Will meditation produce any negative side effects?
No! Meditation will not produce any side-effect except bliss and health.
When to start meditation in Life?
Meditation is just like reading an owner's manual before you start driving the car. The person who does not read the owner's manual before driving the car will naturally meet with accidents! In the same way, the person who has not started meditation before entering into life will inevitably enter into suffering and depression at one point or the other.
Meditation is a basic necessity for life. It is not an option. It is a very basic need. Meditation is like an owner's manual for your body and for your life. The moment you start living, you need to go through it; you need to enter into it. Don't wait for accidents to happen to start reading the owner's manual of your life. Be intelligent and start this very moment
What is the best time for meditation practice
There are three categories of meditation. The first is bringing the Truth or awareness into your life. This is supposed to be done all twenty four hours a day. Techniques like vipassana or bringing your awareness to the present moment all the time belong to this category of meditation. It is not a part of your routine. It should become the very quality of your routine. You may be doing anything - writing, reading, cooking, discussing… but this thread of meditation should be happening in parallel, like an undercurrent.
There are other kinds of meditation techniques for which you need to spend a particular time, like one hour in the morning or one hour in the evening, or any other convenient time. The Maha Mantra meditation technique, where you hum for a few minutes and then remain a witness for a few minutes, can be given as an example for this category of meditation.
Then there is the third kind of meditation techniques, which you neither need the whole day, nor spend separate time for it Just the very remembrance of the technique is enough! Examples of this are the statements of the great timeless Truths. When you are in a highly mature state, you don't need any separate technique. You don't need to practice the whole day or at any particular time. Just the very remembrance of these Truths will put you in the elevated state. You will be in that high state and experience the Truth. This is the third type of meditation. Examples of this are the beautiful Zen koans. They are profound Truths written in a concise way. Just the very remembrance of them will transport you to that zone!
Why do we need meditation techniques?
Meditation techniques are not there to help you achieve anything. They are there to help you remember that you have not yet found eternal bliss! If I suddenly say to you, 'Slip into bliss!' is it possible for you? No! You are not even aware that bliss is your natural state. But when you hear so many masters prescribing meditation again and again, you continuously remember that you are still seeking. Meditation techniques are the lifebuoys that help you cross the ocean of bliss. When you are just learning to swim, will you directly jump into the ocean on your own? No! You need a lifebuoy to keep you afloat. In the same way, to enter into the ocean of bliss, you will need a method to help you initially. Meditation is the most natural method for you. Meditation techniques are nothing but lifebuoys. Once meditation becomes your way of life, you will automatically drop all the techniques, because meditation will become the very quality of your life, no longer a routine that you make time for each day. Every moment will be meditative. Meditation will be a continuous happening in you, irrespective of what you may be doing in the outer world.
What is the right approach to meditation?
The first thing is to be sincere. Keep an open mind. Have the openness to experiment. Be enthusiastic.
Fears and Worries about meditation:
Many people are 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. 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.
Lots of negative thoughts arise in meditation. Will they come to reality?
Don't bother about their coming into reality. Fortunately, you are not that powerful that you can project your thoughts into reality. If at some time your thoughts have become reality, if you have seen your dreams or thoughts becoming reality, do not use that power; try to divert that energy into your consciousness
Is it possible that meditation takes us into inaction.
This is an interesting and real issue. Normally, you are in a state of action, which is the state of rajas. When you are in rajas, also described as aggression or passion, you are externally oriented. Your thoughts are focused on action of some sort or another, usually with some goal in mind. This is the state of most human beings, whether in business, academics or just looking after the household. You plan your activities and you plan to fulfil them accordingly. When you go into meditation and practice seriously, especially when you are in an ashram kind of environment, you realize the futility of these goal-based actions. All these triggers that activate you, seem to be negativities of some sort. You tend to drop these negativities.
When you drop these negativities and do not want to do anything with them, the state that you move into is tamas, or lazy inaction. Suddenly you find that you are disinterested in everything. You may just want to sleep, that is all. It is not quite depression, but a disinclination to act, because all actions seem negative. This may last a while, a few days, but not for long.
Let it happen. Let yourself go through this process. Let all the negativities work themselves out of you. Then gradually you will move back into action with awareness. You will act, since you cannot but act. As Krishna says, but now you act without a purpose. The results of your action are no longer of relevance to you. Success and failure no longer bother you. So do not worry if you slip into what you think is laziness while practicing meditation. It is likely to happen It is a normal process.
Just continue and you will move into purposeless action. People think that moving from rajas, aggression to satva, calmness is the natural evolution. It does not work that way. When you move out of your normal active and aggressive behaviour you first fall into tamas, inactivity. This is the movement of the mind when it moves out of aggression; it moves into inaction. When this shift is caused by meditation, the inaction does not last long. The mind soon moves into a relaxed, calm state.
The mind is constantly looking out through the senses. Its focus is external. It settles on the periphery. However, deep inside there is a longing for it to move inwards. It is constantly getting pulled from the material to the spiritual. Usually it settles somewhere in the middle. Meditation aids the movement inwards. As attention shifts from the periphery to the core, there is a resistance to what was experienced in the periphery. This leads to temporary inaction and detachment to peripheral experiences. Once a glimpse of the center, the core is achieved there is no detachment or dislike. There is neither attachment nor great attraction for something or detachment or dislike for something. All experiences are viewed non judgmentally and with non-attachment. At the core it is always bliss. It is the state of nithyananda, eternal bliss.