ANTAR MOUNA
When the
mind is silent and peaceful it becomes very powerful. It can become a receptor
of bliss and wisdom enabling life to become a spontaneous flow and expression
of joy and harmony. However…this inner silence cannot arise while there is a
continual stream of disturbing thoughts and emotions. All this inner noise of
thoughts and emotions has to be removed before one can truly experience the
soundless sound of inner silence.
Swami
Satyananda Saraswati
Peace,
bliss, harmony. Who is able to experience these states? So many people these
days are struggling with their own minds. Influenced by their conditionings,
and overwhelmed by the pressures of day to day living in today's increasingly
stressful society, they are full of mental tensions, which manifest as anxiety,
nervousness, guilt, lack of self-confidence, loneliness, fear, obsessions and
phobias. Some turn to drugs and alcohol as a temporary means of escape and
solace. Others enlist the costly help of psychiatrists or psychotherapists to
try and cope. All are looking for some form of change, a little relief from the
inner conflicts and turmoil, wanting to feel at ease with themselves, or even
to experience, if not bliss, just a modicum of peace and contentment.
Those who
are fortunate enough to come across Satyananda Yoga can encounter and learn an
excellent systematic meditation practice, known as antar mouna (अंतर्मौन) , that will enable them to release
these oppressive mental tensions and to become their own psychotherapists in
the process.
Antar means
inner, mouna means silence. Antar mouna is a technique of attaining pratyahara
(withdrawal of the mind from the sense objects), the fifth stage of raja yoga,
and in its fullest form can lead to dharana and dhyana. Antar mouna is also a
fundamental part of the Buddhist practice known as vipassana, used in a
modified way.
Purging the
mind
Generally
we tend to allow 'good' thoughts to arise to conscious perception; we accept
and enjoy pleasant thoughts. When an unpleasant, painful or 'bad' memory or
thought arises, we tend to quickly push it back down into the subconscious
layers of the mind. This is suppression and we all do it. Everyone has mental
suppressions. Often we are conditioned to do it from childhood. But suppression
is definitely not the answer.
Every
single suppressed thought that remains unexpressed causes a block in the free
flow of the mind. The thoughts and experiences stay submerged in the
subconscious realms of the mind in seed form, causing pain, unhappiness and
frustration in life. These subtle impressions are known as samskaras. Without
even realizing it, we build up a vast accumulation of suppressed thoughts which
cause a lot of tension and disturbances in the mind and personality without
obvious cause.
To find
lasting happiness or peace of mind, these mental impressions have to be rooted
out. It can be compared to gardening. We remove the unwanted weeds from the
mind. If we just break the top off, although there is temporary relief, the
weed will return. However, when we dig down deep and pull out the root of the
weed, it loses its hold and can be removed completely. If left to fester in the
mind, these negative mental impressions poison the psyche and lead to
irritability, aggression, anger, non-specific depression, a tendency to worry,
being fearful without reason, and permanent tiredness. This affects all our
interactions in life and reduces our ability to be efficient, creative and
dynamic at every level of our lives.
Antar mouna
enables us to exhaust these unwanted thoughts; it provides a means to purge the
mind. Once these mental tensions start to be released, we can experience
corresponding surges of energy and inspiration and life starts to take on a new
dimension. In the same way that we clean our rooms and the physical body every
day we also need to develop the habit of cleaning the mind each day in order to
prevent the accumulation of more dross or rubbish. Therefore, it is very
necessary to repeat this process on a consistent and regular basis.
Antar mouna
is required because this process of oscillation and extrication from the
contracted state to the more benevolent state takes time. We forget and get
lost along the way. We need a technique like antar mouna which will help us
through this process. Antar mouna is the technique of inner silence, also known
as witnessing. It is divided into six main stages which can be divided into
three basic categories. For most people, the first three stages provide plenty
to work with, and in order to obtain the full benefits, a considerable amount
of time should be spent practising and perfecting them before attempting to
move into the more advanced stages.
The first
two categories are passive, where we sit and observe our mind and our process
of evolution, of change in our inner nature, without engagement. We simply
observe that tendency to suppress things and to grab onto things and to lose
ourselves within our mental process. We do not try to change anything. We
simply develop what is called a sense of self. While we are developing that, we
have to maintain an awareness of the object of meditation. We also have to be
aware of the whole process. This is important because we tend to get lost
either in the object we are observing, a thought or an event, or we get lost in
our own selves. It is very difficult to maintain the kind of equilibrium where
we hold an awareness of self and of other at the same time.
Antar mouna
is designed to allow us to do that because developing a sense of self is an
antidote to the pain, to dealing with this kind of contracted and somehow
distorted energetic process that goes on inside. A sense of self is very
grounding and calming. We feel a greater sense of safety and trust the more we
develop it. What we are trying to do is develop a greater stability in that
experience, so that it becomes more available to us for longer periods of time.
So the first stages of antar mouna are simply passive, learning to witness
outside sounds or sensations, learning to witness thoughts without getting
engaged in suppression of thoughts or involvement in the process. These are the
two main states, grabbing onto a thought and pushing it away. Of course, the
awareness is the antidote to ignorance.
Once we
have that capacity, we go into the next two stages. These are active, to
develop mental muscle, like doing mental push-ups. We consciously try to grab
onto a thought, to exaggerate the process of grabbing. Then we consciously let
it go. One stage is to create a thought, grab it and then throw it away, and
the other state is to grab a spontaneous thought as it comes up and then throw
it away. So we are developing this internal capacity to deal with our thoughts,
feelings, emotions and inner states with greater clarity. In the third
category, which is divided into two groups, we throw out any thought that comes
into our mind, until we achieve shoonya or emptiness, a luminous emptiness. It
is not a dark, tamasic emptiness; it is an emptiness which is full of peace and
love.
Antar mouna
is one of the most important techniques that we can learn in order to maintain
the path, in order to maintain an awareness of duality and polarity, and to be
able to hold the negative as well as the positive experiences.
