UNDERSTANDING MEDITATION

UNDERSTANDING MEDITATION

Euphoria is a state of bliss, a state of mind where you are at perfect peace with yourself and with the world.

There are two ways of arriving at this stage.
The first is through drugs. This is an easy, popular and dangerous path and ultimatfly leads to the destruction of both body and the mind. So many
Celebrities the world over have diedprematurely through this kind of drug
abuse.

The other path is through meditation. "Meditation" is a fashionable activity now, with Celebrities since the later half of the twentieth century claiming to practice it. It has, infact, become quite an industry, generating big money.

There are various brands of meditation and each targets an appropriate group - from 'quick fix' to
the musical ones, from 'executive' yoga to 'religious' ones.

But what exactly is the REAL ancient science of meditation ? And what is
the goal ?

The real meditation is what the ancient Indian sage Patanjali wrote
about in his famous "Yoga Sutras". Its ultimate goal is salvation. Brain activities starts changing very early as one practices this meditation.

Unlike the 'executive' meditation popular in the west, the traditional
one requires a certain measure of discipline of body and mind. Even as you start 'activating' the
premordeal force latent in all of us through Patanjali's meditation, you
start feeling a blissful intoxication - with regular practice, that is. Even if
the progress is slow you will start noticing changes in your physical and mental makeup.

At the outset you have to understand that meditation is not religious
activity. It is a spiritual practice. Which means that it does not require
application of any beliefs in a particular God or for that matter any God. The requirement is that you
change how you look at the world.

The fundamental concept is somewhat like this :

Imagine that your mind is a lake at the bottom of
which lies something called perpetual and pure bliss. You are viewing the
bottom of the lake from the top, resting on the surface of this lake.

Now, you can 'see' this 'bliss' only when two conditions are fulfilled.
One, the water of this lake is uncontaminated and clear and, two, that there are no ripples on the
surface of the lake. To achieve this requires some changes in your
mental makeup.

The water gets cleaner and cleaner as you clear the cobwebs of hatred, jealousy, vindictiveness,greed and other negative muck that has accumulated in brain-cells over the years. And, for
this, the fundamental requirement is the practice of 'forgiveness' and 'contentment'. Keep Practicing this and the water of the lake will get
more and more clear.

And to control
the 'ripples' you have to cultivate a certain measure of 'objectivity' to
whatever unpleasant (and pleasant) keeps happenning to you until it
becomes the second nature.

Once you have started the process of bringing these change in you, the rest is a daily regime of a practice involving focus of thought on a single point for the entire duration of
the daily practice session. You can get the details of this daily session from any standard book on RajYoga and may also refer to the original
work of the great sage Patanjali.

But take the first step now - the process of 'cleaning the water' and 'stilling the waves'.