Drawn from Sivaya Subramuniyaswami’s Mastercourse and Shum primer.
Introduction
Meditation is a long journey, a pilgrimage into the mind itself. Generally we become aware that there is such a thing as meditation after the material world has lost its attraction to us and previous desires no longer bind us to patterns of fear, greed, attachment and ramification. We then seek through philosophy and religion to answer the questions, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?” We ask others. We read books. We ponder and wonder. We pray. We even doubt for a while that there is a Truth to be realized or that we, with all our seeming imperfection, can realize it if it does exist. Oddly enough, this is the beginning of the meditator’s journey on the path, for we must empty ourselves fully before the pure, superconscious energies can flow freely through us.
When we try to internalize awareness too quickly through various intense and sometimes fanatical ways, we reap the reaction. Meditation goes fine for a brief span, but then externalizes again according to the programming of our family and culture. To permanently alter these patterns, we have to work gently to develop a new lifestyle for the totality of our being: physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. This we do a little at a time. Wisdom tells us that it cannot be done all at once. We have to be patient with ourselves. If we are impatient on the path, failure is in view. We are going to fail because instant spiritual unfoldment is a fairytale concept. It is far better that we recognize that there will be difficult challenges as the subconscious looms up with all of its conflicts and confusions, heavy and strong. If our eventual goal is clearly in mind and we have a positive step-by-step plan on how to reach that goal, then we won’t get excited when something goes wrong, because we view our mental and emotional storms in their proper and temporary perspective.§
In the beginning it is best to find a suitable room that is dedicated solely to meditation. If you were a carpenter, you would get a shop for that purpose. You have a room for eating, a room for sleeping. Now you need a separate room just for the purpose of meditation. When you find it, wash the walls and ceiling, clean the windows. Prepare a small altar if you like, bringing together the elements of earth, air, fire and water.§
Establish a time for your meditations and meet those times strictly. There will be days when you just don’t feel like meditating. Good. Those are often the best days, the times when we make strong inner strides. The finest times to meditate are just before sunrise and sunset. The period of meditation should be from ten minutes to one-half hour to begin with.§
By sitting up straight, with the spine erect, the energies of the physical body are transmuted. Posture is important, especially as meditation deepens and lengthens. With the spine erect and the head balanced at the top of the spine, the life force is quickened and intensified as energies flood freely through the nerve system. In a position such as this, we cannot become worried, fretful, depressed or sleepy during our meditation.§
But if we slump the shoulders forward, we short-circuit the life energies. In a position such as this, it is easy to become depressed, to have mental arguments with oneself or another, or to experience unhappiness. So, learn to sit dynamically, relaxed and yet poised. The first observation you may have when thus seated for meditation is that thoughts are racing through the mind substance. You may become aware of many, many thoughts. Also, the breath may be irregular. Therefore, the next step is to transmute the energies from the intellectual area of the mind through proper breathing, in just the same way as the proper attitude, preparation and posture transmuted the physical-instinctive energies. Through regulation of the breath, thoughts are stilled and awareness moves into an area of the mind which does not think, but conceives and intuits.§
There are vast and powerful systems of breathing that can stimulate the mind, sometimes to excess. Deep meditation requires only that the breath be systematically slowed or lengthened. This happens naturally as we go within, but can be encouraged by a simple method of breathing called kalībasa in Shūm, my language of meditation. During kalībasa, the breath is counted: nine counts as we inhale, hold one count, nine counts as we exhale, hold one count. The length of the beats or the rhythm of the breath will slow as the meditation is sustained, until we are counting to the beat of the heart. This exercise allows awareness to flow into an area of the mind that is intensely alive, peaceful, blissful and conceives the totality of a concept rather than thinking out the various parts.§
Having thus quieted the outer forces, we are prepared to meditate. Just sitting is not enough. To meditate for even ten or fifteen minutes takes as much energy as one would use in running around the block three times. A powerful meditation fills and thrills us with an abundance of energy to be used creatively in the external world during the activities of daily life. Great effort is required to make inner strides; we must strive very, very hard and meet each inner challenge.§
