How to Meditate
Now, the next question, how to meditate.
There are so many different techniques. Somebody asked me the other day why we have so many gods, so many methods and so many techniques in the East. I asked them, 'In the West, why do they have so many cars?'
Why do we have so many cars in the West? Because they invest so much time and energy in doing research to give different levels of comfort and luxury in the car. The more research you do, the more car models are released! Each model offers a unique comfort level and a unique luxury. So much of time and energy has been spent to develop the comfort and luxury.
In the same way, in the East, we spend so much time in thinking and doing research and development on how to raise the consciousness of the individual. And because we have done so much of research and development, we have so many methods, so many techniques, so many gods, so many paths! All these are available to us because we have done so much research and development. We have hundreds and thousands of techniques in front of us because there are so many paths for so many different types of people.
We will experiment with three types of techniques in these three days. Each day we will do one technique. Today, we will do one technique that will work on our mind, on our inner chatter. Tomorrow, we will do a technique to release the engraved memories in us from our past. The day after tomorrow, we will do a technique to go to the deepest silence or core of our being.
Common Fears about Meditation
Now, I will try to answer some of the FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions on this subject. There are some usual doubts, some usual difficulties that people face when they enter into meditation or when they even hear about meditation.
Many people think meditation is something like blindly believing in some thing. People are afraid because of this.
They come and tell me, 'I am afraid that I might get too attached to meditation!'
Understand, meditation itself is nothing but removing your attachment! So you can't get too attached to it!
People are also afraid that their desires, their fears, and whatever else they think of as their life, will be taken away from them if they start meditating. I can say that this is true! Once you start meditating, whatever you think of as your life will not be any more an important part of your life, because once you start meditating, the real truths will start revealing themselves to you.
All the time, you are trying to protect yourself from the basic truths because you are afraid of them. You don't need to protect yourself from your fears because these fears do not have a base at all.
The concept or the idea that you are a solid being, which is the root cause of all your fears, will simply be shaken by meditation. All that you thought you were, all your desires, all your fears, all your worries will be shaken and will start going through a big change.
There will be a big psychological revolution in you. You will have practically a new birth! Your inner software will have a new quality. I can say that it is like changing the inner software of your computer. Your hardware may be the same, but your inner software will go through a big change.
Meditation is all about changing the inner software.
Your body may be the same, your hardware may be the same, the things with which you are living may be same, the persons with whom you are living may be same, but the Being you are living will be totally different!
The Being will have a different quality. The inner software will be new.
If you apply it every moment of your life, if you are aware of these four states constantly, you will see in every decision, the mechanism or the way in which your thought The simple understanding of the four states of consciousness can initiate the psychological revolution in you. It is like a master key. process goes towards meditation, and how every decision is influenced in the right way!
This is what I call the Cognitive Shift. It is receiving information, processing, and deciding in the best possible way.
If you understand these four states, if you become deeply conscious of these four states of existence, then when you come out of the deep sleep state, and enter the dreaming state, you will understand that the deep sleep state was illusory when compared to the dream state. When you come out of the dreaming state into the waking state, you will understand that the dream state was illusory, that it was not real.
When you move from the waking state to the fourth state, that is turiya, you will realize that the waking state is also not reality! You will realize that the waking state is not what you thought it was.
There is a very beautiful story, a Zen story:
One day, early morning, a Zen master came out of his bed and started crying. His disciples were surprised to see him crying. They gathered around him and said,
'You are an enlightened being. Why are you crying? It is really surprising to see that you are crying.'
The master replied, 'Last night I dreamt that I became a butterfly.'
The surprised disciples asked, 'It was only a dream. Now you are yourself again. You are out of it. Why are you crying now?'
The master says very beautifully, 'I do not know whether I was dreaming that I had become a butterfly, or that butterfly is now dreaming that it has become a Zen master!'
But an important thing: again and again and again, you get a glimpse of this Truth every time you face a deep depression or low mood.
Every instance of depression is actually an opportunity to allow the upheaval to happen, but we miss it.
During deep depression, this understanding starts rising from within, but we manage in such a way that the psychological revolution does not happen inside us at that time, because too much is at stake! Too much of the life that we know, that we are clinging on to is at stake. We are afraid of the psychological revolution.
If we allow the psychological revolution to happen, the results are totally unknown to us. We don't know what will happen to all our cherished desires, cherished goals, cherished ideals and cherished ideas. We are afraid that we may have to let go of everything. So we manage not to allow the psychological revolution to happen in us.
Understand, there is no scale, no proof to say if the state in which you are in is the authentic reality. There is no scale!
When I started the session, I uttered the words athaato bramha jignyaasaa from the Vedas, wherein a great teacher says, let us enquire into the reality. It means that the guru and disciple are both deciding to have the courage to follow where reality leads them! It is not just an enquiry into the truth, but the courage to go wherever the enquiry or research leads, where the understanding leads.
Just the simple understanding of these four states of consciousness can transform the way in which we make decisions. The cognitive shift can happen. The psychological revolution can happen.
