Why Meditation
Why meditate? Why meditation? There are thousands of reasons for this. We should actually ask, 'why not meditation,' because for that we have a smaller number of reasons. There are plenty of reasons for why we should meditate.
Extensive research done by different scientists in different countries has proven that meditation results in good physical health, mental health, and a host of other derived benefits. But according to me, even those results are not straight results of meditation, they are not the actual purpose of meditation. They are just the side-benefits of meditation. Good physical health, mental health, etc. are all wonderful to have, but they are only side-benefits of meditation.
If somebody asks me, why meditate, my straight answer would be, to raise your consciousness! The human body is designed to live in high consciousness.
The human brain is wired for enlightenment. Do you know that by your very nature, you are wired for enlightenment?
The human body is designed to experience expanded consciousness. Only a person who brings all the possibilities of life into living reality, experiences real fulfillment.
Someone who does not bring the possibilities of life into reality, will be carrying so many karmas – unfulfilled words or actions.
I want all of you to understand the word karma.
Karma is nothing but unfulfilled experiences which stay in you, and which constantly push you to fulfill them.
Anything that you experience intensely and deeply will leave your system. It will liberate you.
Any experience that you did not go through completely, through which you did not have complete fulfillment, that you did not give your full energy, attention and awareness to remains inside you as karma.
There is a very beautiful verse in the Upanishad (Vedic verses):
Om poornam adah poornam idam
Poornaat poornamudachyate
Poornasya poornamaadaaya Poornam evaavashishyate
It means: From the Whole came the Whole. If you remove the Whole from the Whole, what remains is the Whole.
Any desire, any experience, which has not become complete in our system, will remain as karma and push
Even if we are carrying some karmas, fundamentally, we are in complete fulfillment - Wholeness. So any karma, us, again and again, to make us go through the same experience to fulfill itself. any desire which has not become complete, cannot rest inside us for too long. It will try its best to fulfill itself. It will drive us again and again to go through the same activity, so that it can be fulfilled.
Please be very clear:
Why meditate? The single-line answer is, to raise the frequency of our consciousness. Let us see how it happens. For this we need to look deeper at how our mind works, how meditation influences our system, how meditation directly affects our 'hardware and software.' Our hardware is our physical body, our software is our mind.
Chapter 3