Meditation aims at the reintegration of the self. It is a kind of in-gathering and collecting. It induces the stillness of all mental activities which leads the aspirant to the silence which is the source and condition of all activities. The inspiration comes from within the soul but from above conceptual reason. In meditation the mind may be fixed on the inner light or on the heart of the illumined soul or on any divine from or name that appeals to one as good. Meditation is not a swoon but an act of close attention. There we visualize the supreme with all our total being. Meditation involves a process of abstraction by which we get behind the physical, vital and mental layers and reach the inner self. “To attain the Good, we must ascend the highest state and fixing our gaze thereon, lay aside the garments we donned when descending here below”. Thereby we sink into the measureless Being that is without limitation or determination.

In meditation an attempt is made to trace the origin of thought. Thought is the subtle form of word or speech. When we speak, words are audible to the ear; if we do not speak the words become inaudible to the organ of hearing. Thus thought is a subtle form of sound, and sound has four stages, namely, Vaikhari; Madhyama, Pashyanti and Para. Vaikhari or the spoken word is audible while the remaining three are inaudible. The process of thinking starts from the deepest level of consciousness, that is, from Para and becomes grosser as it develops. Eventually it becomes gross enough to be sensed on the surface level of consciousness. A thought starts from the depths of mind as a bubble starts from the bottom of the lake. Any thought on the surface level is consciously appreciated. If there were a way to consciously appreciate all the stages of thought prior to the reaching the surface level, that would be the way to transcend thought and experience. That way is the way of meditation.   The transcendent being or God really transcends all the name, form and function. An attempt to describe the real form of God will prove futile. It is impossible for any one to assert that God is exactly like this and unlike any other thing. The highest flight of imagination of the greatest philosophers fails to catch even the fringe of Reality. Yet whatever be the form through which the aspirant invokes the Supreme, will be accepted by Him and in turn He will bestow upon the aspirant, the knowledge of His own real form and nature. There are many forms of meditation and the aspirant has to make his own choice from among them according to his own taste, condition and convenience. But he should constantly bear in mind that God who is the ultimate truth, is one and the same. And it is that one and the same Reality who allows himself to be realized through a variety of names and forms.

Meditation aims at the reintegration of the self. It is a kind of in-gathering and collecting. It induces the stillness of all mental activities which leads the aspirant to the silence which is the source and condition of all activities. The inspiration comes from within the soul but from above conceptual reason. In meditation the mind may be fixed on the inner light or on the heart of the illumined soul or on any divine from or name that appeals to one as good. Meditation is not a swoon but an act of close attention. There we visualize the supreme with all our total being. Meditation involves a process of abstraction by which we get behind the physical, vital and mental layers and reach the inner self. “To attain the Good, we must ascend the highest state and fixing our gaze thereon, lay aside the garments we donned when descending here below”. Thereby we sink into the measureless Being that is without limitation or determination.

It is necessary for the practicant to know the conditions of place, time and posture in which meditation should be performed. The place may be his own home but it should be clean and pure, with sweet and fragrant flowers or agarbatti and with pictures of saints and sages drawn in beautiful features and colours. The suitable time for meditation is the early morning, for the mind remains calm at that time. But it is not advisable to meditate just after a full meal or after heavy exertion. Meditation before taking food is always easy and effective. The seat should be neither too high nor too low and should consist of a blanket or a wooden plank with a white clean cloth over it. The sadhaka or the practicant in padmasana should sit on it with his face turned either towards the East or towards the North. Lotus pose gives the mind an easy stimulus to concentrate. In the initial stage the period of meditation should not exceed the limit of fifteen minutes and it should be gradually lengthened till it reaches the duration of three hours. Sometimes and for some sadhakas an hour’s meditation is sufficient.   During meditation the trunk, neck and head of the body should be kept straight and the spine unbending and erect. When the sadhaka sits for meditation his mind does not all at once fall silent. So long as the mind is not wholly absorbed in the object of meditation and the physical or phenomenal consciousness is awake and thoughts of worldly objects come and cross and crowd the mind, the sadhaka should devote himself to the repetition of Om. Before he begins to practice meditation in right earnest, he should perform Dirgha Pranvanu-sadhana, that is, he should do the deep and loud chanting of Om for five minutes. This generates favourable vibrations which set the mind at rest giving it a fillip to ingather. Then he should begin to meditate on his chosen ideal and at the time of meditation, the eyes should be closed.