But what to meditate upon? What do we focus on during meditation? Usually the sincere devotee will have a guru or spiritual guide and follow his instructions. He may have a mantra, or sound, which he concentrates upon, or a particular technique or attitude he is perfecting. If he has no guru or specific instructions, then here is a rāja yoga exercise that can enhance inner life, making it tangibly real and opening inner doors of the mind. Use it to begin each meditation for the rest of your life.§
Simply sit, quiet the mind, and feel the warmth of the body. Feel the natural warmth in the feet, in the legs, in the head, in the neck, in the hands and face. Simply sit and be aware of that warmth. Feel the glow of the body. This is very easy, because the physical body is what many of us are most aware of. Take five or ten minutes to do this. There’s no hurry. Once you can feel this warmth that is created by the life force as it flows in and through the body’s cells, once you can feel this all over the body at the same time, go within to the next step.§
The second step is to feel the nerve currents of the body. There are thousands of miles of nerve currents in each of us. Don’t try to feel them all at once. Start with the little ones, with the feeling of the hands, thumbs touching, resting on your lap. Now, feel the life force going through these nerves, energizing the body. Try to sense the even more subtle nerves that extend out and around the body about three or four feet. This may take a long time. When you have located some of these nerves, feel the energy within them. Tune into the currents of life force as they flow through these nerves. This is a subtle feeling, and most likely awareness will wander into some other area of the mind. When this happens, gently bring it back to your point of concentration, to feeling the nerves within the body and the energy within the nerves.§
The third step takes us deeper inside, as we become dynamically aware in the spine. Feel the power within the spine, the powerhouse of energy that feeds out to the external nerves and muscles. Visualize the spine in your mind’s eye. See it as a hollow tube or channel through which life energies flow. Feel it with your inner feelings. It’s there, subtle and silent, yet totally intense. It is a simple feeling. We can all feel it easily. As you feel this hollow spine filled with energy, realize that you are more that energy than you are the physical body through which it flows, more that pure energy than the emotions, than the thought force. Identify yourself with this energy and begin to live your true spiritual heritage on this Earth. As you dive deeper into that energy, you will find that this great power, your sense of awareness and your willpower are all one and the same thing.§
The fourth step comes as we plunge awareness into the essence, the center of this energy in the head and spine. This requires great discipline and exacting control to bring awareness to the point of being aware of itself. The state of being totally aware that we are aware is called kaīf». It is pure awareness, not aware of any object, feeling or thought. Simply sit in a state of pure consciousness. Be aware of being aware. Don’t be aware of a second thing. Simply be aware that you are aware—a totality of dynamic, scintillating awareness, vibrant right in the central source of energy. It’s closer to what you really are than your name, than your intellectual education, than your emotional behavior or the physical body itself, which you only inhabit. Go into the physical forces that flood, day and night, through the spine and body. Then go into the energy of that, deeper into the vast inner space of that, into the essence of that, into the that of that, and into the that of that. As you sit in this state, new energies will flood the body, flowing out through the nerve system, out into the exterior world. The nature becomes very refined in meditating in this way. Once you are thus centered within yourself, you are ready to pursue a meditation, a mantra or a deep philosophical question. §
Coming out of meditation, we perform this process in reverse. Again feel the power of the spine and let that power flow right out through the nerve system, energizing the miles and miles of nerve currents. Feel your nerve system coming to life. Feel the warmth of the body as we come back into physical consciousness. Finally, open your eyes and view the external world around you and compare it to the internal world that you very rapidly just touched into in your meditation. It’s easy to remember this entrance and exit to meditation. Do it often. Get to know the energy flows of the body. Live in the pure energy of the spine. Lean on no one. If you must lean on something, make it your own spine.§
This seven-step preparation for meditation is designed to withdraw your energies from external consciousness.
Basic Shum Meditation Steps
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MEANING: Ideal meditation posture, in which the spine is straight and the head is balanced on top of the spine.
PRACTICE: Sit with the spine straight and the head balanced on top of the spine. Inwardly observe this posture and adjust the body to be poised and comfortable. Feel the muscles, bones and the nerve system. This posture is possible sitting in a chair, on a cushion, or on your knees. Ideally, a competent meditator will be able to cross the legs for meditation, either in full or half lotus. The hands are held in the lap, the right hand resting on the left, tips of the thumbs touching softly. In all cases, the posture should be natural and easy, and not cause discomfort, which is distracting during meditation. Look inwardly at the currents of the body. Observe their flow.
