THE INWARD PRACTISE OF MEDITATION MUST BE RELATED TO PRACTICAL LIVING
The purpose of meditation is to bring about self-integration in man. By self-integration, we mean that the three aspects of man, the mind, body and spirit, should become and function as a unit. Meditation helps to bring about this state of being, which is very important and very strengthening. The integration produces harmony in man and helps a person function as a total human being. Most people do not function in this world in a form of totality. Every day, we see people who think one thing, do another thing, and of course, their words would also take the form of something else. That is not functioning in harmony.
To produce this state of harmony, we find meditational techniques to be beneficial, where, by repeating again, man functions as a total whole, which is the purpose of meditation. Meditation can be very useful to us in forming this harmony within ourselves, but that harmony that is within also has to be interpreted without in our actions in the waking state of life.
Though meditation is an effortless practice, the waking state of life requires some effort to bring about and interpret the harmony within our relationships with people and the environment, and to do so consciously. So, meditation and the effort in the waking state of life should go hand in hand. The analogy I would like to use would be of a person who is addicted to drinking. He can meditate as much as he likes, which will give him some strength, it will produce some harmony in him, but if he does not try to make that little effort of trying to push the bottle a bit further away every time, then he will never be able to experience the sense of sobriety that he requires.
So, the inward practice of meditation must be related to practical living; therefore, we find in all our scriptures the dos and don’ts of a practical life. If we take philosophy at its own value, it could very well result in mere mental gymnastics, in which a person operates only on the mental level. But functioning on the mind level only and using what the mind tells us is right, in that coordinated state produced by meditation, this too requires a conscious effort in daily life. So, to make meditation really worthwhile and to give it its fullest value, we also have to improve our daily living with a little effort; in other words, look forward to betterment rather than relying solely on meditative practices.
The same thing would apply in many forms of prayer that most religions advocate. It is no good going to church on Sundays and praying, and then throughout the week, everything which we have prayed for or the worship we have done is entirely forgotten, and our lives are entirely contrary to that which we have prayed for. This would mean that we have been insincere to ourselves. We have been dishonest with ourselves. That is what it would mean.
Through meditational practices, we activate the subtle powers of the mind
Any person wanting to learn to meditate using a proper technique, given to him individually, must first have the sincerity and yearning for self-betterment. That is why he wants to meditate. Many people want to meditate to correct the weaknesses they might face in life and gain strength to replace them, as light replaces darkness. But to find the light, we still have to make the conscious effort to switch it on. So, meditation is an internal process which will give you the strength to extend your arm to switch on the light and thereby banish the darkness. So, both meditation and a practical, lived philosophy would be the ideal ways to make some progress in life and find that integration.
That self-integration is self-realisation. Self-realisation could be termed God-realisation. These are various labels only, labels which would define the ideal state of the totality of man. All problems in life stem from the three aspects of man not functioning harmoniously. There are certain vibrational set-ups in our systems. We do know that the whole universe is composed of nothing but vibrations, and vibrations can exist in a subtle form or a grosser form, such as vapour. The subtle vapour could be solidified into ice, which is a grosser form of the same substance, wherein H2O, the constant factor, remains the same. So, the body could be compared to the block of ice, which is the gross form and the subtler form of the body of matter, which composes the body, is the mind. So here, we would say that the difference between mind and body is just a matter of the degree of solidification of matter. So, mind and body are both composed of matter, one in a grosser form, the other in subtler form.
Through meditational practices, we can dive deeper within the subtler forms of ourselves, which we term the mind. What is the mind? What is the extent of the mind? I would say the extent of the mind is the extent of the entire universe. Where is the mind located? I am sure one could not say that it is located in the brain or in one’s big toe. It encompasses our entirety, and being of a more subtle nature, it has far greater power than any form which is more gross. So it is through these meditational practices that we can activate the subtlety, the subtle powers of the mind and dive deeper within ourselves so that the subtle powers that are resident in the mind can be brought out into the grosser form of life and thereby make the grosser form of life more dynamic, more vital, more powerful, more harmonious and that would be called living instead of existing.
