasn’t saying that. He was saying, in an indirect way, “Don’t focus attention on anything. Abandon that type of focusing-attention.”
Why doesn’t he simply say, “Don’t focus attention on anything?” Maybe because that instruction is too hard for many beginners. They feel like they need something to do. So SRBY tells them to do something (watch an invisible thing without thinking) which is as close to non-focusing of attention as a doing can be.
The important part of his instruction isn’t “watch the space between the eyebrows.” The important part is “don’t imagine, don’t analyze, don’t picturize, don’t think.”
Patanjali, in contrast, says, “Picturize as hard as you can as continuously as you can.”
One way to understand the difference between Patanjali’s method and SRBY’s is to notice that they use the word “attention” differently.
The word “attention” can be misleading because people often assume it has a single meaning. It doesn’t. Attention is a mental action, something we do with the mind, but in fact we use the word to refer to several different actions.
People understand that objects come in a variety of types because we (English speakers, at least) have words for the various types: memories, wishes, emotions, sensations, concepts, etc. Attention also comes in a variety of types. But we don’t have distinct words for the different types of attention so we don’t notice. We get misled by our vocabulary. Attention in Patanjali’s method is a different kind of mental action than attention in SRBY’s method.
In Patanjali’s method, attention is continuous generation of some chosen object. It’s a continuous prompting and re-prompting of the mind to display some particular phenomenon. Edwin F. Bryant’s notes and commentary in his edition of the Yoga Sutras explain this beautifully.
SRBY’s method is the opposite of that. It’s the abandonment of that activity. It’s non-generation of objects.
It’s the “cloud of unknowing”.
Thanks Harry. For others, the reference is to a famous book, The Cloud of Unknowing.
After very careful review and contemplation of different interpretations of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, I’ve just written a short article on my sense of the key message which I understand will be published fairly soon. It goes beyond concentration type focus and is meant to take us to the oneness which yoga means. It is about transcending the mind and coming to what could be terms awareness.
So the key is not to stray away with attention, but to be established in the One.
Hi Brian. I think goals and methods are different things. I was speaking above only about methods which, I suppose, are mainly for beginners. (Some people, including me, are beginners for a very long time! 🙂 )
I think the goal of Patanjali yoga is kaivalya which must be the same as SRBY’s and Ramana’s permanent absorption in the Self. What else could it be?
But I also think Patanjali’s primary method (pratyahara/dharana/dhyana/samadhi-with-seed) involves continuous attention to particular objects. This is not the same as the methods that SRBY and Ramana advocate.