I spoke earlier about Buddha’s analysis of things. There is no such thing as a solid object, said Buddha. The solidity is nothing but the location in space and time of a grouping of certain sensations. This was Buddha’s definition of the substantiality of an object. Curiously, this is also our modern scientists’ definition of an object. To our own wonder, we will realise that scientists today have a similar definition of a physical object as the one Buddha had. According to modern physics, the object is a spatio-temporal location of a grouping of sensations. Whatever the crude senses may tell us, there is actually no such thing as a solid object. The five senses, including the tactile sense, provide the notion of the existence of solidity of an object. If our fingers can be repulsed by contact, we call something solid, otherwise, we won’t know if anything is there or not. That something which is called the object of perception should be capable of a repulsion to our tactile sense. If the repulsion is absent for any reason whatsoever, we cannot know that the object is there. The capacity of the five senses to jointly act upon the mental operation is the reason behind our judgement of the factual existence of an object. All senses connive together to deceive us! It is not one sense that misleads us—all the senses tell us, “Yes, it is there,” and then we have to believe them.

If there are five hundred false witnesses who say the same thing, what will the judge do? He would think they are all correct. Witnesses may be large in number, but they are all telling lies, all of them, without a single exception. We go by lies merely because the majority says they are true. The majority that is the senses give us a similar definition of an object. The eyes see colour, the ears may hear sounds, the fingers feel a sensation, we taste it through the palate, and we smell with the nose. But what are these? They are reactions, but the mind plays havoc in making the judgement of the existence of the object based on these sensations. The whole thing is made worse by the mind’s acquiescence in the report given by the senses. If the judge does not believe in the witnesses—even if they are five hundred in number—well, that is a one thing. But if he says, “Oh, five hundred are saying so, I think it must be correct”, then the whole judgement may go wrong, merely because the majority has led him to believe so. The mind is like an indiscriminate judge, which is convinced merely by the evidence of the senses. Law does not merely mean evidence. There are many other things involved in law, so we should not think that evidence alone is everything.

There was a poor man once who was executed merely because the evidence was against him, but in fact he had committed no crime whatsoever. The fact was discovered later on after he was hanged. The judgement went wrong due to wrong application of the law. Such things happen in practical life, and this happens to us daily with our senses, says yoga. Every day we are wrong. Everything that we see is an erroneous perception, because of a substantiality and factuality being associated by the mind with a grouping of sensations. Minus sensation we cannot know what an object is. We should not think in terms of things ‘out there’. The ‘out there’ is due to the operation of space and time. Sensations, when they are located in space and time, look like something out there in front of us. Space, time and sensations put together are objective perception. What Patanjali wants us to do in meditation is to dissociate the relationships of space, time and sensation from that which really is. Can we imagine what there really is minus spatio-temporal associations and sensations? Our mind will go giddy if we start thinking along these. We will start scratching our heads. This is the first step in meditation—the dissociation of the physical object from all the sensations, and even from space and time.

Patanjali doesn’t want us to dissociate the object from space and time in the beginning—this step is taken a little later on. For the present at least, we dissociate our chosen object from relationships to other objects and think of it as something independent of the sensations we have of it. “Minus the fivefold sensations, what could the physical object be?” is to be our first question in the meditation on the object. In one Sutra in Patanjali’s text all this is described, and I hope we understand what it actually implies. A tremendous detachment cultivated toward the object is required—not merely emotionally, but also perceptionally. I mentioned the detached observation of an object. We might have understood it to mean merely emotional detachment, but I’m going to say now that it is not merely that. It also involves general perception itself.

Apart from our cultivating the habit of beholding the object as free from the notion of  ‘I’ and ‘mine’, can we cultivate the habit of beholding the object from its own standpoint? Can we place ourselves in the position of the object? Try to imagine for the time being the point of view of some external object—let’s say a cow for instance. This is not just a question of seeing the cow—we have to imagine what the cow itself sees. Can we imagine the cow thinking itself as an independent something? Why should we be allowed to define the cow? Why should the cow define itself in terms of somebody else? Is it not something by itself? Is it a slave of its relationship with others? Does it exist merely because of a relationship?

