Zoom-in to Zoom-out

 

A Raja Guru was asked to train the five princes in Archery. He placed a toy bird on the branch of a tree and asked each one of them to aim at the eye of the bird. The Guru asked each one of them to tell what they could see. The eldest prince said that he could see the tree, its branches, the bird and its eye. The next one told he can see the branch on which the bird is sitting, along with the bird. The third prince told he can see the bird and its eye. The fourth one told he can see only the head of the bird and its eye. Finally, the fifth one told that he can see only the eye of the bird and nothing but the eye. The fifth prince hit the bird's eye while other princes missed their target. 

The Guru asked what was running in their mind when they were aiming at the bird. The eldest of them told that he was concerned that the arrow may disturb other birds sitting on the tree. The second one was wondering how good the fruit hanging besides the bird would taste.  Another prince who was able to focus on the bird clearly was thinking about the nature and features of the bird, while the other who could focus on the head of the bird was slightly apprehensive whether he would be able to hit the eye or not. However, the one who had hit the eye of the bird had nothing except the eye of the bird in the focus. He had no evaluation nor emotion about what he saw in his mind. What he could see was the eye of the bird and nothing except it.

The key to the concentration here is not only having the eye of the bird in the focus but not allowing anything (tree, branch, not even the head of the bird) except the target in the focus. Simultaneously not letting any evaluation or emotion in the mind is also important to sustain the focus.

Central focus, peripheral focus and Out of the focus:   

This unlimited world around us falls in 3 zones. Central focus, , peripheral focus and out of the focus.

When the first prince was focusing on the bird's eye, the bird's eye occupied his central focus while the entire tree remained in the peripheral focus. The rest of the world remained out of the focus.  If the archer continues to concentrate on a particular point, the point gradually occupies the entire focus replacing the objects in the peripheral focus. In this process the objects in the peripheral focus tend to move out of the focus. 

  It is not the anatomical, functional difference in the eye that is the cause of the variation in perception. It is the focus of the mind that makes the difference. If the world around us is the screen, the eye is a mere instrument of perception. The mind is the operator of the eye which gives interpretation and meaning to the perception. The ability of a person to converge and sustain his focus on his central vision decides his concentrating capacity. 

 

The human eye and the camera: Human being's eye is just like the eye of the camera. In both the cases the eye doesn’t have a choice on what to focus and what not to focus. 

The zooming in, zooming out, edit features in the camera decides which part of the world should be captured by the camera and how one wants it to be seen. Here the mind is the one which is equipped with these zooming and editing features. 

Camera (eye of the camera and zoom and edit) can be equated to the human focus (human eye and mind complex). 

 The photographer standing behind the camera uses it. In the same way human will and  motivation uses the focus to capture a fragment of the world. 

Just like the camera has a gallery of stored images, Human mind has a memory which stores the entire imagery which it captures.

Difference between the eye and camera: There are few differences between the human eye capturing the world and the camera capturing the world. The images in the memory of the camera doesn’t influence the capturing by the camera. However, the pre-existing memories about a person, place or a thing strongly influences the current perception. 

Unlike camera most of the images perceived by the human eye generate some or other feel. The eye of the camera gives same importance to everything it encounters at all times. However human eye is biased to capture or avoid those things which generate strong emotions. These emotions, likes, dislikes, and beliefs are like auto-adjustment, auto-edit feature in a camera. The purpose of these auto adjustments is to ensure the physical or psychological survival of the humans but not to show the world as it is. These auto-adjustment and edit features and the memory becomes a liability  in the perception of the truth.

When an expert archer aims at a point. In the process of concentrating on the target he tends zoom out everything around the target and the around himself. Further he tends to lose the awareness of the act of shooting. Subsequently he leaves his thoughts, emotions and finally his identity and becomes one with the target. In other words the target occupies his entire focus while awareness of surroundings, self-awareness, and identity become out of the focus. This makes a person an expert archer. 

Yogic philosophy is a higher science which trains the focus to become one-pointed. The same thing happens in the process of meditation. This is just like freeing the eye of the camera from the influence of auto-adjustment and gallery of the memories. This helps one to capture the present moment to the fullest. This the goal of Raja Yoga. 

Zooming-in to the "act of duty" to the extent that the outcome of the action goes out of the focus is the essence of Karma Yoga. Arjuna was an expert one-pointed archer. However, his one pointedness was disturbed when his dutifulness towards the war was confounded by the grief of killing his kith and kin. Lord Sri Krishna through his Bhagavad-Gita made him realize the essence of life. The main purpose of the Yogic practices is not to zoom-in at a point but to train an individual to consciously zoom out anything out of the focus at his will.