BREATHING: Breathe from the diaphragm in a relaxed manner without counting.
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MEANING: Regulated, diaphragmatic breathing, known in Sanskrit as prāṇāyāma.
PRACTICE: Become aware of your breathing and consciously regulate it. Eyes are slightly open, crossed and looking at the nose.
BREATHING: Breathe with the diaphragm, expanding the abdomen when you inhale, rather than the chest. On the inhalation, slowly count to nine, hold one count, then count to nine again as you exhale, softly contracting the abdomen as you expel the air. Breathe through the nose. The exhalation should be the same length as the inhalation. At first, the count may be faster than the heartbeat, but as the meditation continues, the two should ideally become synchronized.
VISUALIZATION (OPTIONAL): While counting the breath, mentally pronounce and simultaneously see the colors of the first eighteen images of Shūm, the first nine with the inbreath and the second nine with the outbreath. This sādhana is called sīflīmf in Shūm. The colors are: ī, bright yellow; image, soft pink; ing, soft blue; ling, bright turquoise; lī, bright violet; nī, rich yellow, ka, rich turquoise; sim, bright pink; vūm, rich purple; reh, bright orange; tyē, rich orange; ā, rich blue; bī, bright blue; ū, soft ivory; na, soft green; sī, bright red; dī, bright green; shūm, soft lavender.
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MEANING: The kuṇḍalinī’s psychic heat felt as meditation begins.
PRACTICE: Feel the warmth of the body, in the head, through the torso, the hands and the legs. Begin by locating ālīkaiīshūm inside the body, then gradually become conscious of it emanating out through the skin.
BREATHING: Continue the same count. On the inhalation, slowly count to nine, hold one count, then count to nine again as you exhale, softly contracting the abdomen as you expel the air.
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MEANING: The feeling of energy, your life force, flowing through the network of nerves within your physical and subtle bodies. These nerves are called nāḍīs in Sanskrit.
PRACTICE: Feel your nerve system, all those thousands of miles of nerve currents throughout the body and the psychic nerve system within and around the body. Feel the energy flowing through this vast network.
BREATHING: Continue the same count. On the inhalation, slowly count to nine, hold one count, then count to nine again as you exhale, softly contracting the abdomen as you expel the air.
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MEANING: Simshūmbīsī» names the area of fourteen strong psychic nerve currents of the subsuperconscious state of mind running along the spinal column. Simshūmbīsī» is often referred to as the source of all life energies within man. As a command used in meditation, it refers to the yoga of feeling the actinic energy within the spine. This is the pure life force flowing through the spine out into the nerve system.
PRACTICE: Become aware of the actinic energy within the center of your spine. If necessary, move the torso back and forth slightly to locate the spine. Do not try to manipulate the spinal forces, such as lifting the kuṇḍalinī, rather simply become conscious of the already-existing power within the spine.
BREATHING: Breathe in a normal and relaxed manner without counting.
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MEANING: The yoga of withdrawing the energy into the spine through the use of prāṇāyāma, breath control.
PRACTICE: Draw the energy from the five senses inward in a systematic way. On the first inbreath, bring awareness into the left leg, all the way to the toes, and on the outbreath slowly withdraw the energy from that leg into the spine. Repeat with the right leg, left arm (all the way to the fingertips), right arm and finally the torso.
BREATHING: Breathe in a normal and relaxed manner without counting.
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MEANING: The singling out of your pure awareness, allowing for the prolonged experience of being aware of being aware.
PRACTICE: Be aware of just being aware. Achieving this, you will be aware without any object, feeling or thought. Experience kaīf» even for a brief time, and you feel renewed, clear-minded, centered.
BREATHING: Breathe in a normal and relaxed manner without counting.
Coming Out
In coming out of meditation the steps are repeated in reverse order. The return to normal consciousness through these same steps is quicker than the internalizing practice.
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PRACTICE: Reverse the process so that the energy is flowing out of the spine into the nerve system in the physical and subtle body.
