Seclusion and the City

A core teaching of yoga is the idea that each person possesses a series of layers, sheaths, or bodies, varying in subtlety. Our senses can usually only detect the most coarse of these layers.

Yoga helps us perceive the more subtle layers and understand their relationship to functions of individual mind and greater consciousness. Yoga helps us see how these layers interact with other individuals, animals, landscapes, constellations, and such.

In recent centuries empirical science has mainly focused on the physical layer, since it is so available to the senses. However, long ago, yogis used empirical methods, guided by evidence, to explore all the other layers. Their experiments have given us the ancient texts we have today, including the doctrine of these layers that we’re currently discussing.

Your ability to access information is related to your yoga practice. Yoga helps you develop skill, experience, and an ideal state of mind for the task. When sutras discuss transcending time and space, they’re not describing something fantastical like a superpower from a cartoon. It’s a literal concept that becomes quite ordinary as your practice advances.

In this context, it’s normal to perceive the thoughts of others. Why wouldn’t you notice something happening within you? Especially if it is of interest or relevance. Yoga offers practices to help you access the information you already possess – usually by calming your bodies and developing the ability to concentrate.

What happens if you don’t practice yoga or realise the existence of the subtle body?

What occurs if you succeed in recognising that other people, animals, and objects reside within you?

In ancient times, when the world’s population was small and people were dispersed, everyone understood the subtle layer. It becomes fairly obvious in regions with low population density, where there’s plenty of open space mixed with friends, family, and neighbours.

As the global population grew and villages began to form and expand, yogis noticed a significant shift. Around this time, Ayurveda and the Upanishads emerged, driven by the observation of elders and teachers.

The yogis of that time noticed that people’s innate awareness of the subtle body was diminishing as individuals had less time for themselves in tranquil and open natural surroundings. People started being born in densely populated areas, immediately entering the world with their subtle body intertwined with the subtle bodies of numerous others – not just their parents and family but strangers as well.

Today, it’s entirely possible for someone to go for many years without realising their subtle body at all.

A modern person may have always been affected by the influence of others and never once had an experience of pure solitude. Additionally, our culture tends to inform people that there is no such thing as a subtle body and that all the sensations they experience are generated by their unpredictable and chaotic physical brain.

This is a stark departure from the way things used to be, and that’s precisely why the yogis employed the technology available in their time, such as palm leaf texts and melodic recitation, to record both the emerging situation and how it used to be. The ancients created forms of yoga that could be fairly physical and systemised is to help town-dwellers and city-folk have a glimpse of what naturally happens when we are alone in nature.

Ramana Maharishi says “In the ordinary man when a thought occurs the ego takes delivery of it as “my thought” and gets involved. The thinking mind is nothing but the ego identifying with a thought and getting involved. In the enlightened Sage, when a thought enters the field witnessing happens and involvement is not automatic.”

Practical advice

Alright, so you’ve been unknowingly sharing your subtle body with countless strangers for decades. That is perhaps unsettling and gives rise to musings on boundaries and consent from a strange perspective. You can no longer close the door to your apartment and assume that you’re entirely alone. Your emotions are no longer completely private; they can impact others, and they, in turn, can be influenced by those around you. Suddenly, ethics takes on a whole new dimension. Cultivating inner anger or despair becomes rather inconsiderate as it affects your neighbours; even if you don’t intend it to, much less physically express it.

The good news is that after the initial surprise, this is a more natural and healing way to live. It’s time to truly know and reside in your genuine self. This is different from thinking about yourself purely through intellectual means.

Through this practice, you will experience profound changes and come to understand your true self. Your true self is already calm, it was born that way and will always be. Calmness is not something to acquire, but something to recognise as already existing in your centre.

It’s likely that initially you’ll carry the thoughts of others with you to your solitary moments, but gradually, with time, those thoughts will fade away swiftly once you’ve left the noisy environment. It may take months or even years to reverse the effects of a culture that underestimated the consequences of high-density living. It will require time and dedication, but the benefit is great!

It demands a commitment to honesty, much like the realisation that smoking is detrimental to your health or that prolonged sitting in chairs for hours daily is as harmful as smoking. It’s crucial that we address this issue for the well-being of our children.

If the practical benefits aren’t already enough, the classical yogic view is that you need to be calm enough to sense your moment of death approaching so that you can begin chanting om, preparing yourself for the decision about to come across your consciousness. To reincarnate or not? In what form? A person drowning in worldly affairs answer the question reactively and without free will. A person in touch with their calm centre exhibits mokṣa.

As you progress on the journey of shedding the thoughts and voices of other people, becoming acquainted with your quiescent self, you’ll find it much easier to recognise when the emotions of others come, and you’ll have the ability to regulate them instead of mistaking them for your own. You won’t feel as overwhelmed and scattered; instead, you’ll have a fresh and clear state of mind to rely upon.

Speak to the best aspects of people

As the practice of seclusion away from people and your capacity for self-regulation unfolds, methods of replicating or preserving its effects while you are back in the city become apparent.

Friendliness with neighbours becomes an obvious benefit. These fields of these overlap with yours whether you like it or not. Even if you’d just prefer they weren’t around, or if they’re not your usual type of company, you are engaging with them. So do it deliberately, find the best and most positive aspects of their personalities and speak to that. Speak to that aspect that you would choose to grow. A smiling “hello” goes such a long way – rural people know all about this.

If you become wilfully familiar with other people you will recognise them when their thoughts appear in your consciousness. If you block them and make them alien, their impulse becomes part of the jumble of the city and will likely be collected in the net of your mind.

It is a paradox that if you want to feel peaceful self-regulation in the city, you need to co-regulate with the people around you. Since you are intimate with your neighbours energetically, you may as well learn a little about them physically. In doing so, they become receptive to your positive mood.

At their core, everyone wants to be happy, and your neighbours will transform into allies in the pursuit of communal accord. It is a good test of your own behavioural control too, a measure of your own loving kindness, your ability to resist muttering and gossiping in your head.

Rest in the countryside, away from the thoughts and emotions of others. Enjoy epiphany after epiphany as you remember your essence. Then, situate this physical and energetic body in the city, let that innocent and hopeful charm radiate outward. Become responsible for the energy far beyond your skin.

Your intuition for anticipating moods, finding the right direction, enhancing your emotional state, and managing your experiences in any given moment will greatly expand. We are learning to switch perspective on things, be they “inner states” or “outer states”.

Comfort with your field helps it grow larger. You will help others feel good.

As your ever-expanding field becomes ever-more comfortable, you understand that everything is within you and you do have the ability to alter circumstances.

It comes gradually.