MEDITATION AND THE ART OF DAILY LIVING ARE PART AND PARCEL OF EACH OTHER
So, we do not stop only where the mind stops, but we go still further in ourselves, through meditational practices, to a state beyond the mind. And beyond the mind lies the reservoir of that infinite energy that could be brought through the medium of the subtle mind to the grosser level of the body, whereby the three factors could operate, as I would say again and repeat over and over again, as a totality. To really experience this totality, one can never divorce the practical living and action of life from meditation because, in the ideal state of life, one should be meditating or be in a state of meditation twenty-four hours a day. We practice meditation for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening; that is just a start towards this totality and the experiences. The glimpses we have in that silent state of the mind and body will make us realise from a far deeper level within ourselves that there is something far greater than just that which we know to be the body or the mind, and which is expressed by the five gross physical senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching. Yet there is a greater coordinating factor behind all these senses of ours, and that coordination must be brought to the level of the body so that it can express itself more fully in action.
We draw upon this coordinating factor through meditation. Through a certain system that every individual can use, specific to each, because one starts from where one is. If a child is in standard six, we do not give the child standard ten lessons. And if a child is in standard ten, we do not give them MA lessons. We start a person from where they are, according to their spiritual state and state of evolution, and from there we proceed. In other words, we start from where we are. Man is inherently Divine, and it is the duty, the dharma of man to express that Divinity in all his actions. Therefore, meditation and the art of living, daily living, are part and parcel of each other.
OUR MEDITATIONAL PRACTICES AIM AT KNOWINGNESS BEYOND BELIEF AND FAITH
Our meditational systems follow a scientific pattern of dwelling deeply in our minds and do not require any particular belief. We do say that if you are a Christian, by diving deep within yourself and finding the Kingdom of Heaven within, you will become a better Christian. If you are a Buddhist, you can become a better Buddhist. So, we do not condemn any path but rather embrace all paths that are in this world. There is no particular philosophy to follow because, as you go deeper and deeper into your meditations, you, yourself, feeling the beauty that lies within you, will come to realisations on your own accord. And when you find the realisations coming to you day by day, more and more you will find the path, the theory and the philosophy which will be most conducive to you, and that is where you start. So, we do not advocate following any particular philosophy. As a matter of fact, belief in something can be blind, and we prefer reasonable beliefs. There are many theologies that teach certain beliefs people are supposed to follow blindly. What I would say, believe by all means, but let it also be pleasing to your mind, and when a belief is pleasing to your mind, you will make faster progress.
Belief itself is not enough; belief can lead to faith, and faith, of course, leads to knowingness, and that is what we want. Our meditational practices are aimed at knowingness, which goes beyond belief and faith. I have used an analogy that if we sit in an air-conditioned room, we believe that the fire in the room next door is hot. We believe that it is hot. But as we approach, go out the door into the next room, and get nearer, we start to have faith because we feel the heat. It means that from belief we have progressed to faith, but it is when we jump into the fire that we know what fire is. In this case, the fire is not necessarily the fire that will burn you physically, but the fire of the spirit, which is resident within us. And as we are shown the way, the technique of how to dive deep within us into that spiritual fire, into that spiritual light that is forever burning within us, as we dive into that, you will find very, very automatically and spontaneously, the karmic values that are attached to us will burn away. The negativity that is born of weakness will burn away, and then, when that burns away, we shine as the eternal fire that is within us. And that eternal fire in turn shines so brightly through our minds and through our bodies so that we live again as the integrated human being that not only meditates but puts the value of meditation into practical living. Therefore, we dive within ourselves, and that is the purpose.
THE PATTERN OF OUR MIND TODAY IS THE SUM TOTALITY OF ALL OUR PAST EXISTENCES
The inherent nature of man is divine, and the qualities, the attributes of Divinity, are joy and bliss, and it is everyone’s right to enjoy the joy and the bliss. We enjoy the joy. That is our inherent right. Man need not suffer at all. Man suffers because the animal that is within us, the cunning little mind, is the cause of suffering. So, we find the ability to go beyond the mind and draw from that light, that fire, to burn up the conditionings of the mind. In other words, our mode of thinking gets re-patterned. We do not need to go to the supermarket to buy a new mind. No. We use our own minds, but through meditational practices, we remodel the mind, we re-pattern the mind, because man is a creature of habit. Man is a creature of habit, and this mode of thinking, positively or negatively, is also created by habit, and this is not necessarily done in one lifetime only. It might extend further back into previous lifetimes for those who believe there were.
