Pratyahara
<h2> Pratyahara</h2><p>/Based on Iyengar's book "Light on Yoga" (Yoga Dipika)/</p><p>If a person's reason yields to the pull of his senses, he will perish. Conversely, when the breath is regulated rhythmically, the senses turn inward instead of chasing after external objects of desire, and the person is freed from their tyranny. This is the fifth stage of yoga, called pratyahara, in which control over the senses is achieved.</p><p>Having reached this stage, the sadhaka examines himself thoroughly. To overcome the deadly but captivating spell of the objects of sense, one must arm oneself with adoration (bhakti), thinking ceaselessly of the Creator who made these objects of desire. The pupil also needs the lamp of knowledge of the Divine heritage. The causes of both bondage and liberation lie in fact in people's own minds. A mind attached to the objects of desire brings bondage; renouncing them, it brings liberation. When the mind craves something, or pines or grieves for something, a person is in bondage. When all desires and fears have been destroyed, the mind is purified. In life people meet with both good and pleasant promptings to action. The yogi prefers the good to the pleasant. Others, carried away by desire, choose the pleasant and miss the very purpose of life. The yogi feels joy within himself. He knows how to stop, and therefore he lives calmly. He begins by preferring what is bitterer than poison, and persists in his practice, certain that in the end the bitter will become the sweetest nectar. Those who seek to unite their senses with the objects of desire prefer what seems sweet at first, not knowing that in the end it will turn to bitterness.</p><p>The yogi knows that the road of sense gratification is broad but leads to ruin, and that many walk it. The path of yoga is narrow as a razor's edge, very hard to travel, and only a few find it. The yogi knows that within himself lie both the road to ruin and the road to salvation.</p><p>According to the philosophy of Hinduism, consciousness manifests itself in three different qualities. For a human being, his life and consciousness, together with the whole cosmos, are emanations of one and the same prakriti (cosmic matter or substance), differing in their purpose according to which of the gunas predominates in them. These three gunas (qualities or attributes) are:</p><p>1.<strong> Sattva</strong> (the quality of illumination, purity and goodness), which leads to clarity and serenity;</p><p>2. <strong>Rajas</strong> (the quality of mobility or activity), which makes a person active and energetic, passionate and wilful;</p><p>3. <strong>Tamas</strong> (the quality of darkness and inertia), which hinders and opposes the striving of rajas towards work and of sattva towards revelation.</p><p>Tamas is the quality of delusion, obscurity, inertia and ignorance. A person in whom tamas predominates is inert and apathetic. The quality of sattva draws one towards the Divine, and the quality of tamas towards the demonic; rajas lies between them.</p><p>Depending on which guna prevails in a person, his beliefs differ, and so do his food, the sacrifices he offers, the austerities he subjects himself to and the gifts he gives.</p><p>One born with an inclination towards the divine is fearless and pure, generous and self-possessed. He strives for self-knowledge. He does no violence, is truthful and free from anger. He renounces the fruits of his work and works only for the sake of the work itself. He is calm; he bears malice towards no one, but mercy towards all, being free of greed. He is gentle, modest and constant. He is intelligent, compassionate and resolute, for there is no treachery or pride in him.</p><p>A person in whom rajas predominates is marked by an inner insatiability and by clinging. Being passionate and greedy, he causes others suffering. His desires cannot be satisfied, for he is full of lust and hatred, envy and deceit. He is inconstant, changeable and easily distracted, and at the same time ambitious and self-seeking. He seeks the protection of friends and guards the family honour. He shuns the unpleasant and clings to the pleasant. His speech is unkind and his belly is greedy.</p><p>Those born with an inclination towards the demonic are false, insolent and self-satisfied. They are filled with malice, cruelty and ignorance. Such people have neither purity nor decency nor truthfulness. They indulge their passions. Crazed by a multitude of desires, entangled in a web of delusion, these devotees of sensual pleasure fall into hell.</p><p>How the minds of people in whom different gunas predominate work can be shown by their differing approaches to a universal commandment such as "do not covet what belongs to another". A person in whom tamas predominates may interpret this commandment thus: "Others must not covet what is mine, however I came by it. And if they do covet it, I shall destroy them". A person in whom rajas predominates, calculating and selfish, will interpret it thus: "I should not covet another's goods, so that others will not covet mine". Having chosen such a policy, he will follow the letter of the law, but not its true spirit, which ought to be raised into a principle of conduct. A person whose temperament is governed by sattva, however, will keep both the letter and the spirit of the precept out of principle and not out of policy, understanding the eternal value of the commandment. He will act righteously for the sake of righteousness itself, and not because there is a human law that enforces honesty under threat of punishment.</p><p>The yogi too is a human being and is subject to all three gunas. Persistent and diligent study (abhyasa) of himself and of the objects his senses reach for allows him to see which thoughts, words and deeds are prompted by tamas and which by rajas. By unceasing effort he weeds out and uproots the thoughts dictated by tamas, and works to acquire a sattvic cast of mind. When only sattva-guna remains in a person, it means that his soul has advanced far along the road to the final goal.</p><p>The action of the gunas is like the force of gravity. Just as intense training and severe preparation are needed to experience the wonder of overcoming gravity in outer space, so the sadhaka needs exacting self-examination and the discipline of yoga in order to be freed from the pull of the gunas and to experience union with the Creator of the cosmos.</p><p>Having felt the fullness of creation, or of the Creator, the sadhaka will lose his craving (trishna) for the things of sense and will thereafter look upon them with dispassion (vairagya). Heat and cold, pain and pleasure, honour and dishonour, virtue and vice will trouble him no longer. He treats both impostors - defeat and victory - with the same equanimity. From all these pairs of opposites he has been freed. He has passed beyond the pull of the gunas and has become a gunatita (one who has transcended the gunas). Then he is freed from birth and death, from pain and sorrow, and becomes immortal. He loses his separate identity, for he lives in the fullness of the Universal Soul. Such a person despises nothing and turns everything to the path of perfection.</p>