Meditation is Not a Childish Task
A very important reminder from our illustrious Param Guruji, Yogamaharishi Dr Swami Gitananda Giri Guru Maharaj.
Contrary to popular belief, meditation, at least certainly not the exhalted concept as conceived of in the Sanskrit term DHYANA, is not a childish task.
Meditation is the end result of a long process of conscious growth and evolution, a process which may take lifetimes. It certainly cannot be “taught” in a workshop or week end seminar, nor can it be achieved simply by sitting still for extended periods of time. As a matter of fact, this approach to the human body mind-emotion complex can be highly misleading, if not downright dangerous. There is no “instant cure” for a lifetime of wrong thinking, speaking and acting. Step by step, the human must cleanse himself of his past Sabija Karma, his Prarubdha Karma, the accumulated effects of actions performed sometime in his past and purify himself so as to reach the exhalted states of consciousness in which Higher Truths reveal themselves.
Sorry, Kiddies! There is no “instant Samadhi”. There is no “quickie Moksha”. There is no “pre-fabricated peace”. These are high spiritual rewards and they are “only for the brave”, and not for the weekend escape artist who likes to frequent a different spiritual haunt with every changing phase of the moon.
I am no admirer of Rajnesh, who later became “Osho.” But he did have many good things to say and some of his perceptions were accurate and “right on.” Osho was asked specifically about the now very popular concept of VIPASSANA MEDITATION which is not only sweeping India, but also the world. In Vispassana people are instructed usually in the beginning for ten days and the discipline is primarily, living a quiet, silent, simple life, austere and communal, and sitting quietly for long periods of time while exercising the mind in a particular mental pattern and trying to cultivate a deeper awareness.
When he was asked to comment on this popular “meditation technique”, Rajnesh had this to say.
I will not tell you to do Vipassana unless I can also give you the experience of Gautam the Buddha.
Buddha could sit silently, desire less, thoughtless, moving inwards, because the outside had lost all interest. He had seen it- that it is just a phenomenon, the way you see a film. But there are idiots who even while seeing a film will cry, weep, laugh, because they forget that it is just a projected film. Our whole life is not much more than that. Gautam Buddha had a great chance to experience life and see its futility. This gave him the opportunity to sit in deep silence, undisturbed. Vipassana was discovered in these moments.
It life has not been a rich experience-if it has been a repressive, religion-dominated, conditioned phenomenon you cannot do Vipassana. In 25 centuries, millions of people have been doing Vipassana How many have become Buddhas? My analysis is very simple, but very significant: you should not repress anything in your life. Live a non-repressive, joyous life. Soon you will find all those joys and all those pleasures are empty
Unless you have found through your own experience that pleasures are not pleasures, but simply toys to keep you ignorant, to keep you engaged…. Once you have found that through your own experience-remember that is most fundamental; it has to be your own experience then Vipassana is the simplest meditation. You don’t have to go to any businessman to learn it.
Vipassana comes in the end; you cannot begin with Vipassana. To begin with Vipassana you will have to go through the dark night of the soul. And you will not find the dawn anywhere. You are not prepared, you have not done your homework, and you have started a work that needs a tremendous background of experience.
First go through all other kinds of experiences, purifying, so that you can become capable of entering Vipassana. People want to jump into paradise directly. They don’t see the place where they are standing, that if they jump from there they will have multiple fractures. One has to reach the steps and one has to move step by step, consciously and cautiously. It is a pilgrimage.
DHYANA or meditation in the classical Ashtanga Yoga tradition of India was the seventh of eight long and arduous steps. It was not considered to be something which you “could do” but rather, something “which happened to you” when you had “done all the necessary preparations and disciplines for it”. In some ways, one could say that the state of meditation was also a “blessing” or the result of “grace of God and Guru”. The preliminary six steps Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara and Dharana were all “active” disciplines, practices which one could consciously and willfully under take. So many schools and Guru Paramparas grew up. Each Guru found his own way up to the mountain top and discovered that certain ways of dealing with social life, personal life, the body, the breath, the senses and the mind worked for him, and he taught these practices to his disciples. But always, the way was considered to be a long and difficult path and there was much emphasis on living a good, austere, simple and straightforward life, with various kinds of controls over body, emotions, mind and senses.
