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 died prematurely 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 . 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 religiousbactivity. 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'.

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