One of the meditation techniques that I practiced during my studies in the Satyananda Yoga Tradition is Antar Mouna. This meditation from the Tantras literally means "Inner Silence”. Antar Mouna is a pratyahara technique, pratyahara being the first of the four inner limbs of Raja Yoga.

Right away, let's remove the mystique from Antar Mouna. As you read on, you might recognize that you already practice it in your daily life, never thinking of it as meditation. I don't say this to detract from the power of Antar Mouna, only to point out that this natural method of mental hygiene is much more effective when practiced consciously. The first advantage of Antar Mouna is that it clears out disfunctional mental conditioning. All pratyahara techniques have this in common, but they usually do this in a roundabout way (using breath, sensation, sound, etc.). The focus of Antar Mouna, however, is directly on the mind. It goes right to the job of cleaning the mental-house. For this reason, it is not appropriate for every personality, and one should never progress too quickly through the five stages.

The five stages of Antar Mouna can be practiced together or separately. The first four stages can be practiced any time of the day in conjunction with any activity. Even so, a "formal" practice (sitting quietly on a daily basis) will magnify the benefits. The practice of Antar Mouna requires a balance between mental control and mental freedom. This is the paradox of mind management. One must allow freedom of thought and at the same time resist being swept away in the currents of automatic thought. The ideal mental state is a balance between suppression and expression.

Antar Mouna helps us to "cultivate The Witness". In some Sanskrit texts, The Witness is also called the Drashta, or Sakshi. The Witness is considered to be the true essence of the individual – the one who notices everything and is unaffected by anything.

Hopefully, the following description of the five stages will explain further:

Stage One: Observation of Sensory Stimuli

Tantra is very wise in its advice not to fight with the mind or the senses. When many people sit down to attempt meditation, they are distracted by both the outer noise and the inner noise. Often they think, if only I lived in a quieter place, or if I didn’t have this arthritic ache, or if that faucet would quit dripping, I might have a chance to really meditate. But, the truth of the matter is that even if one were to go to a remote mountain top to practice, there would be a distraction of some kind coming through one or more of the sensory channels. A bird chirping, a tickle in the nose, the sound of the breeze – whatever.

So in Stage One, we purposely immerse ourselves in the senses. We use any or all of the 5 senses as the focus of the meditation.

Stage One serves the following purposes:

1) It removes mental conditioning.
For example, the telephone rings, and we focus on the sound of the ringing. We might notice these thoughts bubbling up:
“Is it an emergency?”
"Is it a telemarketer?"
“I feel anxious / irritated / thrilled every time I hear that sound.”

As soon as we notice that we are caught up in one of these thoughts, we gently steer ourselves back to Stage One and try to absorb the sound of the telephone as if it were the first time we had ever heard the sound of a telephone. We try to be aware only of the pure experience of that sound vibration, that taste or smell, that tickle on the skin, etc.

2) It enhances appreciation of the senses.
We often go through life on autopilot. Miraculous things slip by either because we were not paying attention or because we were preconditioned in our likes and dislikes. We recoil at the taste of mushrooms because of some barely remembered negative association with mushrooms in our childhood, and so, the present experience of an exquisite mushroom, cooked and seasoned in this particular way is now lost to us. In Stage One we get a chance to tear down old fears and discover new delights.

3) The mind naturally becomes saturated and bored with outer stimuli and after a time is ready to easily move inward to Stage 2. (Reverse psychology.)

Practicing this in daily life:

Let’s say we are driving to work. We cultivate the Witness by deliberately noticing the color of the sky, the sounds of the car motor, the rhythm of traffic flow… You could list scores of benefits: appreciation for owning a functioning vehicle, early detection of mechanical problems, consideration for other drivers on the road, or proceeding safely toward a destination with a calm and focused attitude.

Stage Two: Observation of Spontaneous Thoughts

Let’s say that we have been practicing Stage One formally by sitting quietly and moving through all of our senses (taste, touch, sound, smell, even sight, by noticing filtered light through the closed eyes). Now, we deliberately choose a moment in which to disengage with our senses and begin to focus on the “inner noise”. A great discovery that many people make here is that they are not always the “thinker” of their own thoughts!

That is, the thoughts seem to come and go of their own volition. Just as the physical body has many automatic processes, so does the mind. We have the same thoughts numerous times each day. Some of these thoughts are useful, and some are rather wasteful of mental energies. In Stage Two we deliberately observe these spontaneous thoughts. We watch them with the attitude that they are simply echoes of our past sensory perception and cognition.

Sometimes when we first look inward, there is an initial blankness of mind. The Witness wants to watch this movie of spontaneous thought, but suddenly everything goes quiet as if the mind feels the watchful eyes of The Witness upon it. It is as if all of the thoughts are being suppressed – held under the surface, but, the mind cannot suppress itself forever. Just like a child attempting to push ten inflatable bath toys beneath the surface of the water, sooner or later one after another will pop to the surface.

So, we "cultivate The Witness" by watching these thoughts that pop to the surface, one by one. Pretty soon we notice the following thought: “Hey, I don’t seem to be having any thoughts.” So, we recognize, OK, that is a thought. Next, we remember the quart of milk that we promised to bring home tonight, or there is a visual image of a toothbrush that comes out of nowhere, or there is a thought that is purely emotional (no language or images). Before long, a stream of mental patterns parades by, but established in The Witness, we watch them like a movie. We are completely aware of all the mental activity without identifying with it, without being influenced by it . We watch the thoughts as if they were train cars passing by. We are attentive. We allow complete freedom of thought. We let go of all judgment of "good" thoughts vs. "bad" thoughts. We simply hold the attitude, “Yes. I see you. Yes. Now, move along. Off you go.”

Every now and then, by force of habit, we find that we have become engrossed in one of our own thoughts. It is tendency of the undiciplined mind to spin off on some mental tangent. Our task is now to notice that this has happened and then to again establish the will of The Witness. End the reverie, release the thought, remain vigilant.

Stage Two serves the following purposes:

1) It gives us the freedom of knowing that we are not slaves to the current patterns of our mind.

2) It further establishes the authority of The Witness which will become even more important in Stage Three.

3) We become aware of the mindless frequency with which the same thought has (perhaps for years) been playing over and over like a broken record.
That is, it brings to light our disfunctional habitual thought patterns.

4) It demonstrates that by simply noticing the automatic (and often wasteful) thought processes, those wasted mental energies can be reclaimed and conserved.

5) It ends the crippling effects of thought suppression.
In simple terms, one begins to accept one’s own mind and personality. So much our time and energy is wasted in mental self-judgment. Stage Two trains the mind to let the thoughts play like innocent children. We begin to release our own mental censorship without – and this is important – without wallowing in those thoughts and without being controlled by those thoughts.

6) It helps to bestow equanimity.
Whenever we can wipe out the conditioning of a renegade thought, the Witness gains more control of the mental energies.

Practicing this in daily life:

Whenever we stop to notice this endless regurgitation of mental chatter, we gain an understanding of our current mental climate. In the ashram, much time is devoted to the practice of Karma Yoga or “action with meditative awareness”. In any activity, we simply notice our mental reactions. Perhaps we feel satisfaction, resentment, boredom, or exultation. We learn to witness all of these without judgment. None of these energies of the mind are either good or bad, they are simply our available resources to be used effectively or squandered mindlessly.

The next three stages are:
Stage 3: Examination of, and disposal of consciously created thoughts
Stage 4: Examination of and disposal of spontaneous thoughts
Stage 5: Disposal of all thoughts

The next article will expand on these stages.

Please send your comments, critiques and questions to: Jayasri.