There are so many beautiful stories in our UPANISHADS of students who spent decades with their Gurus, doing nothing more than serving the Guru and performing Ashram chores without being taught a single spiritual practice at all… till the moment was ripe and then, all they needed to enter the state of meditation was a “glance of the Guru” or a “single word”.
It was not the “glance” or the “word” which produced the enlightened state, but rather the arduous preparation of years which made which is the body, emotions and mind sensitive and receptive enough to receive that final benediction. Hence, in Hindu spirituality, emphasis has always been on the process and not the product, preparation and not the culmination. This is the vast difference between East and West.
The Western mind wants “everything now.” Instant everything! The West is oriented towards “getting” the end product as soon as possible. The East says the means and end are the same thing. There is no instant enlightenment, though enlightenment can and does come in an “instant”! If you understand this, you will understand the Yogic concept of meditation.
Of course, it is always good to go on retreats, It is always good to sit silently and live in a simple, uncluttered and peaceful structure for some time. It does refresh and rejuvenate the spirit. But one should not call it “meditation”, for then one thinks he has reached the pinnacle of spiritual development and finds that even that begins to pale after some time. Then, you will become like one of my very foolish, very bemuddled students who declared passionately in Satsangha one evening, “SAMADHI IS NOT ENOUGH!”
I can recall recently leafing through a popular American commercial Yoga magazine which has a circulation in lakhs worldwide. One of the articles was entitled HOW YOU CAN PREVENT YOUR MEDITATION FROM BECOMING BORING. What utter, folly! What total nonsense! How the Rishis in the heavens must weep at the stupidity of modern man who must be spoil everything in his greed, even these sanctified concepts!
The real Dhyana, the real meditation, occurs only when one has carefully prepared oneself in all aspects of one’s life. So many concepts have to be understood. Not just understood. These concepts must become part and parcel of consciousness, giving the mind a framework on which to build its spiritual house. These can be obtained from studying at the feet of a Guru, or through a very sincere study of the ancient Hindu and Yoga scriptures such as the Vedas, the Upanishads, the YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI, the MAHABHARATA, THE RAMAYAMA, etc. There is no comparable philosophic background in the materialistic West and even the best of the intellectual giants, look puny before our Rishis. These scriptures are not just to be read, they should be contemplated upon and read and thought upon. The same thread of teachings runs through all of them, and the same hints are given, in a subtle manner, in each of them. Without this background, it is very difficult to understand Cosmic Consciousness and Samadhi and many are the pit falls along the path-madness, disease and despair.
Keeping all these thoughts in mind, let us now set about building an intellectual foundation for the whole concept of meditation. The intellect, like the body, must also be a satisfied in a legitimate way. There is a right use of the intellect just as there is a right use of the body and the emotions and it is the work of the Guru to teach this right-use-ness (righteousness or righteous way of living to his disciples. The intellect like the body must be exercised to its fullest and our ancient sages have given us superb mental exercise.
Speaking of Dhyana meditation and keeping all these thoughts in mind, let us now start at the beginning with the concept of involution and evolution and what the verb to think really means for the it is the thinking process with which we are dealing and it is this process which must be fully understood if we are to evolve spiritually. Meditation eventually means to transcend thoughts and in order to transcend something we should first master it.
When through the Law of Karma man takes on a body at birth, involution ceases and although his cells may grow and expand to produce an adult body this process will end only in the grave a process of devolution. Most if mans attempts at living are equally devolving and it is only when man learns to think that he begins to evolve. Evolution for man is only through the mind. Man is unique in certain because he possesses mind. Mind in Sanskrit is called Manas. It is quite obvious that the English word Man has come from the Sanskrit word Manas.
Many think that they think and they love the politicians and religious leaders who assure them that they are really thinking people because they belong to this and that party organization or creed. This is not thinking. Many others feeling themselves to be great intellectuals proudly announce they are thinkers but careful observation will show that they are simply reacting to outer and inner environmental, chemical and sensory stimuli.
