Mind Control - Basic step

Pratyaya, the word referred in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, is the mental area (which we can compare with the RAM of a computer or the short memory but very active). Usually it contains the thoughts and conditions produced by us. The self or 'I' watches Pratyaya intently. For the introverts the self is often and intensely lost in Pratyaya, and one will completely immerse in and react to the contents of Pratyaya.

Compare this with watching and completely absorbed in a movie. There are persons who intensely react to the incidents in movie - they cry, are afraid, are inspired or/and become angry as are the characters in the movies.

Remember every situation has Pratyaya + ' I '. If you can blank out the contents of Pratyaya, 'I' remains devoid of the affects of the Pratyaya contents. How to do it? Use the following technique, it is not instant, but for sure produce effective results that matches with your desire to do it, intensity and frequency of practice.

Step 1: be convinced about the concept. If you are convinced about the concept, skip to step 2. Some people have trouble with this, who says the technique should work so they can be convinced. I am asking for the opposite, right? There is a problem with this approach, as this is not an exact science: according to which for example, if you or any one on the earth throws a stone upwards, it will always fall down due to gravity. Unlike in exact science, in life the results depend on one's conviction and practice. To get convinced, just think logically as in the example below the talks about the color of a plain glass jar.

(1) what is the color of the plain glass jar, containing green color water? Green. How about glass jar with red color water? Red, Right? Similarly the attributes - like fear, excitement etc- associated with the thoughts paint similar emotional conditions on the mind or Pratyaya. And we react to them with such expressions.
(2) if you want see the actual color of the jar, throw the water out. That simple! If you want to know the nature of your mind throw away the thoughts in the Pratyaya. But difficulty is to throw away the thoughts. You would slowly overcome this difficulty by practicing the following steps.

Step 2: External - watch a bright object (A) like candle light or (B) a white circle on black background or other way round for more than 2 minutes. Now turn away from this object to look on a plain wall. See the magic! You see the mental reflection that object projected with opposite shade (white as black, or black as white) on the plain wall. See the image as long as possible until the image disappears. Intermittently image disappears but quickly re-appears, patiently wait to see it until it will never reappear. Please do this for 1 week - 2 weeks. The duration of the image retention slowly and gradually increases.

Step 3: Internal - this step is exactly the same as above with an exception. After watching the object (A or B above) for 2 minutes, close your eyes - the walls of which will now support you as plain wall in Step 2. Maybe not as clear, but you would still see images in your mind. Watch it like you did in step 2. The image behaves as it was explained in Step 2 - disappears and re-appear, there will less clarity of this image, but practice this 2-3 weeks or until you can.

Step 4: by now you attained some ability to retain images in mind longer and next step is to manipulate them in your mind. Previously the image has an independent behavior and you have little or no control on it. I will deal with  this manipulation in my next post, so you have some time to practice the steps in this post.