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MEANING: The guided group meditation in the Shūm language has concluded
Further Advice for meditation
Many seekers work or even struggle regularly with their meditations, especially those who are just beginning. “How does one know if he is really meditating or not?” That’s a question that a lot of people who meditate ask themselves. When you begin to know, having left the process of thinking, you are meditating at that point. When you sit down and think, you are beginning the process of meditation. For instance, if you read a metaphysical book, a deep book, and then sit quietly, breathe and start pondering what you have been reading, well, you’re not quite meditating. You’re in a state called concentration. You’re organizing the subject matter. When you begin to realize the interrelated aspects of what you have read, when you say to yourself, “That’s right. That’s right,” when you get these inner flashes, the process of meditation has just begun. If you sustain this intensity, insights and knowledge will come from the inside of you. You begin to connect all of the inner flashes together like a string of beads. You become just one big inner flash. You know all of these new inner things, and one insight develops into another, into another, into another. Then you move into a deeper state, called contemplation, where you feel these beautiful, blissful energies flow through the body as a result of your meditation. With disciplined control of awareness, you can go deeper and deeper into that. So, basically, meditation begins when you move out of the process of thinking. ¶I look at the mind as a traveler looks at the world. Himalayan Academy students have traveled with me all over the world, in hundreds of cities, in dozens of countries, as we’ve set up āśramas here and there on our Innersearch Travel-Study programs. Together we have gone in and in and in and in amid different types of environments, but the inside is always the same wherever we are. So, look at the mind as the traveler looks at the world. ¶Just as you travel around the world, when you’re in meditation you travel in the mind. We have the big city called thought. We have another big city called emotion. There’s yet another big city called fear, and another one nearby called worry. But we are not those cities. We’re just the traveler. When we’re in San Francisco, we are not San Francisco. When we’re aware of worry, we are not worry. We are just the inner traveler who has become aware of the different areas of the mind. ¶Of course, when we are aware in the thought area, we are not meditating. We’re in the intellectual area of the mind. We have to breathe more deeply, control the breath more and move awareness out of the thought area of the mind, into that next inner area, where we begin to know. Such an experience supersedes thinking, and that is when meditation starts. I’m sure that you have experienced that many, many times. ¶Many people use meditation to become quieter, relaxed, or more concentrated. For them, that is the goal, and if that is the goal, that is what is attained, and it’s attained quite easily. However, for the deeper philosophical student the goal is different. It’s the realization of the Self in this life. Meditation is the conveyance of man’s individual awareness toward that realization. Each one, according to his evolution, has his own particular goal. If he works at it, he fulfills that goal. For example, a musician playing the piano might be satisfied with being able to play simple, easy tunes to entertain himself and his friends. Yet, another musician more ambitious in the fine arts might want to play Bach and Beethoven. He would really have to work hard at it. He would have to be that much more dedicated, give up that much of his emotional life, intellectual life and put that much more time into it. So it is in meditation.
Meditation is a fine art and should be approached in the same way the fine arts are approached. That’s the way we teach meditation at Himalayan Academy, as a fine art. The artist-teachers are not running after the students. You don’t learn a fine art that way. You go to your teacher because you want to learn. You might go a long distance. You want to learn, and so you study. He gives you something to work on. You go away and you work on it, and you come back having perfected it. That’s how we expect Academy students to progress along the path. Something has to happen on the inside, and it usually does. ¶Controlling the breath is the same as controlling awareness. They go hand in hand. During meditation, the breath, the heartbeat, metabolism—it all slows down, just like in sleep. You know, deep meditation and deep sleep are extremely similar. Therefore, the practice of prāṇāyāma and regulation of the breath, the prāṇas, the currents of the body, should really be mastered first. In the very same way, the dancer doesn’t just start out dancing. He starts out exercising first. He may exercise strenuously for a year before he begins to really dance. The pianist doesn’t sit down at the piano and start with a concert. He starts with the scales and with the chords. He starts by limbering his fingers, by perfecting his rhythm and posture. Meditation has to be taught like one of the fine arts. It’s only the finely refined person who can really learn to meditate. Not everyone who wants to meditate can learn to meditate. Not everyone who wants to learn to dance or to play the piano can learn how to really, really do it. We need this preparation of the physical body so that the physical and emotional bodies behave themselves while you are in a deep state of meditation. ¶Your breath will slow down until you almost seem to stop breathing. Sometimes you do, and you’re breathing with an inner breath. You have to educate yourself to that so it doesn’t make you fearful and bring you out of meditation with a jerk and a gasp, which can then inhibit you. You can get fearful in meditation. So, good basics must be learned for one to become a deep meditator. You can spend hours or years working with the breath. Find a good teacher first, one who keeps it simple and gentle. You don’t need to strain. Start simply by slowing the breath down. Breathe by moving the diaphragm instead of the chest. This is how children breathe, you know. So, be a child. If you learn to control the breath, you can be master of your awareness. ¶The sense of bhakti yoga, a sense of devotion, is extremely important on the path. Unless we have a great bhakti, a great devotion, we can easily be shaken from the spiritual path. It’s the fuel that keeps us motivated. If we prepare our room before meditation by lighting an oil lamp or candle, a stick of incense, or only setting out a few fresh flowers, it puts us in a state of readiness; and for any serious thing that we do, we must prepare. If you’re going to cook a fine meal for a special guest, you take a bath first. You prepare yourself; you get ready. You get mentally, emotionally and physically ready. Meditation is the same thing. Physical preparations have their effect on the mind and emotions, too, turning awareness within and creating a mood and environment where there are fewer distractions. If you would prepare for meditation as exactly and precisely as you prepare yourself in the external world to go to work every day, your meditations would be much improved.
