The Meaning of Meditation
“Meditation is the art of uniting
with Reality.” - Swami Krishnananda
The art of meditation is not a
job to be performed as one does the duties of one’s profession in life, for all
activities of life are in the form of a function of ones individuality or
personality which is to a large extent extraneous to one’s nature, due to which
there is a fatigue after work and there are times when one gets fed up with
work, altogether. If sometimes one is tired of meditation, we have only to
conclude one has only engaged oneself in another kind of activity, calling it
meditation, while really it was not so.
We have to make a careful
distinction between one’s being and the action that proceeds from
one’s being. What sometimes fatigues the person is the latter and not the
former. We may be tired of work, but we cannot be tired of our own selves. If
meditation is also to become a work or a function of our being, it too would
fall outside our nature.
Aspirants on the spiritual
path are generally conversant with the fact that meditation is the pinnacle of
Yoga and the consummation of spiritual endeavor. When we carefully and
sympathetically investigate into meditation as a spiritual exercise, we come
face to face with certain tremendous truths about Nature and life as a whole.
The question that is fundamental is: ‘How does one know that meditation is the
remedy for the short-comings of life?’
An answer to this question
would necessitate knowledge of what it is that one really lacks in life, due to
which one turns to meditation for help. Broadly speaking, one’s dissatisfaction
is caused, by a general feeling which comes upon one, after having lived
through life for a sufficient number of years, that the desires of man seem to
have no end; that the more are his possessions, the more also are his ambitions
and cravings; that those who appear to be friends seem also to be capable of
deserting one in crucial hours of life; that sense-objects entangle one in
mechanical complexities rather than give relief from tension, anxiety and want;
that one’s longing for
happiness exceeds all finitudes of concept and can never be made good by
anything that the world contains, on account of the limitation brought about by
one thing excluding another and the incapacity of one thing to include another
in its structure; that the so- called pleasures of life appear to be a mere
itching of nerves and a submission to involuntary urges and a slavery to
instincts rather than the achievement of real freedom which is the one thing
that man finally aspires for.
If these and such other things
are the defects of life, how does one seek to rectify it by meditation? Truly,
meditation should then be a universal work of the mind and not a simple private
thinking. An analysis of the nature of meditation opens up a deeper reality
than is comprised in the usual psychological processes of the mind, such as
thinking, feeling and understanding, and it really turns out to be a rousing of
the soul of man instead of a mere functioning of the mind.
The difference between normal
human functions and soul’s activity is that in the former case, when one
function is being performed the others are set aside, ignored or suppressed, so
that men cannot do all things at the same time; but in the latter, the whole of
man in his essentiality rises to the occasion and nothing of him is excluded in
this activity.
In the daily life of an
individual there are at least three occasions when the soul manifests itself
externally and drowns one in incomparable joy; these are the satisfactions of
(1) intense hunger, (2) sexual appetite and (3) sleep. In all these three
instances, the totality of the being of a person acts, and there is no
consciousness of externality, not even of one’s own personality, and hence the
joy experienced then is transporting and enrapturing. And we have observed that
meditation is the soul rising into action, not merely a function of the mind.
This will explain also that meditation is a joy and cannot be a source of
fatigue, tiresomeness, etc., when rightly practiced. In meditation the soul’s
manifestation is not through the senses, mind and body, though its impact may
be felt through any of these vestures before it fully reveals itself in the
process called meditation.
The Sadhaka (aspirant)
attempts to manifest the soul gradually in the meditational technique. The only
other medium through which the soul can reveal itself is the mind which, though
it operates in terms of the information supplied by the senses, has also the
capacity to organize and synthesize sensory knowledge into a sort of wholeness,
and, hence, is in a position to reflect the soul whose essential character is
wholeness of being. Thus, the process of meditation has always to be through
the mind though its intention is to transcend the mind.
The mental activities, being
midway between the operation of the senses and the soul’s existence, partake of
a double character, viz., attraction from objects outside and the longing for
perfection from within. The more does the mind succeed in abstracting itself
from sensory information in terms of objects, the more also is the success in
meditation. For this purpose Sadhakas (aspirants) develop a series of
techniques to draw the mind away from the objects of sense and direct it slowly
to the wholeness of the soul. The main forms of this method, to put them
serially, in an ascending order, would be (1) concentration on an external
point, symbol, image or picture; (2) concentration on an internal point,
symbol, image or picture; (3) concentration on universal existence.
Excerpts from:
The Meaning of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda
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