Pratyahara is a practice in which we withdraw the senses from objects in the outer world and turn them to the inner world. It’s not a dulling or negation of the senses; rather, it is a shifting of the direction of the antennae. Picture an old TV set with the rabbit-ear antennae. Imagine taking those antennae, which are pointed outwards, connecting with the TV waves in the outer world, and turning them to point inside the TV to connect only with the internal waves! That is what pratyahara is. It shifts our sensory antennae from the outside to the inside. It is an important limb among the eight limbs of yoga outlined by the sage Patanjali.
If God has given us the ability to use our five senses to experience the world, why would we have a valued practice of withdrawing them? I frequently emphasise that God doesn’t make mistakes. God gives us what we have for a purpose.
However, just because God has given us a gift doesn’t mean that we were meant to use that gift indiscriminately. Yes, we have tongues that taste, but that doesn’t mean we should eat everything, all day. We have fingers that touch, but it doesn’t mean that we should touch everything. Anybody who’s ever touched a hot burner, a cactus or a sharp edge knows clearly that this is not what God intended when we were given the ability to touch.