The truth is there is no scale to determine whether the state in which you are living is authentic reality. When you were dreaming, you thought your dream was real. But when you came out of the dream state and into the waking state, you concluded that your dream was illusory! It is only when you reach the fourth state that you will realize that not only the dream state but even the so called waking state is also an illusion!
The moment you hear the word illusion, you are afraid. You feel you may renounce, you may leave everything, and life may change drastically. I tell you, you will leave only one thing, and that is your suffering; nothing else! The person who understands that what is in front of him is not complete reality, will renounce only one thing - his suffering.
You might have had a rare experience, where in the dream state itself you were aware, 'Yes, I am dreaming!' And because of that awareness, you would have been able to alter some of the thoughts as you wish to in your dream! You would be able to change some of the scenes as you wish to in your dream – for about two to three seconds.
Understand that in those few moments, you are aware that you are dreaming, and you will be able to move a few things around in your dream as you wish to. But if the awareness increases further that you are dreaming, suddenly you will be awakened!
In the same way, in this world too, in the waking state, if the awareness about you, the center, or the 'I' increases, you will have the experience that the whole world which is in front of you is a dream.
Not only will you have the awareness that this life is one more waking dream, but you will also be able to move around the incidents in your life as you wish to! That is what we call siddhis – mystical powers.
So understand, when the frequency of 'I' consciousness increases, you will suddenly start experiencing the waking state as a waking dream, and you will have the energy and freedom to change the incidents which are in front of you in your life.
When this starts happening, if you get caught in the changing of the incidents in your life, by and by, the awareness of the 'I' will come down, and you will fall back into the same waking state again, and these special powers will also disappear.
But if you are not too much attracted to changing these scenes, and you remain centered on raising the consciousness, you become enlightened!
Whether it is awakening from the dream state to the waking state or awakening from the waking state to the enlightenment state, the process is the same.
There is a beautiful technical term for this understanding. It is called avasthaa traya - understanding the three different states in which you are living your everyday life. This simple understanding can create psychological revolution in you and help you to go through the meditation techniques and get the right glimpse of meditation.
When the psychological revolution happens, inner healing happens. With the inner healing, if the techniques are practiced, then naturally, outer healing also happens.
Without the psychological revolution, if the techniques are practiced, it is called kriya or yoga - just physical movements.
With psychological revolution, if yoga is done, it will become a tremendous mediation. With psychological revolution, even ritual becomes meditation. Without psychological revolution, even meditation will become a ritual.
With clarity inside, if meditation is added to your inner space, you will see that every time you meditate, the clarity becomes deeper and deeper. Every time you make decisions in your life, it will add more and more understanding to you.
With psychological revolution, with every decision that you make every day, the aptapramaanaas - the experiences of the enlightened masters, will become atmapramaanaas your own experiences!
Without psychological revolution, everyday that you live, every moment that you add to your life, will only be pravritti - going outwards, and not inwards, and adding more and more suffering, low moods and difficulties.
With psychological revolution, it will become nivritti – towards reality. You will become more and more relaxed, more and more restful, more and more aware.
The essence of what I call psychological revolution is understanding these four states of consciousness clearly, and trying to raise yourself to the higher and higher frequencies.
I can say that on a relative scale, if you have the frequency of say a hundred, it is deep sleep. If you have the frequency of a thousand, it is the dream state. If it is two thousand, it is the waking state, and maybe one hundred thousand, it is turiya or blissful state. With this proportion, you can know by how much the frequency of your consciousness has to be raised.
Sometimes you spend most of your life, most of your time, most of your energy between the dream state and the waking state – just moving listlessly between these two.
If you are aware, you will see that in your waking state also, in just a span of say half an hour, so many things happen around you, without even your awareness! You would have drifted to the day-dreaming state, wherein your dream state would have influenced your waking state with thoughts, thus causing you to drift off. When you come back to the waking state with awareness, you will realize that half an hour went past wherein nothing was really under your control! You would have been awake, your eyes open, and your body doing work, but you would not have been aware of what was happening. I can say that this is what we call the state between the dream state and the waking state. Most of us spend eighty percent of our day in this state.
Understand one thing: Never think that just because you are out of your bed, you are in the waking state. No! Maybe you can't afford to spend your time in bed all the time, and it is necessary for your survival to be out of bed, so you are out of bed. But that does not mean that you are out of the dream state.
Bringing yourself out of the dream state, and also out of the waking state, is what I call meditation! Bringing yourself completely out of the waking, dream and deep sleep states, is what I call dhyaan, meditation.
When a person tries to raise his consciousness towards turiya, the fourth state, naturally his body and mind start getting healed. I always tell people, when they come and ask me what the essential quality of spiritual life is, three things are needed for a successful life. I don't even want to call it spiritual life. The term is loaded with too many different meanings.
Three things are needed for a successful life. The first is intensity, second is intensity, and third is intensity, nothing else!
In anything that you do, if intensity is added, you will see that you are continuously raising the frequency of your consciousness, you are continuously elevating yourself to different states of consciousness. Then the entire day will have the quality of meditation and you will enjoy a different quality of life!