|| WHAT IS MEDITATION ||

WHAT IS MEDITATION

Today Meditation is as popular in the West as it is in the East. When earlier, Only a few qualified aspirants could practice meditation, now, a fairly large number of followers have emerged who practice meditation in a varieties of daily-life situations. 

Meditation is an attempt to isolate the self and discover the Uncreated or the Absolute, which is what humanity is trying to seek through creative activity. Meditation is a movement towards unity and peace.

It should be understood that trying to drive the mind inward, as a shepherd drives sheep into the pen, is not meditation. True meditation is the result of the natural inwardness or interiority of the mind caused by an inward pull. This inward "pull" comes from one's higher centre of consciousness. And the higher centre will exert this pull when it is open and active.

Then the mind comes to rest in its own source, as a bird comes to roost in its own nest. This resting or fixing of the mind is called dharana, without which meditation is difficult. 

Meditation is an attempt to make the mind stop creating by seeking the source of experience. Though experience is also a function of the mind, its real source (consciousness) is in the Atman or the self. 

What is meditation? 

Meditation is the power which enables us to resist all this. Nature may call us, "Look, there is a beautiful smell; smell it! I say to my nose, "Do not smell it", and the nose doesn't. "Eyes, do not see!" Now, if you had that power in yourself, would not that be heaven, freedom? That is the power of Meditation. 

THE GATE TO BLISS

Meditation is the gate that opens that to us. Prayers, ceremonials, and all the other forms of worship are simply kindergartens of meditation. You pray, you offer something. A certain theory existed that everything raised one's spiritual power. The use of words, flowers, images, temples, ceremonials like the waving of lights brings the mind to that attitude, but that attitude is always in the human soul, nowhere else. [People] are all doing it; but what they do without knowing it, do knowingly. That is the power of meditation. 

TRUE MEDITATION

Dyana or meditation is the conscious maintenance of a steady stream of the same thought about an object at a higher centre of consciousness. 

The mind has two tendencies. Its natural tendency is to move constantly from one thought - wave to another. This tendency to grasp object is called all pointedness. But, Occasionally the mind holds on to a single object; this tendency is called ekagrata (one pointedness). Dyana or meditation is a special type of one pointed activity of the mind. 

CONCENTRATION VS MEDITATION

In ordinary concentration the mind is focused on an external object or a mental idea. From childhood we have been practising concentration on external objects as a part of the natural process of perception. 

What is perception?

According to the Samkya, Yoga and Advaita-Vedanta schoold of philosophy, the mind goes out through the eyes and takes the form of the object, and this is how we see it.

 According to Ramanuja and Madhava, it is the self that issues forth and directly perceives the object. Either way, concentration on external objects is a natural process.

Real Meditation is completely different process than perception. It means turning the mind or the self back upon its source. Meditation is the result of the focusing of consciousness on its true source or centre.