The gurus and teachers in the twentieth century talk about meditation as a medicinal pill, and I am no exception to this explanation. When you read the books of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, of Swami Sivananda, of any yoga teacher in the western hemisphere, or you open any scientific manual on the research of meditation, it seems that meditation is a system of therapy.
It will not be possible for me to quote the names of the books and their writers but most recent books on the subject of stress and strain have come to the conclusion that meditation is the best way. They have also said that, the two symptoms of stress and strain are the cause of most diseases, let us say eighty-nine percent. This means that if you have a migraine, meditation will help you. If you are suffering from hyperacidity and consequently peptic ulcer, meditation will help you. If you have tension and hypertension, high blood pressure, meditation can bring it down. There is no end to this type of citation now and this is, in my opinion, the one reason why the modern world is accepting meditation.
Scientists are against occultism and mysticism, and there is no place for God in their theories. Naturally, where is the place of meditation for a scientist? If meditation is a way to apprehend God or if meditation is a way to experience the Self, scientists do not want it. Therefore, meditation in our century has survived by the mistakes of humanity. If science can give you happiness, there is no hope for meditation, but this is just a temporary phase of what you call meditational philosophy.
I came to the West in 1968 for the first time and in these sixteen years I have seen a sea of change in their way of thinking. Transcendental Meditation, though it is a very important meditation, is not considered enough. People want to know more about their own self. This process of knowledge of the self came to a halt maybe two thousand years ago. In India, the search for the self went unabated, but in the West it came to a halt. Socrates was served hemlock. Why was he poisoned? Because he spoke a dangerous philosophy. He said, ‘Know Thyself.’ The Greek people thought, ‘What do you mean by it? I am Plato, I am Aristotle, I am Pythagoras, I am Greek, I am Macedonian. That is all I am! What is this crazy man talking about? No, he is talking insanity. Finish him!’ The search for the self stopped there.
There was another unfortunate man in Greek history. He was known as Alexander the Great. Unfortunately, that man happened to go to invade India. It is easy to conquer India politically and militarily, but it is very hard, very difficult and impossible to conquer India philosophically. There he encountered a few swamis in Punjab, Takshasheela, and he was very much impressed by them.
Basically, the Greeks were philosophers. They were brilliant people and so was Alexander. When he went to India he did not go only with the commanders-in-chiefs, he also went with wise people. He took with him philosophers, because he knew that in India he was going to encounter the swamis. Two things happened at the same time: Alexander conquered Punjab and India conquered Alexander. He returned.
Before his return and during his stay in India, he wrote quite a few letters to Aristotle who was his philosophy teacher. When Aristotle received the letters from Alexander he was very angry, and so Alexander met the same fate as Socrates. He brought with him a guru from India who had to live in Babylonia and an ashram was established for him there, but there was no Alexander.
With this a tragedy begins. What is that tragedy? Greek thinkers were the fathers and their philosophy of matter, not the philosophy itself, continued right up to 1927 when Einstein said E=mc2. Isaac Newton was the last of the scientists of matter. The Greek philosophical system said, ‘Know the matter.’ So, they knew matter.
Today, scientists know matter. The sciences in the West discovered the deeper and greater areas of every matter, but Hindus said, ‘Know the self.’ In order to know the self, the intellectual process is not enough. The process of thinking is the process of reasoning which is a process of analysis. If you want to realize the quality of matter, you have to use your reasoning; and this reasoning can become more and more fine.
The German philosopher scientist Immanuel Kant used to call it ‘pure reason’. When you are analysing matter, there comes a time when reason is superseded by a higher knowledge. You can call this ‘philosophic attention’. How many times does an apple fall from the tree? It was only Isaac Newton who discovered the theory of gravity by the falling of an apple. That is called ‘pure reason’, ‘philosophic attention’, and in yoga it is known as dhyana.
Forget meditation for the time being. The words meditation and contemplation are a part of the Christian church theology. You are Christians but you do not know very much about it. In Christian theology you are allowed to pray and meditate, but you are not allowed to be aware. There was a saint, Saint Teresa of Avila. She had this problem with the church. She wanted to go deep into awareness and she was told not to, but to contemplate. This contemplation is an intellectual, mental or psychological process.
During the process of awareness there is only one object. The knower is not there. The process of knowledge is also not there. There is only one substance called awareness. Sometimes in dreams it happens. In Sanskrit, the word is dhyana; its equivalent is not meditation but awareness, absolute attention.
When my mind does not think about myself, when the mind does not think of the place where I am and when the mind does not think what is happening, but there is awareness of one object alone; that is called dhyana. This dhyana word in Buddhist literature is known as jhana. When Buddhism went to China it became chhaan and in Japan it became Zen.
In India for the last four, five thousand years, the only thing being worked out is how to practise dhyana. Just to close the eyes and try to concentrate on one point does not bring you the desired result. In dhyana yoga you are entering into your own self. In dhyana yoga you are entering into the universe. In dhyana yoga you are becoming what we call cosmic.
Now you are not cosmic. You are an individual, a person, a part of matter and the senses, but in meditation or in dhyana yoga you become the universe. This is a big journey from individual to universe, from microcosm to macrocosm, from finite to infinity. In between these two, a lot is to be done. Many people try to concentrate and get hypnotized. In India, we have always thought of how to practise dhyana yoga and therefore, they named the science yoga. Yoga means dhyana yoga. Hatha yoga, bhakti yoga and similarly karma yoga and others are the means and not an end. The ultimate goal, the ultimate aim of all yogas is just one, dhyana.
When your mind is turned from this material world of diversity, from this transitory world of name and form and from this world of the senses and the mind, and when you begin to visualize something which the eyes cannot see, that is known as the path to meditation.
7 July 1985, Antwerp, Belgium (Extracts)