Meditation: What It Is Not
It is easier to explain what meditation is not, rather than defining what meditation is.
When we ask - 'what is meditation?' all of us immediately imagine an old man with a long beard on the banks of a river, sitting crosslegged with eyes closed and moving his lips in recitation of mantras. Today, if we tell you to sit in silence and control your mind, if we tell you to calm down your mind and remain blissful, what will happen? People tell us 'when we sit for meditation, so many thoughts gush out. We don't know their source and don't know how to control them. We feel we are mad.'
Meditation is not sitting in a corner, alone, in a cross legged position, with back pain, knee pain, neck pain, complaints, saying - I am not able to control my mind - all these things! Meditation is all about making a shift in your Consciousness. The moment you bring yourself to the present, you feel enthusiastic, alive, joyful and blissful. So the cognitive shift or shift in your Energy is what I call meditation
The condition of a man who tries to calm his mind by mantras today is most likely to be like the person who was told to meditate not thinking about a monkey; all that he could see were monkeys whenever he sat down to meditate. During the age of Patanjali, man was able to calm his mind by meditating with mantras. At that time, Man was simple with no complex cerebral layers, hence these techniques worked. Today, methods adopting silence will not help. Man has become neurotic and complicated. Neurosis has become the normal state of man. With the growth of Science and Consumerism, all of us have become neurotic. Like how the bullock cart is outdated, so also are the bullock cart techniques. With those techniques, you will be able to travel at the speed of a bullock cart. This is the jet age. You should be able to travel at jet speed in your inner space with techniques designed by Modern day Masters and Mystics.
Spiritual practices or sadhanas in the Hindu tradition usually follow one of three paths: the first, one of puja or rituals which require extensive preparation, and which is physical; the second is mantra japa, repetition of a word constantly; the third is dhyana, the silent contemplation.
In puja or ritualistic sadhanas which may also include practices of yoga the process has the danger of becoming mechanical losing its original objective. How many times have we seen priests intoning slokas and sutras mechanically during a puja or a yagna, their mind far away focused on other mundane matters? Mothers and grandmothers chanting ashtotras and sahasranamas (108 and 1008 names of the Lord chanted in prayer), more worried about what number they are on and keen to finish and get it over with. It requires great dedication, discipline and fixity of purpose to practice the ritualistic routes to progress spiritually. Moreover these practices are gross in nature, verbalized and full of physical interventions that continuously keep the mind occupied with thoughts and with forms.
With mantra japa the physical grossness is reduced and the possibility to focus intensely is increased. However, the very fact that the mind is focused on a word, which is what a mantra is, means that, there is constant verbalization and visualization following the word. The mind is engaged in the form and in thoughts. This limits the spiritual progress that can be made using this process. As long as we are in the form we are limited.