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The Fine Art of Meditation, Part Two

Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami

Description: Let thoughts pass by, let them go. Vegetarian diet important on the path. Ultimately, man’s greatest desire and urgency is for the realization of the Self in this life, the core of his Being. When we experience the soul we're no longer attracted to the world. Paravairāgya—the supreme state of dispassion and indifference toward worldly matters achieved by the great ones. One who meditates should avoid highly emotional states as highly emotional states requires a lessening of mental control. Put power into your meditation; go into meditation with full force and vigor being outwardly relaxed but inwardly intense at the same time. Demand perfection in your life. Meditating is rising above karmic binding influences. Penetrate the doors of the Absolute into the core of existence itself, and you become the Self. We can draw on sanchita karma; many lives can be lived in one single lifetime. Shum series related to karma: ireh, simireh, isimireh. "Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva" lessons 255-257.

Transcription:
Good morning everyone. Today we are continuing with "Merging with Siva" chapter thirty-seven entitled "The Fine Art of Meditation" drawn from "The 1972 Master Course." Lesson 255: "Thought, Diet And Desire "Devotees occasionally ask, 'When you experience a thought you don’t like, should you go around the thought, or go to the center of the thought and find out why you don’t like it?' Look at thoughts as people. I see thoughts when I’m in the world of thought like a school of fish. I’m there in the ocean, sitting and looking, and a school of fish goes by, right in front of me. Well, look at thoughts as people. You are aware of other people, but you are not other people. You are just aware of other people. So, when you see someone you do not like, you don’t have to do anything about it. Let him be. It’s the same with thoughts. When a thought comes passing by that you don’t like, let it go. You don’t have to glue yourself onto it and psychoanalyze it; it doesn’t do the thought any good to be psychoanalyzed by you! "A vegetarian diet is a big help on the spiritual path. Of course, it’s only one of the helpers on the path. I’ve worked out a very simple look at food. I look at food in four ways. You have four types of food: fresh food, dead food, clean food and dirty food. Not necessarily all fresh food is clean food. Much fresh food that we get nowadays is dirty food, because food is like a sponge. It will sponge up into itself chemicals, smog and inorganic substances. These are harmful to the physical body, because the physical body is organic. So, the object of nutrition for meditation is to eat clean, fresh, organically grown food and to avoid eating dead, chemically grown, dirty food. Every time you have a delicious dinner in front of you, ask yourself the question, 'Is this clean fresh food or dirty dead food? Or, is this clean dead food or is it fresh dirty food?' After that, have a wonderful dinner, if you can! Basically, we eat one-third fruits, nuts and seeds and two-thirds fresh vegetables, salads, grains and dairy products. "Such a diet keeps the physical and emotional forces subtle and refined, which therefore makes meditation subtle and refined, too. The within is very refined. We always try to the best of our ability, and we’re not finicky at all about watching the combination of foods." So my comment: One example is that fresh food is preferred over canned or frozen food. That's a very simple way of looking at fresh verses dead. Back to the text. "We have talked before about desire and transmutation. The idea of transmuting one’s desires really means becoming aware of something inside you that you want even more than the external desires. Ultimately, man’s greatest desire and urgency is for the realization of the Self in this life, the core of his Being. Realize that and live with it and enjoy it while on this planet. Once we intensify that desire, other desires become less intense, only because we are less aware of them. They are still intense for the people who are aware of them, because they still exist, right in the mind substance." And my comment goes to "The Yoga Sutras". A verse in the Yoga Sutras states the same idea, talking about not desiring. The supreme state of that is the non-craving for the guṇas arising from the realization of puruṣa. So what it's saying is, gunas means the world. So we're not attracted to the world because we've experienced our soul. That's what it is saying. So once we've experienced our soul then the world doesn't have the same magnetism for us. So comments on the verse: The Sanskrit term puruṣa is rich and complex; it defies rendering as a single English word—just as dharma, yoga and karma do. In Sāṅkhya/Yoga philosophy puruṣa is understood as the witness consciousness within us, the unchanging Self that simply watches without attachment or action. Patañjali explains in his sutras that when spiritual awakening takes place and the puruṣa experiences its true nature, there is a natural loss of interest in all of prakṛti’s material manifestations and machinations. This is called paravairāgya—the supreme state of dispassion and indifference toward worldly matters achieved by the great ones. And back to living with Siva. "Here’s a wonderful meditation that I think you will enjoy. It shows you how simple the mind can be. How many hairs are there on your head? Thousands, but there’s only one hair in the total mind structure. People have thousands, and animals even have more, but basically there is only one hair. Think about that. There is only one eye. People have two, and so do animals. But study one eye and you know them all. There’s only one tooth. "People have a lot of them, and so do animals, 'but there is basically only one in the universe of the mind. Meditate on that and bring everything to the one. Then, when you get it all worked out that there’s only one hair, there’s only one eye, there’s only one tooth, there’s only one fingernail, and there’s only one of everything start throwing those few things away. Throw away the tooth and make it disappear. Throw away the hair and make it disappear. This will take you right to the essence, the total essence of your being. Of course, probably your awareness will wander in the meantime, and you won’t get through this meditation. But keep working at it and working at it and really make everything extremely simple. We look at the world with our two physical eyes and we see such a complexity that it’s almost mind-boggling to encompass the entirety of it all. It’s much simpler than that on the inside." Then Lesson 266: "Energy and Meditation" Text "Highly emotional states should be avoided by one who meditates." My comment: Highly