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 dead dirty 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. ¶We have talked before about desire and transmutation. The idea of transmuting one’s desires really means becoming aware of something inside 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. ¶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.
Highly emotional states should be avoided by one who meditates. 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. ¶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.
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. ¶Why would you ever want to place demands of perfection upon yourself? You now walk the path of perfection, and you must be so to walk that path. What is this perfection? First, it is a clarity of cognition. Second, it is a bursting of actinic love for your fellow man. Third, it is an openness and willingness to serve and fit in, in any capacity. Fourth, it is living a contemplative lifestyle better every day. Fifth, it is mastering all of your yoga disciplines given to you by your guru. Sixth, it is the ability to hold responsibility, maintain a continuity of your own karma yoga, yet have the mobile quality to be ever ready to do something different without losing continuity of what you have been doing in holding your responsibility. ¶If you can gear yourself to accomplish all this, you are on the path of enlightenment and you will surely prove to yourself, when you have your realization, that you are a free man in a free world, subject to nobody, to no power, even the power of karma. How could That which is formless and causeless be subject to anything?
I am often asked, “When one feels it’s time to travel the spiritual path, do you recommend he aggressively seek a guru or passively wait and see what happens?” When one is ready to swim, should he walk around the swimming pool, or should he dive in and get on with it? Naturally, he should dive in and take each thing that comes along in a very positive way. That is the thing to do. Otherwise, in waiting and putting it into the intellectual mind, all the different doubts come up and make a big fog which again he has to live through. He missed his timing. ¶The guru-disciple relationship is so central in Hinduism. A guru is a helper on the inner path. Visualize a rocky stream path leading up a high mountain. The guru is there to help you over some big boulders and through the swamps and to send out a scout to help you back on the inner path if you become externalized. You don’t need a satguru all the time. Most of it you have to do yourself, after you have his grace and learn the rules. But, he is there when you need him inwardly; he is just there, and that is reassuring. Do everything that you possibly can for your guru. The guru is like the wind. You may not always have him as close to you, so throw yourself into his work selflessly. He has a mission that came to him from his guru and his guru’s guru. It is your mission in this life, too, realization of the Self God within and helping others do the same. ¶I have been asked many times, “How does one choose a guru?” Well, if you were in a crowd of people and you hadn’t seen your mother and father for five or ten years, you would immediately know them. You could pick them out of a large crowd. You’d immediately know. Not necessarily by how they looked, but by the vibration. You’d immediately know. And so it is with the guru. There are, shall we say, commercial gurus. Pick a guru. Here a guru, there a guru. A guru, in the classical sense of the word, doesn’t have a great many devotees. He might have a lot of people who think he’s really great, especially if he chants well or does something that is outstanding. It’s easy to get a lot of followers. Traditionally, a guru can only take a few close disciples, and he generally does. ¶If you’re looking for a guru, try to feel his vibration. Better still, talk to his students to see if they have any substance. Ask them, “Have you had any inner experience?” If they start talking about everything, telling you all about it or try to convert you, be cautious. On the other hand, if they look content within themselves and test you out a little to see if you’re sincere, you know that they’re taught to be wise. Look at the students. See how they interact among themselves. Observe closely what they do. Note how well disciplined they are. In this way, you get to know the caliber of the man who is their satguru. Find out who his guru is and where the line of darshan power comes from. Then you get to know, to really know. Don’t be too hasty in picking your guru. That is the best advice. Maybe it’s not for you in this life to have a guru. Maybe next life or the life after that. There’s no hurry, and yet there is a great