MEDITATION REVEALS THE HARMONY WITHIN US, ALLOWING US TO EXPRESS OUR INHERENT DIVINITY IN DAILY LIFE
My speciality is meditation, and the purpose of meditation is to bring about harmony between mind, body and spirit. That harmony already exists; all it requires is the conscious recognition and experience of that harmony.
What do we mean by experiencing harmony? The answer is simple. It is when you feel peace within yourself, so much peace that all problems can come and yet you remain peaceful. It is like Kipling’s poem “If”, which you all know. Everything can go mad and haywire around you, and yet you preserve your peace, your tranquillity. And this is what meditation aims to do. Through a systematic process of taking your mind to the deeper layers within, you automatically draw on the stillness inside, bring it to the fore, to the outside, and find that peace.
It only means quietening the mind, but that is not all that happens. You quieten the mind by drawing on that inner resource, so it also means you are activating it. By activating that inner resource in your daily life, you are living in accordance with the harmonious laws of nature. And the harmonious laws of nature are the truest reflection of that indescribable God.
By bringing this inner resource, this inner energy, into our waking state of life and living, it becomes a spontaneous process. You become and you live God. You no longer think of Him. You no longer pray to Him, but you live Him. Then prayer becomes redundant. You have no need to pray because you are living the prayer. You become a living prayer, not just that hour in church or wherever. You become a living prayer. Every breath you take is a prayer. Every word you speak is a prayer. Every thought you think is a prayer. And that can only come about by creating harmony within us. By creating harmony within us, problems will disappear for us personally.
Problems will always exist in this world; you can do nothing about them. All these conflicting forces will be there because that is what makes the world go round. But how you view them, by gaining that inner strength and bringing it into active daily life, is your job. If you study history, you will find that many great reformers have failed for one reason; they tried to take man up to God. We are trying to bring God down to man. Buddha made that vital mistake. Buddhism was born in India, and very little of it remains there today, because he wanted to lift man up towards God. It is not practical. You cannot, but you can bring God down into man and make man into a living God. Do you see the difference? And that is what harmony is all about. The spirit we talk about is within; it is nothing else but that Divine power, and we can draw on that Divine power. We do not throw water into a well; we draw water from the well, the well within, the well of love, of compassion, of kindness, of mercy, of joy, and we bring it to the surface, the surface of our day-to-day living, day-to-day life. That is what we are after, and that is what meditation does.
MEDITATION AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF LIFE
We call ourselves a Meditation Society, but that is not all that we do. We do not just teach meditation; we also help people understand what life is really about, and that, in turn, supports meditation, while meditation, in turn, deepens that understanding. It is such a pity that human beings of the world today have so many misconceptions; they should have rather been miscarriages. Before the misconception took place, it should have miscarried; it would have done humanity a greater service. So the aim is to have the proper attitude, the right way of looking at things, and that can only come about by expanding one’s awareness, and awareness expands through meditation.
It all works hand in hand, actively modulating and controlling our daily lives, offering all our actions to Divinity, which means offering them to someone you do not yet know. That means sacrificing – sacrificing means surrendering. Do you see how all these things are related to each other? And this can only come about when you bring a certain measure of harmony into your life through meditation.
THE ART OF LIVING IN THE WORLD
When one surrenders, a sense of non-attachment develops automatically. That does not mean being aloof – there is a great difference between detachment and non-attachment. When you detach yourself, you are running away, escaping. Ninety-nine per cent of the Mendicants, Saddhus, Swamis, and Yogis sitting in some remote cave somewhere in the mountains are escapists. I addressed a large convention of Saddhus in India about two and a half years ago. There was a crowd of nearly thirty thousand people. India has such a vast population that you just need to stand up and shout, and a whole crowd would gather. Among those Saddhus and these so-called Swamis, there were some good ones, but the rest? So I said, “What the devil are you sponging on society for? Do some useful work, whatever work you want to do. You expect to go around from door to door and get your meals for nothing without doing anything? Do you call that non-attachment to life?” One man said, “Yes, but I only own a begging bowl and a staff. That is all I own.” And I said, “Is that all you own, really? Do you not have the desire to get things for nothing? Which is worse, my two-hundred-pound suit or your desire?” So, detachment is escaping. Because they could not face the world, they ran away where no one can touch them, none of the creditors can run after them, or no wife to chase them around – they ran away, detachment.
Non-attachment is what is said in the Bible, “To be in the world and yet not of the world.” That is non-attachment, where you do everything like a normal human being, yet you are not attached to it. You have the attitude that a dry piece of bread is just as good as a beautiful meal, but if you have the choice, why not choose the best? But you are not attached to it; you do not hanker after it. If you have a million pounds in the bank, why not have two million or five million, as long as you are not attached to it? If you lose it tomorrow, you will say, “So what. It is gone; it was not mine in the first place. I am just an agent.”