Now a few forms of meditation will be dealt with in a general way –   The heart is the seat of the psychic being which is in the form of light known as Tejas. Imagine a steady, clear and effulgent speck of light in the center of the heart and meditate upon it. The sadhaka cannot visualize all at once the speck of steady light, when he begins to meditate on the heart centre with his eyes closed; the immediate result is darkness, a restless darkness – it is a painful night. If, however, he refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down, the darkness begins to thin and wear away. Then comes the stage of restful darkness but it is still darkness. The outer lights are gone and the inner light is not yet visible. But the true seeker goes through and comes out triumphant, for darkness in the end disappears and the seeker steps out of the night, enters into the deeper layer of the heart and stands face to face to the inner light – the very image of the self.   Oh! ye the seeker gather all the strings of dispersed consciousness, roll them up and rush into the heart and there in its deep quietude you will find the joyful jet of light.

Meditation on Om (AUM) in the center of the eye-brows should be practiced. Om is called the seed from which the tree of Veda or knowledge has sprung up. This only means that intuitive knowledge wells out from within by the constant repetition of Om with an attention on its meaning. The seeker should chant the Om in all his sincerity. While the lips and throat repeat it physically, the mind should reflect upon it intently and the heart should feel it profoundly. Thus the three fold intonation of Om removes the veil of darkness and reveals the glory of self.   The Upanishad is eloquent on the greatness and efficacy of OM. Om is described not merely as the means of meditation but the goal to be reached by the meditation itself. It is the supreme, the supreme support. Thus Om stands for both the means and the end of spiritual life. “The mystic symbol Om is the bow; the arrow is the soul; Brahman is the mark to be pierced. We should penetrate it with one-pointed attention, so that the arrow may become one with the mark.” See how the unitary state of consciousness is achieved by the meditation of Om. It is a strange but happy thing to know that the sun himself, we are told, travels the universe, singing the symbol Om. Finally, the moral efficacy of meditation on Om is brought into bold relief in this saying : Just as a snake is relieved of its slough similarly is the man who meditates on Om relieved of his sins, and by power of his chants is lifted to the highest world where he beholds the person who informs the body, and who stands supreme above any living complex whatsoever.”

Meditation on the space in the crown center leads one to the realization of an impersonal and universal divine. The seeker should reflect that space within the pot and the space in the room are not different. Similarly, the space within the room and the space outside the room are not different. It is in eternal space that all the rooms have been constructed and it is in one such room that the pot has been placed. It is the same space which permeates all those places and the smallness and largeness of space observed in the pot and in the room are nothing but an appearance. If the space in the pot transcends its limitations and establishes its identity with the outside space which is, in fact, its eternal form, then it will be realized that every thing is an imposition on the space which is all pervading. Moreover, it will be discovered that the material and instrumental causes underlying the construction of both the room and the pot are apparent and not real. Following this train of reflection, the seeker should eliminate the I or the ego-sense and identify it with the larger I or the universal self which conditions the world of appearance.

Meditation on breathing also constitutes an exercise. Normally, breathing goes on automatically and unconsciously through the action of the sympathetic nervous system. The seeker should become conscious of the course of breathing and focus his attention on the inhalations and exhalations without any conscious effort at Kumbhaka or retention of breath, and develop the habit of counting them gradually up to thousand. He may otherwise adopt the method of counting the inhalations and exhalations for exactly one hour. The exercise of counting the number of breathing is a psychological device for turning the mind inward. When the mind thus becomes introvert to a certain extent, the seeker then should take up the breathing process with colour consciousness. While inhaling the breath imagine that five coloured rays of light are entering the body from outside, while exhaling imagine that rays of a similar kind are going out from the body and spreading themselves in the outer space. The five colours are red, violet, green, blue and yellow. These five cosmic colours have their points of contact with the five sense organs of man. Meditation on the breathing process makes the sense organs accurate and sensitive.

Crystal gazing is also one of the methods of meditation. There is nothing at all magical in gazing crystals; they are merely instruments. Just as a microscope or telescope can bring invisible objects view by using natural laws, so can a gazing crystal. It merely serves as a means for the invisible or the third eye, the opening of which enables one to penetrate any person’s subconscious mind, and retain the memory of facts gleaned. There is a variety of crystal-gazing. Some persons work with a rock crystal, others prefer a ball of glass, yet others use a bowl of water or a pure black disc. No matter what they use, the principles involved are the same.   Istalinga is also a sort of crystal. It is made of light grey stone and is coated all over with a fine durable paste made of certain ingredients. Istalinga is supposed to be a representation of God and is worshipped daily once or twice. Linga is placed on the palm of the left hand so raised as to come in a line with the centre of the eye-brows. Behind the back just above the shoulder an oil-fed lamp should be placed in the nitch, so that the light of the lamp is reflected in the coating of the Linga. With half closed eyes the devotee should fix his attention upon that Linga, the coating of which is blue-black or indigo serving to widen and deepen concentration. The concentrate gaze generates psychic heat which stirs into activity the dormant pineal gland. The flowering out of the pineal gland which is supposed to be the relic of the third eye, confers upon the seeker the clairvoyance.