To really think may be the most shocking single experience of the present incarnation. When the power of Higher Thought Consciousness surges through the mind/brain pathway to take over the entire human nervous system, the transformation which takes place is near-irreversible and the beginning of evolution, a return through mind to the source from which we came is set into play. A powerful force may be necessary to aid us in this return, and Yogis and Tantrics alike have aroused a unique power for this evolutionary propellant known as Kundalini Shakti, found to be residing within the human nervous system, dormant in most people.
Involution and evolution are the two sides of a great wheel. All that the present scientific evolutionists term “evolution” is yet only a part of the Divine Evolutionary Process. Involution/evolution may be grandly described in the following manner; all energy, mind, sense and matter manifestations are a Srishti, an involutionary unfoldment from the Whole, the homogenous Mula-Prakriti into Khanda, (diversified) Pariccinna (finite), heterogenous Vikriti and then evolutionarily back again through mind into a Pralaya (dissolution) into the Akara (causeless), Arupa (formless), Purna (complete), Akhanda Purusha, the Indivisible Causeless Cause. The power of Srishti is Shakti, the Great Mother of the Universe. Her Lord, Shakta, the Power-Holder, is the same eternal Aparicchinna Purusha (Infinite Causeless Cause).
Evolution begins from a healthy body, like a healthy seed to bear forth good fruit. The body is poised “pregnant with the seeds of evolution.” In a firm seat, Asana, the breath is made silent by controlled Pranayama. The senses are drawn away from their sense enjoyment by Pratyahara. The mind is freed from its constant agitation, the Vritti, by right concentration and the powerful evolutionary forces in Shakti now begin their lift through the lower Chakras into the worlds of consciousness, then Manas, into the Buddhi, the purified intellect. In this realm the most powerful Shakti forces of the mind are made available to pierce through the higher regions of the Ahamkara into the Mahatattwa, the Samavit, the Abode of Pure Consciousness, Chit.
True meditation may now be experienced in this pure Consciousness. Out of pure meditation comes the Samadhi, the identification with the infinite, indivisible Atman-Purusha. In this complete state some call’ the Supreme Consciousness, there is no vestige of mind, Amanah, no finite limitations.
Western concepts of mind are very primitive. For all its intellectualism Western science is very hung up on emotionalism and confuses it with mentation. Emotions are part of the animal brain, the mammalian brain. We must evolve beyond that to the neocortex to experience consciousness.
Western studies of the mind have been confined principally to the behavioral patterns of certain lower states of humanity and of some higher animals. Indeed, that study of the human mind which is known as psychology has not really been a study of the mind at all, but rather of the actions of certain parts of the brain made manifest into external actions in the environment. The Western preoccupation with materialistic benefits from its various studies may be its shortcoming. These empirical pragmatists demand to be able to “see” the mind and finding only the brain instead have concluded that mind is brain. This same attitude of mind used in Western scientific investigation as a whole, accounts for the empty churches and synagogues. This same Western pragmatist has not been able to measure or weigh the “Soul”.