emotional states, to experience them requires a lessening of mental control. The reaction is to drop in consciousness and time is required to regain mental control and reach a balanced state of emotion. So that's highly emotional not just emotional, the highly emotional states basically. To get there we have to give up controlling the mind and then when we drop, takes a while to regain our mental control. And the text: "The reaction to the emotional experience is too strenuous for him to live with. It takes quite a while for that reaction to re-enact back through his nerve system. When one goes through an emotional state, it takes seventy-two hours for the basic emotional system to quiet and about one month for him to unwind out of the reaction to the action. So, he must really watch the emotions and keep that power very much under control. Therefore, one who meditates should not argue. One who meditates should not allow himself to become emotional. Then should he suppress his emotion? Well, if he is so emotional that he has to suppress his emotions, then he is not going to be meditating anyway, so we don’t have to bother about it. "Let’s intensify a few ideas about meditation. Put power into your meditation. Put power into your meditation so that whether you sit for five, ten or fifteen minutes a day, you go into meditation with full force and vigor. In this way, you come out of your meditation with something more profound than the thought or feeling you took within. You then begin to build up a tremendous, dynamic force, a reservoir within yourself which acts as a catalyst to push you on to contemplative states. A contemplative state of consciousness is by no means a passive state of consciousness. It is a very dynamic state of consciousness, so dynamic that the best you can do is to sit still without moving physically as you begin to enjoy it. Meditation, as you may know, is a very active state, where every thought and every feeling is directly under the flow of your will and cognition. Of course, we must remain relaxed also, being certain not to externalize our efforts, to become outwardly fanatical or pushy. There is an inner will and an outer will. We must use the inner will in our daily efforts to meditate." So my comment: Sometimes you see individuals who are meditating and clearly there is a significant strain showing on their face and in the tension seen in the body. Gurudeva is saying: that is not the correct approach. We need to be outwardly relaxed but inwardly intense at the same time. Back to the text: "Meditation does not have to be prolonged to accomplish what you want to gain in unfoldment through your perceptive insights. Ten to thirty minutes is enough in the beginning. However, after you have finished with a dynamic meditation, you might sit for a longer time in the bliss of your being and really enjoy yourself as the pure life energy radiates through your nervous system. Meditation is essentially work, good hard work, and you should be willing to work and expend energy so that you can meditate. Karma yoga activity, the ability to serve in the temple selflessly, wholeheartedly and accurately, is a must if you want seriously to amalgamate the instinctive forces that demand reward for work and be able to meditate with full force, vim and vigor. "There are many ways to prepare yourself for meditation. First, generate energy. Jump up and down, exercise, do knee bends, do push-ups and get your mind active and interested in something. It is impossible to meditate unless you are interested in what you are meditating on. Perhaps you have found this out. Then sit down dynamically. Close your eyes. Breathe, keeping your spine straight and head balanced at the top of the spine. The spine is the powerhouse of the body. Feel the power of it. Now go full force into the challenge you have chosen to take into meditation. Observe, investigate, elucidate and stay within. "Keep your body motionless until you bring out something more than you intellectually knew before, a new observation or a new thought sequence. Your meditations cannot be a milk-toast state of consciousness, a passive-magnetic state of mind." Lesson 257: "Overcoming Karma" Text: "Seekers ask, 'How can I stay awake when I meditate? I fall asleep almost every time. This happens even during the day. It’s terrible.' The answer is, it is absolutely impossible to go to sleep while in meditation and still call it meditation. It is possible to put the body to sleep deliberately and then go into meditation. If you catch yourself dropping off to sleep while sitting for meditation, you know that your meditation period is over. The best thing to do is to deliberately go to sleep, because the spiritual power is gone and has to be invoked or opened up again. After getting ready for bed, sit in a meditative position and have a dynamic meditation for as long as you can. When you become sleepy, you may put yourself to sleep by deliberately relaxing the body and causing the prāṇas to flow. Mentally say: 'Prāṇa in the left leg, flow, go to sleep; prāṇa in the right leg, flow, go to sleep; prāṇa in the right arm, flow, go to sleep; prāṇa in the left arm, flow, go to sleep; torso actinodic prāṇa, flow, go to sleep; head with inner light, go to sleep.' Then the first thing you know, it is morning. "How does meditation affect one’s karmas? Karma is congested magnetic forces, and meditating is rising above karmic binding influences. You can control the congestion of karma or avoid the congestion and thus control your karma. This proves to yourself that you are the creator, the one who preserves and the destroyer simultaneously on the higher levels of consciousness. Yet, you have to come back occasionally to the 'little old you' on this level and do the things that you have been accustomed to doing as a human, until you fully have the complete realization of the Self God—the īmkaīf experience. Then you penetrate the doors of the Absolute into the core of existence itself, and you become the Self that everyone is searching for. But to overcome karmic patterns, the will must be tremendously strong and stable, and that means we must demand perfection in our life. " And the final commentary is from Shum, relates to karma. Second dimension: ireh Cat, kitten or kitty. Third dimension: simireh Karma, prarabdha; on the path karmas intensify as many lives relived in one; the prarabdha karmas draw on the sanchita karmas when one is on the path of intense sadhana and tapas; when these two karmas join together, many lives can be lived in one single lifetime. isimireh (Fourth dimension) Path of clearing karmas of the past for a brighter future. So interesting how we can draw on sanchita, meaning what would normally not happen until a future life we're able to speed up and experience it in this life cutting down on the number of future lives required. Have a wonderful day.