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.§