So, the pattern of our mind today is the sum totality of all of our past lives and perhaps all past existences. So, we are the sum total of the conditioned or patterned mind. If it is conditioned, we uncondition it to its primal simplicity. Does the Bible not say that “We have to become childlike, to reach the Kingdom of Heaven”? Yes, and that is what we mean by simplicity. All complexities are produced by the mind. So, we repattern the mind to its primal simplicity, thereby enabling us to enjoy the joy. We say that it is so simple to be happy, but so difficult to be simple.
THROUGH MEDITATION ONE CAN EXPERIETIALLY COGNIZE THE DORMANT LEVELS OF THE MIND
All of you know that the human being only uses ten per cent of his mind, which we call the conscious mind, and ninety per cent of the mind is lying dormant. Through meditational practices, we dive deeply within the ninety per cent of the mind that is dormant. That percentage of the mind which is beyond the conscious mind, and which is dormant, cannot be intellectually cognised by the ten per cent. In other words, we do not have the tools. Our reception apparatus, our radios, are too weak to be able to tune in to that transmitter, which, to the conscious mind, to the ten per cent mind, is supposedly dormant.
Really speaking, that ninety per cent which to us seems dormant is more powerful, but because we are only able to function with the limited, finite mind, we cannot intellectually comprehend that which is infinite.
Through experience, through feeling, for example, one can cognise experientially other levels of the mind, the so-called dormant levels of the mind and even that which is beyond. So basically, a self-realised man functions not from the 10% conscious mind, but from the heart level.
OUR PRACTICES GRADUALLY BROADEN THE AWARENESS OF THE MIND AND EXPAND THE HEART
Many of our meditators will verify that our practices not only broaden the awareness of our minds, but also gradually lead them from the ten per cent to fifteen per cent and to twenty per cent. It not only broadens the awareness of the mind, of the consciousness as you would put it, but it also expands the heart, and when the heart expands, the power and the force of that which the ten per cent conscious mind cannot comprehend can be felt. It experiences.
It is like another analogy, which is the analogy of sugar. We can take sugar to the Oxford University laboratory, have it broken down, and find out all its chemical components and what constitutes sugar; we can know all about sugar, but we cannot analyse its taste. We got to taste the sweetness. We got to experience the sweetness. At universities, we learn about things but not what a thing is. The purpose of gurus is to show the path, show the way whereby you actually experience that which is within. So, the cognition of our higher self is normally on the experiential level. Yet one thing happens, that with the expansion of awareness, the experience can be appreciated more.
We look at this flower now, and after a few months of meditation, we will look at the same flower, but we will find greater beauty in the flower. We will feel its very pulse. We will be able to identify ourselves with the very flower. That is possible on the experiential level, and that is the purpose of life because if we regard that Divinity or the Infinity or the God, whichever label you want to name it, if we regard that to be omnipresent, present everywhere, then if we through meditation find the presence within us, then we will find that presence within others and therefore the meditation becomes practical in daily living.
BY FINDING SELF-INTEGRATION WITHIN OURSELVES, WE FIND THE WHOLENESS IN ALL AND EVERYTHING
So, one forms an identification. One identifies with oneself through the integration that has taken place, and because of that integration, cognition and recognition, we very, very spontaneously find the Divinity in all that surrounds us, all the time, in the meanest creature that crawls on the floor to the highest evolved man, because then we do not see surface value. Because we have found the ability to find our inner depths, we can see the inner depth of others, and at that subtle, fine level, there would be the identification of all existence. And then it becomes possible to experience eternity in a moment.
When we go beyond all laws of duality, the you and I, me and mine, that all disappears, and it all becomes one complete whole. So, by finding at first the wholeness, the self-integration within us, we find the wholeness within our environment. We find the wholeness within our city, within our country, within the world and then within the entire universe. And then we can say, “Ah, I hold the universe in the palm of my hand.” Yes. Yes. Yes. Because then, you are the universe and the universe is you. And this is what is meant by Christ when he said, “I and my Father are one.” This is what is meant. And then we experience that beautiful oneness, and when oneness is experienced by man, all conflicts cease.