Nobody would like to be told that he or she exists merely because of his or her relation with others. Am I not something by myself? What is this something that I am? What is this cow, thinking itself to be something independent of associations with others? What is the cow when it is not seen by anybody else? Nobody sees the cow in the whole of creation, but the cow may exist even though nobody sees it. What could be the situation or form when it is not beheld? Suppose the sun does not shine. There would then be no colour, and if nobody could see the cow, there would be no idea about it. When there is no object external to it, there may also not be any relations. Can we imagine the existence of a cow independent of its connection with other particulars? It is difficult to conceive what the circumstance of the object is, but this is how we have to concentrate in the beginning, says Patanjali. This will help us in clearing up the muddled way of thinking. It remains to be seen what actually will be realised by this way of thinking and meditation. But what we will realise now at least, is that we have cultivated the habit of concentration and also the habit of thinking without relating an object to any other thing.

We are not a father or a mother, we are not a brother or a sister, we are not a friend or a foe, and we are not related to any other person in this world in any manner whatsoever. What is our name? When we are asked what our names are, we give some answer, but who gave us this name? Somebody else did. Why do we depend upon somebody else? Why should we be subject to so much slavery? Somebody says that I have this name; therefore I am this name. Is it a good judgement to think so? Simply because somebody wants to call us by a name, we need not necessarily enslave ourselves to this name. Patanjali advises that we should detach ourselves from the name. If we are alone somewhere, why do we want a name? Nobody is there to call on us. We want a name because we want to be called by somebody. We want to be named, singled out and defined. Suppose we don’t need to be connected with any kind of activity in the world and we are absolutely independent persons. Why would we want a name? Hence, this name is an unnecessary botheration of the mind. So deeply has this idea of name gone into our minds that we cannot imagine that we could live without it, but to live without a name could actually be so simple. Name is unconnected with us, and there is no connection of the name with us. We can imagine that we can be without name, provided of course nobody else has any dealings with us. When I can exist alone—absolutely alone, unconnected with any other human being—then it is that I can be without a name.

Patanjali tells us it is not merely that we are without a name; we are also without a form! To our surprise, he is telling us that this is what we have to learn in the higher states of meditation. While it is easy enough to understand that we can be without a name, we may find it a little difficult to understand that we are also without form. He says that form is nothing but association. Our relationships with other things by colour and by space-time associations, etc. are ultimately responsible for a notion of the form of an object. Can we dissociate the object—whether it is a cow or our own self, it makes no difference—as if it were free from name and relationship? If this is possible, then we exist as we truly are without name and form. One is without a name because the name has been given by someone else, and one can exist without a name. One is without a form because form is only a bundle of relationships. A network of relations is the formation of the body. It becomes difficult for us to imagine that our body is not a form, because we have been accustomed to think in terms of sensations. We can sense the body; that is what confirms our bodily existence. How could we then say that it is not there? Whatever it may be, in the final analysis, we don’t have a body; we only have only sensations. Instead of saying, “I have a body”, we can better say, “I have only sensations of a body”.

Similarly, we have sensations of other objects. Apart from our having to be without association of a name, now we find the necessity of accepting the fact that there can be existence without a form. Again I would like us to read the analysis of Buddha and modern physicists like Eddington and James Jeans. They said the same thing that Buddha taught. The sensations which are grouped together by a habit of the mind in terms of space and time are responsible for our assertions, “Here is a body and here is an object.” Sensations, space and time, and the habit of the mind—all combined—create the notions of there being an object and there being a body. Habit has made this way of thinking so factual that we cannot imagine that there could be any other way of thinking.

Plato’s description in the seventh chapter of The Republic of the people living in a cave would help us to clarify these ideas. People get accustomed to erroneous ways of thinking—this is what Plato tells us. We mistake shadows for facts, and we get accustomed to the illusion so much that we cannot afterwards see the facts. After a person who has cataracts has an eye operation, he will suddenly see bright daylight. He is surprised. “What am I seeing?” He cannot believe his eyes. He has never seen forms, and now suddenly he sees the world of reality. Likewise, the mind will see a flood of reality opening itself up to its vision, when it frees itself from sensations and the clutches of space and time. We have to start thinking along these lines in meditation.