Any Western dictionary definition of the “mind” usually suggests actions attributed to the brain alone, confirming the discoveries of the illustrious, Russian psychologist Ivan A. Sechenov (1829–1905). Sechenov was the first to discover the phenomenon of inhibition in the central nervous system. In his textbook THE REFLEXES OF THE BRAIN published in 1863, he pragmatically states that “All cerebral activity is of a reflex nature and consequently the mental processes inherent in man have a physiological basis and not some unknowable (higher) cause.” (The bracket is mine)
Sechenov is correct, of course, within the limits he has drawn for himself. All of the scientists who have followed his lead are also correct. All reflex activities are confined to the body itself-but man is not only “reflexes.” Man is much more than the body, much more than the senses, much more than a collection of racial memories gathered through generations in the struggle aptly termed “the survival of the fittest.” Our studies and practices of Yoga and Tantra confirm that at a body level all activities are of a reflex nature. Our Rishis taught this same fact some millennia ago. It was for this reason that our Rishis categorically called “leave off the mind; rise beyond the mind; transcend into that which is beyond mind itself-consciousness.” The Rishis also taught: “Detach yourself from the body for you are not the body. You are much more, infinitely more. “”
The Hindu concept of consciousness is something unique and must be confused with what in the West is called “mind”. Mind at a certain level is a part of consciousness, the state of “being aware”. That state in which I produce this article, the state in which you receive it, is a form of consciousness. You may evaluate this material as you read it, drawing comparison out of your memory bank, the sub consciousness, and you may store away all or some of this material presented to you in the same memory bank of the sub-consciousness. It is possible that something I say or which is released from your Higher Mind by your reading may take you into a Supra-Conscious state, a state where the Higher Intellect is at work. These three classifications consciousness, with sub-consciousness below and supra-consciousness above-is the common classification of Western thinking on the range of consciousness of the human mind. But Hindu thinking allows for seven states of consciousness. 1. All Consciousness 2. Supra Consciousness 3. Un-consciousness 4. Consciousness 5. Sub-consciousness 6. Non-consciousness (as in a coma) 7. No-consciousness (inert matter)
The un-conscious is a state of mind preceding the conscious state, of that moment before I speak, that moment before you hear. It is that un-conscious that will become conscious. I do not know what I will write twenty minutes from now, nay, even the moment before this, but if my mind is in a flow of consciousness, the unconscious then is the state from which I draw. The future is not yet present, but will soon be the present and then the past. The future is the un-conscious, the present is the conscious, and the sub-conscious is the past.
The unconscious should not be confused with the Western concept of the collective unconscious, the group mind, the racial mind, the mental phylum from which certain emotional and mental tendencies arise. The idea of group consciousness arises only in the study of Hindu Yantra, a system of mystic symbolism where the development of the human mind falls into certain categories or patterns, translated into English as group consciousness.
The supra-conscious state may include what the Westerners refers to as the super consciousness, but it is more than the Western term portends. The super-consciousness of Hindu thought contains vibrant powers to motivate the high intellect. Ic’cha Shakti is will power; Jnana Shakti is the power of knowledge; Prema Shakti is the power of Universal Love, the Love that makes the world go round and the Love that keeps it going. It is truly the power of Kriya Shakti, the power to act. All actions not motivated by Universal Love are but reflex actions of the lower cerebral and visceral activity. Do not mistake this high profound love, however, for emotionalism or eroticism or hormonal, chemical reactions. Those “feelings” still exist at the reflex, physical level.
The All-Conscious state, the Chit, and also the power of the Paramatman, Self-Existing, is the highest state of consciousness, an undivided state. This is the state where the reason of being” Self exists above and beyond cause and effect, which are subjective states of the lower consciousness. Below the conscious mind are many planes or worlds of sub consciousness. In our Hindu thinking there is a state of mind directly below the conscious which contains concepts akin to the Western idea of heaven and hell. Both heaven and hell are subconscious states and not higher states of mind as believed by Western theologians. Heaven is here called Swargha and hell, Narak. The wise Yogi rises himself out of these subconscious planes of heaven and hell into Swa-Jna, Self Realisation, the realisation that Atman and Paramatman are one.
Narak is a sub-conscious state of conditioning where anxiety, worry, the fear of pain and the lust for pleasures exist unresolved. In consciousness man may pursue Sukha or pleasure, fearing pain or punishment, which is Dukha, or he may be filled with Bhaya, the fear of fear itself. These three-Sukha, Dukha and Bhaya — all condition the sub consciousness so that these become anxieties or irrational fears, fear of fear itself. This is one’s personal sub-conscious hell, a man-made hell in which one can be tortured for one’s errors, burned but not consumed by unresolved, fiery passions. Your sub-consciousness contains the evil of your life, your past acts, the devil, the Satan whom you must command, “Satan, get thou behind me!”.
