Originally posted in German on 25th November 2023
A continuation of the article “Cases of Cancer will continue to increase in the future” by Heinz Grill
Natural sunlight, unfiltered and pure, mild and warming, provides the human organism with a natural stimulation of the periphery, that in general transports structuring processes right into the organic interior. The opposite of the effects of the forming, structuring forces are the many dissolution processes that, for example, occur in inflammation and even in fast growing cancers, in which the tissue does not gain a natural and beautiful form, according to an ordered building up, but instead moves towards a chaotic and undifferentiated growth. Just as the individual human being must develop a natural structure for life, through education in childhood by learning language and practical skills, through following rules in an orderly fashion, to the same extent even the senses must receive a certain steering, order and be formed in a detailed way. In yoga, the right steering of the senses is generally referred to as pratyahara.
It will probably never be possible for mankind to direct their senses only to beautiful and pleasant phenomena and overlook all horrible or brutal world events. Pratyahara is the fifth limb of Patanjali’s raja-yoga and it is said in the interpretations that practitioners of meditation must withdraw their senses from the objects of the outer world in order to prepare themselves for higher concentration and spiritual realisation. Meditators must turn away from both the pleasant as well as the unpleasant aspects of life in order to learn to climb to the next levels of supersensible awareness and gather experiences of a reality that is no longer accessible to general perception.
The right and conscious activity of the senses leads people to a more ordered relationship tableau with all phenomena that the world offers, and the essential thing is that this discipline offers a way of counteracting, with a clearer form structure, the many dissolution processes that are already having an effect, for example, through the shielded sun light and the many other general irritations. However, what must individuals practically do to avoid just closing their eyes and starting to dream? What does the practical discipline of pratyahara look like in its first and simple stages?
The eyes stay completely open and practitioners realise that they are transporting through the eyes a whole host of unconscious emotions, desires and quick intellectual information. They glace, for example, at a forest landscape and, with their sense processes directed to the trees and forms they see, the need to go for a walk there is immediately carried over. Strictly speaking, people do not experience themselves in the reality of the outer world they are looking at, but due to their many needs of sympathy or antipathy and through their inner lying emotions they experience mostly their inner world. Projections through the senses are infinitely widespread and it only has to be considered, how a woman is able to look at a man and a man at a woman. The selfish needs live in the senses like an unseen monstrous saurian. Seeing the outer world, as it is, is hindered through one’s own laden and unpurified inner world. The first process of freeing the senses from one’s own emotions and the resulting projections, is to observe an object in the outer world or, for example, a piece of text, objectivity for a long period of time perhaps for two to five minutes. Finally, the gaze can be turned away from the object and an attempt can be made to describe what has been seen with objective criteria. What words were in the text, what is the main thought, what is being said, the sentence structure as it is in reality? The uncertainties that ultimately arise, can always be overcome through a repetition of the sense-observation, so that the reality, as it is, appears completely as reality. Those practising in this way attain the viewpoint of the so-called witness, which, for example, in yoga is called the sakshi.
In every case, practitioners must dispel their motoric and automatic inner life from the processes of the senses for at least a few phases, in order to achieve an objective perception of the outer world. Pratyahara does not mean, therefore, as it is often described, the complete withdrawal of the senses, the closing of the eyes and all organs of perception, but rather the consciously undertaken perception without one’s own projections. It is not an emptiness that develops, but a real sense process with increasing richness. The sensitive nervous system gains a clear strengthening through objective and guided perceptions and as a result the motor nerves can also experience a strengthening. However, if from the very beginning the motoric automated processes predominate in the senses, the whole nervous system generally weakens and the person becomes like a plaything of many stimuli, opinions and suggestions.
Through objective observation free from one’s own projection, the whole person is moulded and gains, furthermore, a better relationship to the external phenomena of the world. A calm forming of thoughts accompanies, as a rule, every objective perception and bestows the health promoting, so called, forming forces, that sunlight also contains in its nature. By taking a few minutes every day to contemplate an object, ideally even a suitable meditation object and freeing themselves from their own inner life, practitioners develop better steering of the senses. The sun, that is shielded today, must arise in people in this initial way through a joyful and beautiful, clear and steered, sense-process filled with noble thoughts.
This development of a healthy perception- and sense-process, connected with thought content, that does not come from the motoric and emotional sphere of the human desire-world, provides increasing forming forces that open up a healing atmosphere for both inflammation and also with cell degeneration.
A source of error must now be pointed out. In yoga advaita-philosophy is differentiated from dvaita-philosophy, a non-dual plane from a dual. I am often criticised for advocating a dvaita-philosophy, a materialistic duality. As the world is a great unity and spirit and matter are the result of godliness. What answer must I give to this crude criticism? For a healthy standing-in-the-world and a conscious stepping-into-relationship the human being must get to know the world and furthermore the various laws. If people omit this discipline and live in an illusory way on this advaita-plane without knowledge and insight they would be a world dreamer and alienate themselves from their own creative potential. Only correctly knowing and recognising the duality and the differentiation between one’s own projection and a perception that is true-to-reality, leads to relationship and initial reconciling subtle-feelings. The knowing of duality goes, therefore, before the experience of non-duality.1) More on this theme can be found in the book Übungen für die Seele (Exercises for the Soul), Synergiaverlag, 3. Edition 2022 (English edition will be available in 2024) and Prophylaxe und Therapie der Krebskrankheit, Lammers-Koll-Verlag. (not yet translated into English)
Anmerkungen
| ⇑1 | More on this theme can be found in the book Übungen für die Seele (Exercises for the Soul), Synergiaverlag, 3. Edition 2022 (English edition will be available in 2024) and Prophylaxe und Therapie der Krebskrankheit, Lammers-Koll-Verlag. (not yet translated into English) |
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