In our practical lives we may find it difficult to think like this. In the later stages we can do this in our day-to-day practical lives also, but in the earlier stages we need to confine this way of thinking to our meditation room. We must try hard to dissociate objectivity from relations and sensations, and think of the physical object as it is. The two ways of meditation in the initial stages are physical observation of an object with relation, and the physical observation of an object without relation. These are the first two stages of Patanjali’s way of meditation. There are at least seven stages of meditation, but for now I am concerned merely with Patanjali’s psychological process of meditation. It doesn’t mean that this method is suitable to all, but I am trying to give an outline of different methods. If we like this method we can use it, if we don’t like it, we can practise some other technique. This is a purely scientific way of approach and a psychological method of analysis of objects. The method employs the observation of a physical object with associations and the observation of a physical object without associations. This itself will take enough time for us to cultivate. It may take months, or it may take years to cultivate the habit of this kind of detached observation of an object.

If we are successful, we will find that we will never love or hate things. The whole world will look ideal to us. We will not be disturbed or upset by anything after this cultivation of thinking along these lines. Everything will look quite familiar, natural and expected. Nothing will be unexpected in this world. Nothing will take us by surprise when this habit of thinking is cultivated. It is relation-less thinking of a physical object of perception. In the beginning stages, this way of thinking may be cultivated in respect of an external object, and not with our own bodies. We need not attempt the same detached relationship to our bodies in the earlier stages of meditation. We will come to it a little later, because we are so much attached to our own bodies that we will refuse to analyse ourselves like this. It is a little easier to analyse an external object apparently unrelated to us. The first stages of meditation are connected with external concepts and forms, rather than internal ones. From the external we come to the internal. Therefore we should take a physically external object for our analysis and concentration.

What is that object? We can choose any object we like. In Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj’s book Concentration and Meditation, we will find many such suggestions given pertaining to objects for concentration. We can take any simple object—our fountain pen, our pencil, a flower in the garden, a flame of a lamp, the moon shining in the sky, a resplendent star—whatever we like may be our object of concentration. We have to start thinking of these objects in terms of what it could be by itself, independently and unrelated to us. ‘Unrelated’ means not merely emotionally unrelated, but also perceptionally and factually.

When we start thinking like this, it is not merely thinking—it is called meditation. We will have experiences of peculiar types in the initial stages of meditation. We will have super-sensible experiences. In every type of super-sensible experience, we will have a joy and a sense of freedom coming in the wake of this concentration. We will begin to gradually feel that we are getting released from the clutches of sense objects. Botherations, annoyances, etc. will be getting less and less. When we are free from the clutches of things, our annoyances will be less. We are annoyed, disturbed, harassed or emotionally disturbed by the objects when they are thought of as related to other objects and in relation to us in space and time. If we can think of them as unrelated, we will not only be free from psychological harassment from things, but we also gain a control over things. We will gain a kind of power over the objects, and the power may go to such an extent that our thought may affect the object. It may start acting according to our will, but our intention should not be to exercise any kind of control over the object. That would be a kind of emotion again interfering with concentration. The seeker should not go after powers. The powers may come, but we are not to worry about them. The moment we think of them, our emotions are again there, and we will be defeated in the very purpose for which we have started. The control that we are likely to automatically exert over the object of concentration comes spontaneously. We are not to bother with these things and neither should we give them much thought. If we think of things in this way, we will immediately develop love and hatred, and then we will be frustrated in our attempts.

The concentration on the object is therefore for the purpose not only of understanding the real structure of the object, but also to gain a kind of inner intimacy with it. We will feel that the object is under our control, and we feel a sense of freedom from it and therefore a joy attending upon it. Wherever there is freedom, there is joy. We are daily harassed by something or other—knowingly or unknowingly. Even unknowingly we will be harassed, and we don’t know what is happening. The very presence of things external to us is the cause of worry. Psychologists will tell us how things, merely existing, can disturb us. Not merely the objects connected with us—even objects unconnected with us can apparently disturb, merely by their existence around us. This disturbance has to cease through this method of concentration on physical objects.