There are seven sub-conscious worlds below Naraka, your personal hell. These are actual low states of the sub-conscious mind, independent of your personal condition. There are: Satala, Vitala, Tala-tala, Mahatala, Rasatala, Atala and Patala. The foundation of all the states of consciousness is even lower yet in a nonconscious or inert state. In Tantric symbolism we find the sleeping Vishnu reclining upon Ananta, his serpent couch, the Shesha Naga, with the entire world impressed upon his crown, like a diamond. Here the Shakti Varuni manifests her power as atomic vibration into the molecular structure of all non-conscious or inert things. In Hindu thinking there is another state between the sub-conscious mind and that state of no-consciousness. It is a non-conscious state, like deep dreamless sleep. It is typified by a state of “no-mindness” as in a coma or a state when you are knocked senseless. Keep in mind these seven states of consciousness in your Yoga and Tantra Sadhana, and free yourself of the limitation imposed by Western thinking.
By now it should be clear that meditation is not any of the lower phases of subconscious or even conscious cerebration. Meditation is not a sleepy, dull mind lulled into a deceptive peace by its own sluggishness. It is rather vibrant, alert, aware and infinitely stable. Meditation occurs in a mind which is infinitely clear, refined, silent and still. This state of mind is achieved only after long and arduous effort.
The hormone-secreting glands are under the control of the Yogi’s mind. If the produce hormones, they are produced at the direction of the Yogi’s consciousness. The chemistry is all from within and for higher purposes only. The use of drugs, even the so-called hallucingens or psycho-memetics, can only split the mind into its subconscious states of heaven and hell, Swargha and Naraka, and not elevate the mind into any unified state. Indeed, they are all mind splitting or schizophrenia producing chemicals. Because they are of synthetic nature, they are also dangerous and can produce genetic changes in the brain cells and elsewhere in the body. Drugs do “alter consciousness,” this is true, but they take the person into lower not higher realms, some drugs like LSD actually induce an enhanced sensual state which is natural to the animal world, not to the human level. Alcohol and hashish equally lead to a cul-de-sac, or a blind end in lower consciousness. That they are stimulating and mind-expanding is to be admitted, but not mind-expanding into any super-conscious state. They simply enhance the sense of feeling and the lower senses. This lower phase of awareness aroused by drugs and chemicals is the state produced by early Yoga practices as a launching pad for the higher Yogic states. The true Yogi uses no drugs, not even indigenous ones, although some Sadhus, having failed in their inner quest, the spiritual Sadhana, have turned in despair to drugs as a last resort. In fact, I have serious doubts whether those who have used drugs heavily have a chance to experience meditation in this lifetime. They may have destroyed the essential sensitivity, and may have to content themselves with producing enough good Karma for a more fortunate birth next time.
In the Yoga system the mind must first be purified through its lowest instruments, the senses and the body. The mind uses the senses, the senses create emotions and emotions rule the body. This is the order of Adhi-Vyadhi, or psychosomatics. If the emotions and the body take over from a weak mind, then they can rule the body independently of the mind, so much so that many conditions originally psycho-somatic in origin become physio-psychologically oriented. The body and the emotions now create problems for the mind. A vicious cycle then occurs, in which the average man is caught up with mental diseases, emotional breakdowns and physical ill health and disorders.
It stands to reason, then, that the place to begin a higher Sadhana is on the lower rungs of the ladder in the physical state. Many teachers will tell you to start your Sadhana “above the brows” forgetting the emotions and the physical body, while others will tell you to simply believe in their self-styled Messiah for your salvation. A Yogi does not believe in either of the above, knowing that Moksha or Mukti is freedom from the limitation of the physical and the emotional nature not indulgence in it. Indeed, for most of us, our prison is the body and the greatest enemy of spirit is the emotions. To be free while enslaved is not the concept of Yoga. The Jivana Mukta is completely free, body, emotions, mind and spirit.
In the earth-bound state, the Yogi begins a cleansing of the body with Hatha Yoga Dhautis and Sauchas. He releases himself from the control of Chitta, the sub-consciousness, with all of its attending emotions, by disciplining the Jnanendriyas of the senses, and the Karmendriyas of the organs of sensory action.
