Senses, Mind, Attention, Yoga

What are the indriyas, actually? Let us see together. They are external
instruments of experience or extensions of the brain through the body. These
instruments have been classified as sensory-experiential instruments or
gnyanendriyas and bodily-actional instruments or karmendriyas.

The brain, though localised inside the skull, is also everywhere in the body
through the nervous connections. The body-brain operations, whether
experiential, actional, reactional, physiological, psychological, etc are
captured, processed and rendered conscious through the space and energy of
attention. Without the energy of attention, emanating from the body-brain
structure and creating the space of the conscious mind, nothing can be
experienced and known, whether immediately or retrospectively.

So the body-brain complex with its sensory/actional extensions and

instruments all operate through the energy of attention in the space of the
conscious mind and become known as instruments and objects of experience
and action in the field of experience and action. The field is also the space
of the mind.

Now the body-brain unit or living organism is also an object of experience,

an instrument of experience, a field of experience operating in a wider field
of experience and action with other organisms, objects, events, actions,
movements, thought-forms, etc. All these become known through the
instruments of experience attending to objects and events in the space of the
mind. So the space of the mind is as wide and far off as the universe of
experience extends and it is usually called the space of the universe and its
seat is the body-brain complex, which is an agglomeration of particles, cells,
life, attention and consciousness.

Internal extensions or instruments are: imaginative self-talking mind space,

intellectualising mind space (cognition, ratiocination, attribution, moral
reasoning, etc), memorising and recollecting mind space (storing
experiences and retrieving them for review and reuse), impulsive mind space
(emotions, urges, drives, feelings, etc) and egoic mind space (thought
identifying, during wakeful conscious experiencing and acting, with the
body-brain complex through past experiences, imagination, impulses,
intellectualising and separating itself from the rest of objects, sensations,
events, etc, making as if and believing that every experience is happening to
it and through its agency and that every action is done through its agency.

So sensory instruments usually act in a natural and automatic manner, but

the egoic mind can focus attention and shift the focus of attention towards or
away from any objects of sensory experience in a directive way, as it is
naturally concerned with seeking more pleasure, power, profit and avoiding
pain, suffering and loss.

All the five internal instruments are involved in self-talking or thinking,

which is a focusing of the energy of attention, animating and sustaining the
conscious mind, in a given area or on a given object. Attention, however, is
a silent, wordless, formless and all pervading energy filling and animating
the space of the conscious mind and everything it contains as objects, events,
entities, thoughts, emotions, etc.

Now where does this silent energy of attention come from? It comes from
the Universal Life animating, sustaining the body-brain complex with its
host of instruments of experience and action. When the Universal Life is
reflected in the living organism, attention, as an energy of the Universal
Life, shines and illuminates the spaces of the mind and allows all
movements of conscious experiencing, subconscious thinking and
unconscious stirring, inherent in the organism to flow and manifest.

So everything the mind space can experience is conditioned by the inputs

from and processing by the instruments of experience and action, both
external and internal. So all mental experiences are always conditioned and
they rest on the ground of attention. Mind can know only what its
instruments can capture from the field of experience through the energy of
attention.

A mind with focused attention is an inattentive mind, which is involved in

self-talking, in divisive experience and in egoic perception, cognition and
pursuits- a seer seeing objects through a lens or focus. What happens when
the lens or focus is not there? Then both the contracted vision and the
limited seer, produced as polarities by the lens or focus, just disappear! What
remains is the experiencing of actuality with unfocused, undivided attention.
When is the lens or focus dropped? It happens in a state of relaxation, letting
go, resting in herenow awareness without any form of contraction,
resistance, seeking, focusing, holding, pulling, etc.

Only unfocused, uncentred, undivided attention is unfragmented, total, all-

encompassing, all-embracing. This is the purest form of love. Only total
attention is in direct connection with the Universal Life flowing in every cell
of the living organism and in every particle or wave of the universe. In total
attention, the body-brain complex loses its particular individual structure and
flows in wave-like mode in boundless space of being, knowing and bliss.

In total attention, there is no focus, no movement, no volition, no self-talk,

no seeking, no centre, no periphery, no choice, no preference, no like, no
dislike, no contradiction, no resistance, no contraction, no becoming. It is
undifferentiated awareness, wordless witnessing, and immediate knowing.

Total attention is the state of Meditation, which is a mirror in and through

which the Universal Life sees Itself in the space of the silent, empty, relaxed,
attentive mind, also called the mindless space. The Universal Life sees Itself
not as an object of experience but as the Enlightening Awareness or the
Light of Knowing, revealing everything else through experiencing. This
connection of the Universal Life with Itself through meditative attention has
been called YOGA.

koosradha@gmail.com

Koosraj KORA VENCIAH 26.11.2010