IF THE GOAL IS JOY, THE PATH TO JOYOUSNESS SHOULD BE JOYFUL TOO
Conflicts are only created by duality when man separates himself from man. When there is a subject and an object, there is friction; but when the subject and the object merge into each other, there is no friction, and while we are still embodied beings, our personal lives assume a greater beauty, a greater light. There is another good analogy. You go to a theatre, and on either side of the hall, you have two spotlights shining onto the stage, and spotlights on their own have their amounts of light, we could call them the absolute and the relative, but when the spotlights are brought together and when they converge, that light is so much brighter. So, by meditation, we are actually combining the Absolute with the relative. Then we are living the Absolute in the relative, because there is no separation from the relative to the Absolute.
Therefore, when a philosopher says that “I exist therefore God exists, and God exists therefore I exist”, this is what is meant, the total identification between the relative and the absolute. It is cognised by experience, and that experience is translated into daily living by the expansion of the heart, where you can truly know the meaning of love. Then you not only know love, but you live love, become love, and then flow. And what a beautiful flowing where all is just one, where you and I are one, everything existent is one, all conflicts cease, and then there is joy. And the path to that goal must be joyous too. If the goal is joy, the path to joyousness should be joyful too, and we have it within ourselves. It is not beyond ourselves. It is there, it is just to be accepted and practised. Not accepted blindly with blind belief but by reasonable belief, and the practice of it produces the faith in us and further practice as we get stabilised and established in the practice, then we know, then we speak from a knowing level.
THE MIND CANNOT TELL US MUCH ABOUT THAT WHICH IS BEYOND, BUT WE CAN EXPERIENCE IT
Therefore, I said that you, who are students here at Oxford and have studied psychology and philosophy so much and in such greater detail, would know more about it, but now we try to live it. We try to know what it is and how much more joyful life becomes when conflict ceases. But of course, every Institution, every teaching serves a wonderful purpose because when we know about things, all our energies can be directed towards knowing what it is. We study the components of sugar, and those studies make us want to taste it. So, students here at Oxford are very, very well equipped to really want to experience that level of being that is within us. They are very well equipped because they have the basic knowledge about the thing, and now we want to know what it really is, and that is the goal of life. And that is the inherent right of every man, every woman, every child, and it is so simple. So, so simple. It is actually beautiful, so beautiful in its simplicity, beyond words, beyond description.
So, the mind cannot really tell us very much about it. We can only infer to that which is beyond us, but we can experience that which is beyond us and make it us, in real, practical living and loving.
EXPERIENCE IN THE TRANSCENDENT STATE OF MEDITATION WILL BE IN THE FORM OF JOY AND LOVE
In meditation, one gets glimpses of a greater peace that happens within us. We know that practising meditation lowers the metabolic rate, which shows how the organs and muscles of the body can relax, and the mind follows suit. And how, by using the practices, one does even go beyond that, even body consciousness is lost, and how it does help us physiologically, psychologically, biologically and in all these various spheres, one’s bodies and minds become better. And, because of finding that stillness within ourselves, many psychosomatic diseases could be eased, could be alleviated, could be banished from ourselves because of the strength produced in the mind. Yes, these things happen, and doctors would tell you that ninety per cent of beds in the hospital are not really of organic diseases, but the origin is more of the mind; they are called psychosomatic diseases. I am not well-versed in these scientific terms, but we do know that the basis of most diseases lies in the mind. If that mind could be brought to a tranquil state through meditation, it definitely would influence our whole physical being and our mental being and make us live a more fulfilled life in the action of daily living.
The actual experience of sweetness in the transcendent state of meditation cannot really be explained by my 10% conscious mind. It can be experienced, and that joy and that bliss are indescribable. It is a state beyond mind and body, where the light shines on its own; it is self-luminescent, without any electricity or gas from the mind and body. It is self-luminescent, and it is such a bliss on its own. Therefore, we normally call it indescribable, inexplicable, but it is experiential. It defies all verbal explanations or all intellectual analysis, but it can be experienced, and the experience would be in the form of joy and love.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1976 – 09