Purifying the seven lower stages of Chitta, he cleans out the lower heaven and hell by Jnana Yoga relaxation techniques. Asanas, Kriyas and Mudras and the Pranayamas are employed to steady the body so that the mind may lift through the seven planes of consciousness, through Bhurloka, Bhurvahloka, Swahloka, Maheloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka into Satyaloka, the plane of Truth-Consciousness. Tapoloka below Satyaloka is the Deva Loka, the plane of the Gods from the lowest of the celestial Devas, Yama, the Lord of Death, to the highest, Indra, and the Lord of Heavens. Satya Loka is the “seventh heaven” experienced by Saint Paul and is the state of mind of St. John in the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation of the Christian Bible, where he said, “For I stand in a new heaven, and the old heaven and earth have passed away”. Truth Consciousness or Satya Lokha is the state of mind of all mystics.
Vidya, or knowledge which produces intelligence, belongs to Manas, consciousness. Here Paramvidya, or Jnana, is produced. This Jnana bears with it Viveka, the power of discrimination, the discrimination of the difference between the unreal, the temporal, the transient, phenomenal world, the passing parade, and the Real, the Permanent, and the Eternal.
Three mighty powers or Shaktis exists within the Buddhi. The lowest is Kriya Shakti, the power of action. This power of higher action comes out of Prema, or Universal Love, the power behind the whole Universe. It is said that God is Love, that Love is Prema. A second Shakti is the power of Higher Knowledge, Jnana Shakti, an embodiment of the Buddhi, Lord Buddha was an embodiment of this same Buddhi. Ic’cha Shakti is the power of Will. This will power is to direct one’s life towards the Higher Self, to will the higher stages of Consciousness. What man terms “will power” is more often to be found as “won’t power”, or “I don’t power”. Abstention from any bad habit is not necessarily a state where “will” is used. We commonly hear at the most negative level terms like “I can’t, I won’t” or “I am notable”. When the state of Buddhi Consciousness is attained, man affirms “I will, I can, I do”.
Above and beyond the Buddhi is the plane of the Ahamkara, the “I-maker”, the Ego. It has two aspects, the pure and the impure. The impure is to think in the “i” — “i am doing this, i am doing that”. In the purified state it is the “I”, the Supreme Self, who is working through man. This Dvaitic state, this state of the dual “I”, is why some of our great intellectuals are pulled down by their egos. Even a Master can fall if he begins to think that “I am doing this or that”, instead of holding the realization that the Supreme is flowing through him. “When the Eye becomes single”, is also esoterically understood to mean that when the duality of the ego ceases and only the higher “I” exists, then the spiritual states begin.
Chit, Undivided Consciousness, is above the state of Ahamkara. This Pure Consciousness has the power created through the purified “I” and is able to naturally move into a still higher state of the Mahatattva, the Mighty That-ness of the Supreme Nature. It is out of the Mahatattva that the Prakriti manifests the entire Universe. Silently, beyond all Self-existing, Eternal is the Paramatman. Realisation of and oneness with that high state is where true meditation takes us to Samadhi, or Union with the Highest. -
Now perhaps you can understand why I have entitled this article, “MEDITATION IS NOT A CHILDISH TASK”. It is the most highly evolved state of being possible for the human creature on earth, a state reached after long and diligent work. It requires intelligence, alertness, awareness, a discipline, and a control on every level of existence. It is a life encompassing state of mind, an attitude towards Being, (which produces Beatitude) which implies a depth and profound consciousness of our own thinking, speaking and action.
Let those who advocate systems of “sitting still” redefine themselves. Let them boldly proclaim their main goal is to attain PEACE OF MIND even while living in a style which is incompatible with the Yogic way of living. Let them assert that they are “exercising the mind”, or “performing mental gymnastics” which will strengthen mental conceptions and the power of concentration. But neither let them not sully the ancient holy word of MEDITATION nor must they take it out of its context within a wider spiritual framework.
To commercialize meditation for any ulterior motive, no matter how noble it may seem, is to insult the Rishis. And to insult the Rishis is not a childish mistake.