sense of urgency on the spiritual path, a great sense of urgency. Don’t go hunting for a guru. Just be alert enough to know when you encounter him. ¶How does one know whether an inner experience is real or imaginary? Well, we don’t have to go very far in answering that question, because everyone has inner experiences. Two people are in love. They fight. They separate. That’s an inner experience. And it’s real, isn’t it? That emotion, that tearing apart, those wonderful mental arguments where nobody quite wins—they’re all real. Even such an argument is an inner experience, but of a more externalized, instinctive-intellectual or gross nature. Yet, it’s very real. It shakes the muscles. It can even make us perspire. It lives within us. It could keep us awake at night or give us disturbing dreams. It’s a real and a vital experience. We have to go through these grosser inner experiences first before our inner life becomes more refined. They are just as real—seeing light within the body, light within the head and hearing the inner sounds. All of the things you have read about come to you after you have gone through the inner experiences of the instinctive and intellectual mind. First we go through our inner instinctive experiences, then our intellectual experiences, then our intuitive or creative experiences. Finally, we come to the Self, which we realize is the totality of all inner experiences, being beyond experience itself.
The refined, inner energy that you experience in your deepest meditations is always there, was always there and shall always be there. It’s just there. You don’t have to call upon it. It’s just there. Just be aware that you are it, and not that you are any other of the many other types of things that you can be. Just be that intangible, tangible energy and don’t be the emotions that you feel. Don’t be thoughts that you think. Don’t be the stomach that’s hungry. Don’t be the body that’s moving. Don’t be the place that you’re going to. Just be that energy. Then you can do anything in the external world and really enjoy life. ¶Here are some basic signposts for successful meditation. Remember them and do them slowly on your own. First, sit up nice and straight with the spine erect and the head balanced at the top of the spine. Proper posture is necessary because the very simple act of equalizing the weight and having it held up by the spine causes you to lose body consciousness. Just the equalizing of your weight can do that. Breathe deeply and rhythmically. Feel the energies of the body begin to flow harmoniously through the body. Now try to feel the warmth of the body. Simply feel the warmth of the body. Once you can sense physical warmth, try to feel the totality of the nerve system at one time—all of the five or six thousand miles of nerve currents. It’s simple. Feel it all at one time and grasp that intuitively. Now, this nerve current is being energized from one central source, and we’re going to find that source. It’s in the central core of the spine. Feel that energy flow through the spine and out through this nerve system, which finally causes warmth in the physical body, which you’ve already felt. But now don’t feel the warmth of the body. Don’t feel the nerve system. Feel only the power of the spine. Once you have done this, you are ready to meditate. You’re alive in your body. You look alive. You look vital. Your face is beginning to glow. Next simply sit in a state of pure consciousness. Be aware of being aware. Don’t be aware of a second thing. Simply be aware that you are aware—a totality of dynamic, scintillating awareness, vibrant right in the central source of energy. It’s closer to what you really are than your name, than your intellectual education, than your emotional behavior or the physical body itself, which you only inhabit. From this point in your own personal meditation you can take off and travel in many different directions. If your guru has given you a mantra, for instance, contemplate on the inner vibrations of the mantra. Chant it to yourself, or follow whatever inner instructions he has given you. ¶Coming out of meditation, we perform this process in reverse. Again feel the power of the spine and let that power flow right out through the nerve system, energizing the miles and miles of nerve currents. Feel your nerve system coming to life. Feel the warmth of the body as we come back into physical consciousness. Finally, open your eyes and view the external world around you and compare it to the internal world that you very rapidly just touched into in your meditation. It’s easy to remember this entrance and exit to meditation. Do it often. Get to know the energy flows of the body. Live in the pure energy of the spine. Lean on no one. If you must lean on something, make it your own spine.