Meditation
With and Without Seed
The next step is our
method of meditation. What do we mean by meditation? Meditation
cannot be the same for every man. Though the same in principle,
namely, the steadying of the mind, the method must vary with the
temperament of the practitioner. Suppose that you are a strong-minded
and intelligent man, fond of reasoning. Suppose that connected links
of thought and argument have been to you the only exorcise of the
mind. Utilise that past training. Do not imagine that you can make
your mind still by a single effort. Follow a logical chain of reasoning,
step by step, link after link; do not allow the mind to swerve a
hair's breadth
from it. Do not allow the mind to go aside to other lines of thought.
Keep it rigidly along a single line, and steadiness will gradually
result. Then, when you have worked up to your highest point of reasoning
and reached the last link of your chain of argument, and your mind
will carry you no further, and beyond that you can see nothing,
then stop. At that highest point of thinking, cling desperately
to the last link of the chain, and there keep the mind poised, in
steadiness and strenuous quiet, waiting for what may come. After
a while, you will be able to maintain this attitude for a considerable
time.
For one in whom imagination
is stronger than the reasoning faculty, the method by devotion,
rather than by reasoning, is the method. Let him call imagination
to his help. He should picture some scene, in which the object of
his devotion forms the central figure, building it up, bit by bit,
as a painter paints a picture, putting in it gradually all the elements
of the scene He must work at it as a painter works on his canvas,
line by line,
his brush the brush of imagination. At first the work will be very
slow, but the picture soon begins to present itself at call. Over
and over he should picture the scene, dwelling less and less on
the surrounding objects and more and more on the central figure
which is the object of his heart's devotion. The drawing of the
mind to a point, in this way, brings it under control and steadies
it, and thus gradually, by this use of the imagination.
he brings the mind under command. The object of devotion will be
according to the man's religion. Suppose--as is the case with many
of you--that his object of devotion is Sri Krishna; picture Him
in any scene of His earthly life, as in the battle of Kurukshetra.
Imagine the armies arrayed for battle on both sides; imagine Arjuna
on the floor of the chariot, despondent, despairing; then come to
Sri Krishna, the Charioteer, the Friend and Teacher. Then, fixing
your mind on the central figure, let your heart go out to Him with
onepointed devotion. Resting on Him, poise yourself in silence and,
as before, wait for what may come.
This is what is called
"meditation with seed". The central figure, or the last
link in reasoning, that is "the seed". You have gradually
made the vagrant mind steady by this process of slow and gradual
curbing, and at last you are fixed on the central thought, or the
central figure, and there you are poised. Now let even that go.
Drop the central thought, the idea, the seed of meditation. Let
everything go. But keep the mind in the position gained, the highest
point reached, vigorous and alert. This is meditation without a
seed. Remain poised, and wait in the silence and the void. You are
in the "cloud," before described, and pass through the
condition before sketched. Suddenly there will be a change, a change
unmistakable, stupendous, incredible. In that silence, as said,
a Voice shall be heard. In that void, a Form shall reveal itself.
In that empty sky, a Sun shall rise, and in the light of that Sun
you shall realise your own identity with it, and know that that
which is empty to the eye of sense is full to the eye of Spirit,
that that which is silence to the ear of sense is full of music
to the ear of Spirit.
Along such lines you
can learn to bring into control your mind, to discipline your vagrant
thought, and thus to reach illumination. One word of warning. You
cannot do this, while you are trying meditation with a seed. until
you are able to cling to your seed definitely for a considerable
time, and maintain throughout an alert attention. It is the emptiness
of alert expectation. not the emptiness of impending sleep. If your
mind
be not in that condition, its mere emptiness is dangerous. It leads
to mediumship, to possession, to obsession. You can wisely aim at
emptiness, only when you have so disciplined the mind that it can
hold for a considerable time to a single point and remain alert
when that point is dropped.
The question is sometimes
asked: "Suppose that I do this and succeed in becoming unconscious
of the body; suppose that I do rise into a higher region; is it
quite sure that I shall come back again to the body? Having left
the body, shall I be certain to return?" The idea of non-return
makes a man nervous. Even if he says that matter is nothing and
Spirit is everything, he yet does not like to lose touch with his
body and, losing that touch, by sheer fear, he drops back to the
earth after having taken so much trouble to leave it. You should,
however, have no such fear. That which will draw you back again
is the trace of your past,
which remains under all these conditions.
The question is of the
same kind as: "Why should a state of Pralaya ever come to an
end, and a new state of Manvantara begin?" And the answer is
the same from the Hindu psychological standpoint; because, although
you have dropped the very seed of thought, you cannot destroy the
traces which that thought has
left, and that trace is a germ, and it tends to draw again to itself
matter, that it may express itself once more. This trace is what
is called the privation of matter-- samskara. Far as you may soar
beyond the concrete mind, that trace, left in the thinking principle,
of what you have thought and have known, that remains and will inevitably
draw you back. You cannot escape your past and, until your life-period
is over, that samskara will bring you back. It is this also which,
at the close of the heavenly life, brings a man back to rebirth.
It is the expression of the law of rhythm. In Light on the Path,
that wonderful occult treatise, this state is spoken of and the
disciple is pictured as in the silence. The writer goes on to say:
"Out of the silence that is peace a resonant voice shall arise.
And this voice will say: 'It is not well; thou hast reaped, now
thou must sow.' And
knowing this voice to be the silence itself, thou wilt obey."
What is the meaning of
that phrase: "Thou hast reaped, now thou must sow?" It
refers to the great law of rhythm which rules even the Logoi, the
Ishvaras --the law of the Mighty Breath, the out-breathing and the
in-breathing, which compels every fragment which is separated for
a time. A Logos may leave His universe,
and it may drop away when He turns His gaze inward, for it was He
who gave reality to it.
He may plunge into the
infinite depths of being, but even then there is the samskara of
the past universe, the shadowy latent memory, the germ of maya from
which He cannot escape. To escape from it would be to cease to be
Ishvara, and to become Brahma Nirguna. There is no Ishvara without
maya, there is no maya without Ishvara. Even in pralaya, a time
comes when the rest is over and the inner life again demands manifestation;
then the outward turning begins and a new universe comes forth.
Such is the law of rest and activity: activity followed by rest;
rest followed again by the desire for activity; and so the ceaseless
wheel of the universe, as well as of human lives, goes on. For in
the eternal, both rest and activity are ever present, and in that
which we call Time, they follow each other, although in eternity
they be simultaneous and ever-existing.
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