Meditation is one method through which our soul, our spirit, our lives can evolve, but there is one major problem that bothers many aspirants. That problem is how to achieve successful meditation, and it is something that many people do not solve during their entire lifetime. To close the eyes and look within sounds easy enough, but to dive deeply into your own consciousness, well, that is not so easy. In order to do that, there has to be some kind of system formulated, some kind of way to go into meditation which is really a way we go into our consciousness.
There is such a system to guide the aspirant along the path of meditation. The main obstacles along that path are the many thoughts which crowd the mind automatically whenever we sit for meditation. They are of many kinds. There are thoughts about the past, present and future. There is a theory that these thoughts should immediately be suppressed, avoided by force of mind. A second theory supports the idea that if a particular thought comes into your mind, let it come and watch it carefully. Do not suppress it. The whole practice of meditation is based upon these two fundamental theories: one to suppress thoughts and the other to express thoughts.
Both ideas are right. They simply have to be applied correctly. In those cases, where the mind is terribly upset and thoughts are hammering over the mind endlessly, you should watch your thoughts and be a witness to them. Finally, when the mind becomes comparatively quiet and just a few thoughts come, which are not compelling and do not shake your consciousness from the very centre of your being, then you should suppress these thoughts. Those few distractions should be suppressed and avoided.
For instance, if you are upset mentally and you are sitting for meditation and you find that every time you try to fix your thoughts on one point, one subject, object or symbol, somehow or other the consciousness slips, and after a while, you find you are dwelling on those disturbances you underwent during the day. Then again you try to bring your mind back, but it does not want to come back. In this case, it will be necessary for you to practise witnessing the thoughts for some time. This method is known as inner silence, in technical yogic terms, antar mouna. In Sanskrit antar means inner, and mouna means quiet. This inner silence is the first requirement, the first step to successful meditation.
This practice is good for those people who have a very disturbed condition of mind. Their minds behave like a drunken monkey. It is unable to sit quietly for even a second. This first step is not for evolved souls or aspirants already on the path; it is for beginners who know little or nothing about meditation, the mind and consciousness. They are babes so to speak, so they must begin at the beginning with the practice of inner silence. First sit down with the spinal cord erect. This is most important; it should not be tense or bent, but erect. You close your eyes and ask yourself what you are thinking. If thoughts come into your mind, good or evil, let them. Don’t check a single thought; don’t hold any thought; and don’t be disturbed by any thought. Let the stream of consciousness flow.
In this practice the important thing is that you are not the thinker, you are the seer of thoughts. This is the one attitude you must maintain throughout, to be aware and to remain aware that you are a seer, a visualizer of the thoughts; and not the thinker of the thoughts. The tendency is to become a part of the thinking process and identify with the thinking process to such a degree that there is no difference between the thinker and the thought. In the practice of inner silence, the consciousness is split into two parts: one part is the thinker and the other part is the seer of the thought. There should be a constant process of ‘I am seeing the thought’, without becoming involved in the thinking itself.
To help yourself to remain the seer, imagine a screen in front of you. See it mentally. It could be white, purple, pink, yellow or black, perhaps grey. The colour is determined by the elemental structure of your personality at that moment. It doesn’t remain the same colour for long because the elements within your body change from moment to moment. When you close your eyes, you must project your thoughts onto the screen. Of course when your eyes are closed, you see darkness, the inner space or the inner firmament. That inner space is the screen and onto the screen you project spontaneous thoughts; they must spring from the bottom of your consciousness.
By definition, a spontaneous thought comes from within; it is not induced by some external occurrence. For example, if a thought comes to you because a man has just passed through the porch, it is an external thought which gains entry into your consciousness from outside. But suppose a thought of your parents comes into your mind, that is a thought from the depths of your consciousness. You continue to project these thoughts upon the screen. You try to exhaust the entire fund of your subconscious thoughts which are expressed spontaneously, without putting the brakes on any thought. Throughout the practice you remain the seer, you say, ‘I am thinking and now this particular thought is coming into my mind.’
In this method there is the danger that we are not aware that we are seeing a particular thought. It slips past our awareness. It is only after the thought has passed that you realize it went through your mind. Sooner or later, sometimes within days, you will find your mind is becoming quieter and quieter. So this practice of inner silence is a practice to produce tranquillity. In yoga this state of tranquillity is known by its Sanskrit name, pratyahara. It means withdrawal of the senses and is essential to meditation, but before we can reach the state of pratyahara, we have to go through a whole process of thought elimination from the mind.
There are other thoughts which need to be purged from the mind as well, thoughts from the past that are ready for expression. We can draw a parallel between these thought processes and the digestive process. You eat a certain food. It remains in the stomach for about five hours, then it goes into the small intestine for a few hours, then it passes into the large intestine, into the colon. It has been processed, and what the body does not need, it now eliminates. In the same way, within your personality there are hundreds and thousands of impressions belonging to this life, inherited, imported from outside and belonging to previous lives. All those thoughts are in the form of impressions which have to be exhausted through expression in meditation.
