The necessity of solitude in meditation

During the course of this summer, CWI having graciously provided me with spacious and commodious accommodation, I have been conducting an experiment of sorts on the effect of socializing on meditative practice. The problem is as follows: since the final state of meditative repose lies in a realization of the illusionary nature of physical and conceptual partitioning, and whereas progress in meditative awareness is measured quite accurately by the relative subjugation of the identifying principle - the Ego, there seems to be a logical inconsistency in requiring the aspirant to isolate his body and related appurtenances from the rest of perceived reality. The definition of solitude, in essence, seems rather arbitrary and ad hoc. Fundamentally, this problem arises as a consequence of a deeper question: what is the relationship between the Whole and the Individual. What is so special about the Individual? What properties of the Whole cause the Individual to exist in the Singular, not in the Dual, nor even in the Plural?

Philosophical answers to several of these statements appear to leap immediately to mind. However, today, I wish to collate the empirical evidence that my experiment has accumulated. We may be able to discuss their implications in the context of the metaphysical a priori answers that tradition and logic tend to present. A brief word regarding the methodology: being in possession of an apartment with a double bed and a spacious living room, I have, for the past month and a half, offered my living space freely to any and all travelers visiting Amsterdam and desiring to spend their hours of rest and leisure in less alien surroundings than the insides of hotels. My efforts are aided and abetted by a splendid social networking site called Couchsurfing which I joined a couple of years ago. Thus, it has so transpired that my little apartment has taken on the shape and form of a caravanserai of sorts, with lots of young artists, nomads and other self-actualizing individuals passing through the doorway in either direction each and every day. I don't think I've had the apartment to myself on more than five days, of all the time I have spent here.

My experiment has consisted of seeing how much or how little my practice and daily routine have to diverge in order to accommodate other people's wishes, people of various proclivities and temperaments, people of several desires and motivations. The results are quite striking, and quite distinctive. Setting the statistical question of sample size aside (though N ~ 40), I think it is fair to say that most people who reported positive experiences and enjoyed their stay were single young males, while most people who reported negative experiences were attached young males and/or their girlfriends. Single women appeared to not enjoy their time too much, but the sample size for this demographic group is not sufficiently large to draw statistically significant conclusions.

From a qualitative point of view, visitors who enjoyed their time here found the conversations interesting, the sense of calm around the place invigorating and refreshing, and the logistical freedom afforded by an unlatched door and open refrigerator extremely useful. Visitors who did not enjoy their stay found me rude and callous in conversation, the atmosphere in the flat boring and the open door policy annoying and creepy.

From my own perspective, it was refreshing for me to find that my practice proceeded quite smoothly independent of the identity of my guests and their sentiments towards their hosts. A couple of minor points that were of interest follow.

1. Regarding the question of fidelity of practice, it was found that prolonged conversation acts as a debilitating influence on pranayama. The breath seems much weaker and less inclined to fill the chest cavity as completely the morning after a long evening of philosophical discussion.
2. The Ego is as slippery and slithery a snake as one could ever hope to find. It is always an interesting exercise to exorcise elements of pleasure in hearing compliments paid to one's way of living. The discriminatory intellect gets lots of vigorous exercise in neutering the extremely creative feints of the Ego during the course of my conversations with my visitors.

This latter point, as a matter of fact, ties in with a more general observation in that positive social interactions seemed to affect meditative practice negatively while negative social interactions seemed to have no significant effect. From the point of view of social harmony and social utility theory, this is not an optimistic result. However, it is quite easy to see why this should indeed be the case. The mind seeks attachment, and attachment is generally a consequence of affirmative experience. Thus, positive social interaction results in the generation of large quantities of stimuli that the mind can attach itself to and grow in volume.

The yogi's task is to starve the mind and feed it deconstructionist versions of material reality, so that its moorings to the affairs of the physical universe may be detached gradually. Friendly conversations appear to proffer dangerous food for the mind to devour greedily and resume its noisy perturbations of the unconscious mind. Negative social interactions, on the other hand, cause the mind to flee inwards and gratefully accept the disassociativity that meditation provides. Thus, perversely from the perspective of the social contract, negative social interactions and social alienation appear to play into the yogi's strategy.

This brings us to the original problem. Can the practitioner be said to be correct in soliciting negative interactions with society to force the mind into subjugation? Intriguingly enough, this is precisely what aghoris and tantric practitioners recommend. An aghori will believe that the subjugation of the mind under control of his identity is worth the temporary discomfiture of the minds under control of other identities, minds which do not propose or desire to be starved at any rate. It is possible also, that the aghori believes that his behavior will stimulate thoughts of depersonalization and disassociation in his correspondents in the aftermath just as well, in which case, his behavior is actually extremely positive, since it motivates his social acquaintances to question the premises of physical existence too.

The greatest joy of writing is that there are times when clarity emerges as a consequence of the process. I did not see this aspect of the schizoid coldness that must naturally develop in a yogi's interactions with the world, but now I see that it is possibly of some social value. The archetype of the spiritual guru, with shining bright eyes and a benevolent message for all of humanity, seems extremely unreal and delusional to me. I am sure that that is precisely the mental posture that a therapist or a healer should adopt, since their mission is to bring psychological comfort to those who need it. But therapy ought not to be confused with the process of self-contemplation. There is always a tenuous link between meditative practice and social utility. Attempting to burnish it using tokens of religious or psychotherapeutic value might bring more social relevance to the system, but is a losing proposition in the longer term, since it will draw several into the practice in pursuit of tangential goals (freedom from stress, social welfare, peace and good will etc).

I now understand and appreciate better, accounts of the temper tantrums and socially unacceptable behavior in the lives of accomplished seekers. While I do not see myself succumbing to temper under any circumstance, I think that is primarily a consequence of my negligible spiritual standing. That is, I am not as yet firmly established in my practice enough to require anger towards infringers upon my daily routine to sustain it. For now, if one my guests is too noisy for me to keep track of the ticks of the clock during pranayama, I will simply stop and let him do what he is doing and start over. I can do so, because I merely have to count up to 48 seconds at any one time. More accomplished practitioners, who have to track thousands of seconds of breath suspension are unlikely to be as stoic if some ill-fated tresspasser broke in upon their silence.

In conclusion then, I find that my desire for solitude is understandable from the perspective of meditative practice. Solitude does not only mean the absence of other people, it also means absence from the desires and complaints of the body and mind. The performance of asanas is an effort at acquiring physical solitude, the performance of pranayama is a means towards acquiring freedom from the processes required in the ingress and egress of breathing, the performance of trataka and similar practices is aimed at sustaining mental solitude for long periods of time. And growing a long beard and ignoring basic social protocol is a good way of obtaining and sustaining social solitude and being free to contemplate Brahman and its manifestation (Hiranyagarbha) and the evolution of its manifestation (quantum mechanics) in peace.