Some people were building a temple and approached me for charity, and I gave them what I could. But I reminded many of the wealthy people sitting around that you are just an agent on this earth and that everything is energy. Even finances are energy, and you have no right to store up that energy. As an agent, you distribute energy, and that comes about through non-attachment. You can live in luxury and yet be totally non-attached. I know one person in this room who lives in luxury, with everything beautiful, and yet is so simple at heart, so totally unattached to it, that I really admire that man.
That is the secret of happiness. That is the secret of creating no problems that will affect you, and of being non-attached to them. Therefore, earlier I said that there are only two kinds of people who could say, “So what,” the very irresponsible and the responsible person with an understanding of life.
Because of a lack of harmony, problems can be found in anything. There is nothing you cannot complain about. You can complain about everything, and once you start complaining, it becomes a problem. If it were not a problem for you, you would not complain.
FROM INNER STILLNESS TO UNIVERSAL AWARENESS
Our meditative practices are individually designed to bring about this harmony. It is not like waving a wand overnight. Everyone wants instant coffee and instant pudding; we do not have that. It is a gradual process, and with perseverance, one achieves greater and greater harmony. All the rough edges are slowly planed off the wood, and then you have beautiful, smooth wood, so harmonious with the environment. So you become beautiful, but that is not only the beauty of you alone that counts. You are connected to the entire world, to every human being on this earth. Each and every one is inseparably connected at a subtler level. That is how you can pick up another person’s thoughts, like having a feeling that Aunt Jane is coming to visit today and she turns up, or such and such is going to ring me and suddenly the phone rings and it is the person you were thinking about. That shows that beyond the conscious layer of the mind there is a layer that is connected inseparably throughout the world, four thousand million people and much beyond that, throughout the universe. So, with this harmony created within oneself, man can tap into any remote corner of the universe. You can go into meditation and go wherever you want to at the given moment. But we should not go in too much for that; the airlines will go bankrupt. Do you see the possibilities man has? So, to repeat again, the purpose of meditation is to create harmony, or to recognise and realise the harmony between body, mind and spirit, for it is a continuum; there is no separation.
About two years ago, I think it was, I gave a talk at the Holistic Health Symposium in Las Vegas. I told them that doctors try to examine your body or your mind or what have you, and that this is totally wrong. A person must be treated wholly, because the body, mind and spirit are but a continuum in varying grades of solidity or condensation. The body is grosser, the mind is subtler and the spirit is the subtlest. It is one continuum, and being one continuum, harmony has to be there. It is just for us to realise that harmony and bring the subtler, more powerful aspects of ourselves into conscious day-to-day living. That is what it is all about.
THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCE OF INNER AWAKENING
Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese science, as everyone knows. I know very little about it. The ancient Chinese found that certain energies can be released by inserting a needle into specific areas, and they identified about seven hundred such points. It might have some validity. I have heard that acupuncture has been successful for some people and unsuccessful for others, and, of course, it depends on the Acupuncturist. He works by a set of rules, a set of laws, but a good Acupuncturist should be very intuitive. So, in acupuncture, intuition plays seventy per cent of the role, and thirty per cent is the basic knowledge of the various Nadis, seven hundred of them, in the body.
In our system, the same effect can be achieved by working on certain chakras in the body. Chakras are nothing but energy vortexes in the system. The brain’s field does not extend only to the head; the spinal column is also part of the brain, and together they form a whole.
There are energy vortices situated at various centres of the brain, mostly along the spine. If a particular vortex or chakra is sluggish, it can be activated through spiritual practices, and doing so allows the energies to flow as they should. So, when one says that all the Chakras are activated, it means one thing, that you have now brought all your brain cells into activity, for man only uses a very small percentage of his brain, the rest lying dormant. The more the brain cells are activated, the more mind substance, which is not the brain, can function through them.
Through these practices, a stronger connection is formed between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere is more oriented towards analysis and rationalisation, while the right hemisphere is more connected to the deeper layers of the mind, the intuitive level. Through these spiritual practices and meditation, we can help the intuitive and reflective sections of the brain work in greater harmony, so that there is a greater flow from the intuitive level to the analytical level.
So even without pricking yourself with needles, we can energise the body and create the flow that is required. But it requires practice and perseverance. It is not something done overnight; it takes time. You can do this easily through meditative practices. Acupuncture, if it works, can only release certain energies that are blockages in the body. Meditation goes far deeper and releases the spiritual energies within us. So acupuncture could be termed a kind of medical science, while meditation can be termed a spiritual science. It emphasises the spirit within.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1982 – 04