There are experiences and impressions of your previous lives and also of this life which are in a premature condition and are not ready to come out yet. Even if you want them to express, they won’t because they are immature. Then there are certain thoughts which need to come out and be expressed. They have come to the doorway. They have matured and have come to a state of fructification. This particular stock of thoughts has to come out. You cannot suppress them. These mature thoughts have gone through a process of resting, a process of fructification, desire expression. Therefore, the meditator will have to exhaust all those thoughts which are wanting expression, standing at the gateway to the mind. This can be done through inner silence.
In meditation, the first practice is inner silence. It may continue for days, weeks, months, and even years. It is possible to exhaust most of the more compelling thoughts within a few weeks. The moment you have done this, you will find that calmness comes to your mind, and the compulsion from inside is not troublesome. The noise from outside is then left to deal with.
There is the noise of the TV, loudspeakers, the radio, babies crying, children playing, neighbours, motorcars, trains, airplanes, along with thoughts of the future such as ‘I have to go to the office, I must get my son educated, I have to lock the door’ and ad infinitum. So many thoughts trouble the mind. These distractions also have to be worked out of the mind. This means that in the first stage of meditation you must work out of your mind those impressions seeking expression. In yoga the method to use is to ‘see’ your own thoughts. Watch them for as long as you can, whenever it is possible. Not only at the time which you set aside for this practice in the morning and evenings, but anywhere, everywhere. If a thought comes to you, become aware of it at any time. You will have to evolve a faculty to see your thoughts right from the time you get up until you retire at night.
Do you have any idea how many thoughts have come into your mind during one day? No, because you are not aware. Awareness is a faculty you will have to develop. The moment a thought comes to you from the depths of your consciousness, you should see it, know it has come and then let it pass. To give an example in order to make this perfectly clear, you pass over a certain road quite often. There are many cars that also use it every day, but you never notice them even though you look at them several times a day. Ask a traffic policeman. He notices every licence plate because it is his duty to do so, that is his ‘faculty’.
In meditation, you will have to use the faculty of a traffic policeman, so that the nature of every thought that passes through the mind is noted. If you do this during the day, you will find that your meditation is more successful, in so far as the impressions of the past are concerned.
Another difficulty you have to contend with is thoughts of the future, anticipatory thoughts. When you sit for meditation, no thought of the past comes up, but you find this second problem – thoughts of the future begin; potential financial difficulties, marriages, divorces, economies, family, whether certain things will or won’t take place. What should you do? When a particular thought comes to your mind about a future difficulty, you are anticipating because of a basic fear in your personality, which you cannot cut suddenly, it is a fear complex. Fear comes.
Maybe there is the danger of a crisis in your life at some future time. What are you going to do, pacify this thought or ignore it? If you fail to pacify that thought and you force yourself into meditation on your deity or mantra, what will happen? In the depths of your meditation, the visionary fears will come. You will see dragons, snakes, ghosts, and other things of this nature, and you will think they are good experiences, but they are not experiences. They are expressions of your own consciousness. Unless you solve the particular problem of consciousness, it is no use going ahead with meditation.
There is a simple solution to this problem. The moment a fear or any other complex regarding the future comes into your mind, let it come and let the thought develop to the extreme. These are the psychological problems. Let the thoughts develop to such an extreme that you think of every bad thing that can possibly befall you. Come to a point where you are finished with the thought. Cut it off. Now bring into your mind a counter thought, use the same thought process, but opposite in nature. Think of a positive thought. If it came into your mind that sometimes in the near future, you are going to suffer a grave financial loss and you let this thought work out to the maximum catastrophe, then start the thought that you can manage your financial problems, you have done so in the past and you will do so in the future. In other words, create a counter-balancing thought, a kind of heroic thought full of strength. Confidence should be entertained. Positive neutralization overcomes the negative. This is the law of the mind. This is point two.
Point three is concerned with the problems of the present. One of the problems is what to do about the physical body which refuses to behave, particularly for the aspirant from the West, who has always sat on chairs with the result that the ankle and knee joints are extremely stiff. For him the lotus pose comes very hard. Furthermore, he finds his spine won’t stay erect, his neck gets sore and tired and his arms at times feel like leaden weights. These difficulties can be worked out through asana, the physical postures. There is scarcely a town of any size anywhere, particularly in the West, which does not have teachers teaching asanas and pranayamas of hatha yoga. There are many good books written on the subject which the aspirant can use, although it is advisable to have a trained teacher.
Along with the body problem comes the problem of a ‘busy’ mind that must be quietened before any kind of meditation will succeed. Once thoughts of the past and the negative thoughts about the future have been exhausted through the processes described in steps one and two, certain techniques can be employed to eliminate thoughts of the present and to still the mind. There are many ways to do this: counting the beads, using a mantra as in japa yoga, and chanting or music as in bhakti yoga, to name a few. Through these practices you can bring the necessary peace to your mind and when this is done you can proceed with meditation.
11 June 1968, Theosophical Society, Chicago, USA