.Imagine that inside you is a soul, a purusha, and it “sees” without perception, without the need for eyesight, hearing, or touch. That is in a lot of ways a great way to describe purusha, it is even called “the seer” by some translations of the yoga sutras. When we see a beautiful piece of art, it is because we have space in our consciousness to take in something beautiful. Have you ever been somewhere surrounded by beauty, but you lacked the capacity to enjoy it? Perhaps you have been at a meal that you knew was wonderful and tasty, but your experience of it was simply off. In a way this overstimulated way of existence is the opposite of the yogic art of pratyahara and we want to be mindful of it. Practicing sense withdrawal means that we guard our senses just as a parent would protect a child. We honor this body and accept is primitive nature; it is not ours, but it belongs to the process of evolution.

The DNA in the bodies we all have were once a part of other beings that did wonderful and terrible things. We cannot change that, just like we cannot change the habits that our bodies have… we are attracted to beautiful things to our own detriment, and it is the very nature of the flesh and ego to consume in order to validate itself and remove the existential fear that the spiritual realm is introducing to it. To counteract that process, it is important to recognize how vulnerable we are to addictions of various kinds, all of which start with a subtle desire to be entertained by something outside of ourselves. This is how we know that we are playing in the world. There is a way to do it in union with purusha, and there is a way to do it that is aligned with addiction, pain and suffering.

Imagine the eyes of a human being, and the feeling you get when you look deep within the eyes; what do you see? People say that the eyes are “the window to the soul” and they are correct. Purusha is behind the eyes, witnessing all that the body and the life form it is occupying is experiencing, but it is doing so objectively and without bias, it would seem.

So, if the purusha is the aspect of yoga that tends to be missing in the lives of people, then we will want to create space for that, and one very easy way to do that is through pratyahara, the art of withdrawing the senses. This is also a discipline of avoiding consumerism and being a part of the “rat race”. When we back away slowly from the grizzly bear that is our consumerist mindset, we find a state of calm where we aren’t struggling from moment to moment, feeling that we need something that we do not have. Instead, directing our attention inwards brings an awareness that what we really are will last forever, and no matter what the circumstances are outside of ourselves, we will be okay. Thinking this way really is beautiful. It may sound boring, but its not.

When we go out to watch a movie, and we need to be entertained, we are already in a mindset of consumerism. We likely need to be entertained because there is something annoying about our lives that we want to get away from; that is totally natural. There are going to be longer term consequences to dissociating from your problems through sensory stimulation, but in the short term it is fine as long as we are aware of what we are doing. Losing that awareness and participating means we are living more like an animal; we have lost the insight provided by remaining connected with purusha, with our spirit. This is also normal and for a short time is okay, but it can be a slippery slope.

The novel Siddhartha (spoiler alert) tells a story of a powerful young master who was in his spiritual prime, who became overwhelmed by the joys of the world, and fell into a decades long stupor before snapping out of it and retreating into the wilderness to regain his spiritual connection. This story is so wonderful for us that struggle with our attachments to the material world. We can be drawn in by something so simple and small, but it can lead us down a path that will take us away from our spiritual goals, away from our spirit.