The Beauty of God and the Glory of
Meditation
Divine Life
Society Publication: Chapter 4- A Brief Outline of
Sadhana by Swami Krishnananda
The apex of sadhana, is dhyana, or meditation. It is a
penultimate stage of the eight limbs of yoga, culminating in divine absorption.
Meditation is not the beginning; it is the end of the spiritual endeavor. Meditation
is not a religious exercise but one step below divine communion.
The fullness of achievement
that is expected in meditation is practicable only if there is a fullness of
aspiration. The means evolves gradually to the end, and the end, the divine
experience, determines the nature of the means.
The object of meditation is
very aptly designated as ishta, or the
most beloved. It is not just an object; it is a beloved deity for the purpose
of concentration of the whole spirit within us. An ishtadevata
is a permanently dear thing and is not anything that is available in the world.
It is a form, a symbol, an item which is invested with the highest values of
life. The divinity, the deity of our concentration, is all-powerful,
all-knowing and all-pervading. It is most beautiful.
God is always depicted as a
judiciary in the cosmic court, a terrorizing parent, a lawgiver and a lawmaker,
but no one can think that God is beautiful because we have an inveterate habit
of considering God as old. But God is beautiful. If He is not beautiful, the
mind cannot be pulled towards Him.
The might, the glory of God,
His happiness is described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, not His beauty. A
flood of bliss will inundate our personality if the vision of God becomes
practical (Bri. U. 4.3.32).
As unseen things cannot be
conceived in the mind, God’s beauty also cannot be conceived. Beauty is a
conditioned complex arising in the mind under given circumstances in the
process of evolution. It is only in the Srimad Bhagavata that we hear that God
can be the highest beauty. Sākṣān manmatha-manmathah (Srimad
Bhagavata 10.32.2) says Vyasa. But great effort is necessary to pursue
it ourselves that God is beautiful, powerful, all-pervading, and immortal. This
object that we choose for meditation should be invested with this power.
The usual practice in India of
receiving a guest is to offer holy water to wash his feet, give him a beautiful
seat so that he may be seated, wave a holy arati, give
everything we would generally give to a king, and arrange for music and dance
to celebrate the festival of a king’s coming to our house.
Each one should feel in the
heart what our feeling would be if God comes and stands before us. These
wondrous qualities of immortal inclusiveness and perfection should be invested
upon the deity by mental invocation. Sometimes mantras are chanted. Place the
power of God on that idol, and feel it is vibrating with the divinity.
The choice of the object of
meditation, the ishtadevata, should be such that
there should be no need felt to change the object. If we want to dig a well, we
do not go on digging in a hundred places, little by little. We will not find
water anywhere. We have to dig in one place only; then, we may find it. So
allowing the mind to move from various conceptualized objectives will not bring
anything worth the while. There should also be a certainty in the mind that
this is going to bring the desired result.
Actually, the force that is
invested in the object of meditation arises from one’s own self. It is the
power of the mind that is working when such investiture is performed to the
object of meditation. Our thought of divinity, our thought
of inclusiveness, our thought of intense concentration and positivity
charges itself upon the object, and it vibrates by the power of thinking.
The mind is all powerful. Incalculable
is the speed and also the strength of the mind. A very intense assertion by the
mind materializes itself according to the proportion of the mind’s strength. If
the strength is a hundred percent, the objective should be realized in this
life itself. If it is mild, it will be realized in the next birth.
Arjuna speaks to Bhagavan Sri
Krishna in the sixth chapter of the Bhagavadgita, “All this is very difficult.
The mind is fickle” (Gita 6.34). And Bhagavan
replies, “It is true that the mind is uncontrollable, but repeated practice
will bring it under control” (Gita 6.35). Even if
there is no expected achievement in this life, there should not be any disappointment.
The practice of this birth will be carried forward to the next birth.
Automatically, the reborn individual will be prompted along the lines of the
same practice which was done earlier in the previous life. Though no one
remembers their previous life, a spontaneous impulsion will be there, right
from the beginning of one’s life, towards this practice (Gita
6.44).
The impediments caused by rajasic and tamasic prarabdhas will be
transferred to another condition of sattvic
motivation by the power of the mind. There is also compassion and goodness in
the world, along with law and order. Any good intention is rewarded because the
heart has greater force and power than mere intellectual motivation. It is
possible that in one birth itself the realization may take place.
With this conviction, one may
be seated in meditation. Finally, we are our own guide in the advanced stages
of meditation. Tīvra saṁvegānām āsannaḥ (Y.S. 1.21):
The achievement is very near to those whose ardor of longing is
sufficiently intense.
“I want it, and I must get
it.” This is the highest qualification required of a spiritual seeker. Every
other requirement is subordinate to this great ardor called mumukshutva.
The mind is fickle; this is
well known. When it concentrates itself on the chosen ideal, it is very eager
to exclude certain other thoughts, not knowing that the thought of excluding
another thought also is a thought itself. So two thoughts are operating, even
at the time when one is imagining that there is only one thought. We have to bring all the thoughts into the
focus of the attention of a single thought. Then, the thought becomes what we
call cosmic thought. That thought which is cosmic in its nature is called brahmakara vritti. All other
thoughts in our mind are object-motivated thinking, call the vishayakara vritti. When the
universe becomes the object of meditation, the thought assumes a vritti called brahmakara vritti, the total vritti of everything. A single
thought is a binding vritti, and all
the thoughts joining together, like an army marching as a single force, as it
were, in a given direction, is brahmakara vritti.
The whole world cooperates at that time.
Service does not mean running
about here and there. A total being of our mind – that is the greatest service.
Contemplation is action when it reaches the highest stage. Those who are
engaged in this kind of total concentration of mind touch the corners of
creation and have done the greatest service to humanity, much more than all the
social workers can imagine anywhere in human history. Hands and feet do not do
any service; it is the mind that does the service. A powerful blessing that
emanates from our mind is a redeeming service, more capable in its potency than
what we can give in the form of service through hands and feet.
Nothing equals meditation. The
whole world of humanity is served at one stroke in a moment by this non-active
activity of the cosmic endeavor of the spiritual seeker. Words fail here. It is
non-active adventure, but it is all activity blended together into a total
focus of concentration.
These are some of the
preliminaries in meditation. Glory, Wonder, Treasure, magnificence and blissful
experience are the words we can use to designate meditation. The world wants us
more than we want the world, because that is the cause and we are the effect.
The effect pulls itself towards the cause, and the cause exerts its influence
on the effect.
These words that I have spoken
themselves constitute a kind of meditation because if you have listened to me
properly you would be in a state of great attention, bereft of any kind of
distractive thoughts in your mind, and you will be enthused inordinately to
take upon yourself this divine task of achieving divine perfection, which is
the highest goal of life.
Excerpts from:
The Beauty of God and the Glory of Meditation –Chapter 4
A Brief Outline
of Sadhana by Swami KrishnanandaArchives - Blog
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