Meditation on the attributes of God or on qualities like love, forgiveness and non-violence is also practiced. By meditation on these the mind gets suffused by moral and spiritual fervour. God exists because man exists. There is no God but man; man knows God in proportion as he knows himself. Man is neither a bundle of nerves and muscles nor a stream of sensations and impressions, but he is a concrete person, a real individual who is evidenced by the presence of I. All experience, whether cognitive, conative or affective, is an experience to the I which is implicit in all awareness. The implicit I in all awareness is not something inferred by reasoning but something immediately lived and known by experience. What is immediately known is apprehended as unique, as a formal and a material distinction – a distinction of Ahamta and Parahamta; a distinction of soul and oversoul. This oversoul goes by the name of God. If man is a concrete individual, then God is the most unique individual. The relation between the individual and the universal, between man and God is to be established not without but within one’s own consciousness. In establishing this relationship prayer and meditation help us to a great extent. Because God is the unique individual, he is therefore the repository of innumerable attributes such as Love, Knowledge, Power, Bliss, Beauty, Unity etc. It is not given for the human intellect to comprehend them all at once stretch. Hence it abstracts some of them and by this mode of abstraction it becomes able to concentrate upon one or other of the attributes. Since the whole of God cannot be grasped by the human mind, it is therefore no weakness, if meditation is directed to some definite or well-defined attributes of God. Meditation is to fix the mind on a definite attribute of the Divine, lest the vagrant mind goes uninhabited and hence un-energized for securing a desired object.

Seek not the self in the man-made temples, churches or mosques, but see it in the grandeur of the universe, in the solitude of thy heart, in the nature’s features of exquisite beauty. See it in the blazing Sun, in the blue sky, in the murmuring river, in the majestic mountain, in the blooming flower, in the burning fire. Tune thy mind with nature’s rhythmic music to stimulate thy inner music of the soul which is infinitely superior to the music of the spheres. The inner self is the sweet musician who is ever weaving the discords, deftly into the great masterpiece of the universe.   Learn thou to hear the voice of the silence, the soundless sound. The voice of silence is the voice of the inner self. Sitting alone on a plane ground beneath the canopy of the azure sky, studded with the twinkling stars and the lovely moon, enjoy the soft breeze that blows on the face creating a happy lull in the mind that turns wild passion into mild peace. It is only when the mind is silenced, the sense are controlled and the heart takes delight in the nature’s joyous rides, that the voice of the self is heard. There is no music grander than the music of silent communion with the inner self.   Self is the light that burns in the heart without wick and oil. It is a light that can never be blown out by any gush of wind. To see this inner light requires a mind disciplined by a life of self-abnegation and active altruism, cleansed and curbed by daily prayer and meditation.

It is the pure heart and not proud head, the inner illumination and not the outer intellect that can reveal this light. Yearn ye O seeker, to hear the music of the self resounding and reverberating through the corridor of eternity. The voice of silence thrills and enthralls thee when thou are in deep communion with thy inner self.   The world is deafened by useless words – words of insipid advice, words of false hopes and fond illusions, words of cheap propaganda and chary slogans. Not garrulous speech but a grave silence is the need of the day. The 20th century has made many contributions to the modern civilization. Of all these, the contribution of the noise is the supreme. It ranges from the hearth to the heaven, from the interior span to the interstellar space. I urge upon you to observe silence at least one day a week. It is very helpful for self-introspection. Man must needs to turn away from the world of noise into the inward stillness, into the interior silence, to become aware of the Reality which transcends time and space. The present condition of the world is diseased. The word of God cannot be heard in the world today.

O God, we find Thee in the silence of the heart,

Not in the noises of life’s busy mart.

We hear thy voice, when the soul is in tune,

We get thy breath when the heart is hewn.

                                                                            – OM SHANTI | OM SHANTI | OM SHANTIHI –

This article ‘Astrology and Yoga’ is taken from H.H.Mahatapasvi Shri Kumarswamiji’s book, ‘Towards the Spiritual Nisus’.