Yesterday I was poring over some accounts; George was studying calculus – we were both much in our minds. We met and started a conversation. It happens that George and I like different colours, different kinds of music, different foods, movies and sporting teams. After 5 minutes, we made a long list – of all our differences.
Today, I’m singing my favourite songs, and George has been meditating – we’re both centred in our hearts. We meet on the street and chat again. After 5 minutes we make a new long list … of all that we have in common, our shared loves, passions and interests.
Yesterday our minds separated us. Today our hearts have united us.
So the mind and heart operate: the mind builds walls between us; the heart sees and feels only our oneness. The mind suspects; the heart loves. The mind grasps; the heart offers. The mind frowns; the heart smiles. The mind judges and criticises; the heart accepts and forgives. The mind dominates; the heart liberates. The mind hesitates; the heart accelerates. The mind sees problems; the heart seeks solutions. The mind sees spots on the moon; the heart sings to the moon’s beauty. The mind abhors the thorns; the heart adores the rose. The mind is old, tired and pessimistic; the heart is ever young, fresh and optimistic. The mind is master of the world; the heart, servant to the world. The mind espouses superiority in separativity; the heart proclaims unity in diversity. The shouting arrogant mind knows nothing; the whispering humble heart knows everything. The mind asserts “Me!”; the heart proclaims “Us”. The mind reduces me to my little lonely ego; the heart expands us to the wide universe, and beyond…
Our mind is the servant that has become the master.
Fire can be used to cook, to warm us and give light: or it can destroy.
The mind is meant to be an instrument for our use, processing information from the senses, and applying its intellect for our own and the greater good. The mind is a wondrous power, an indispensable tool to aid us to live and operate in the world.
Yet the mind has gotten ahead of itself, and out of control. It has usurped the role of ruler of our selves and lives. It tells us what to think and what to do. It forms our opinions and makes our decisions according to its own limited experience and prejudices. It acts as though it owns the place. The mind has usurped the throne and seized control even of our sense of self. To all intents and purposes, most of us think and act as though we are the mind. We have become the mind’s puppets, instead of the other way around.
The mind’s sovereignty is precisely what has led us into such disharmony, disarray, disaffection and dismay. Not only our personal problems but also the problems of our society and even our planet, are expressions of the mind’s division, ignorance, selfishness, greed and stress. The solution to all of these problems lies in our hearts’ love, peace, compassion, wisdom and oneness.
The mind has staged a coup d’etat of our conscious being. The time has come for our hearts to mount a peaceful counter-insurgency, to assume loving guidance of our conscious awareness and therefore, our selves, our world and our destiny.
Other than by direct divine intervention, the only way to achieve this remarkable transformation, is through meditation.
We have seen that of the five levels of our being, the lower three levels – body, vital and mind – are finite, while the higher two levels – our spiritual heart and soul – are infinite. The qualities we seek: peace, love, joy and satisfaction, all are infinite. All abide in our heart and soul. Yet our present consciousness is most dominated by our finite parts: in particular, our mind.
The finite tends to resist the influence of the infinite, because the finite fears it will lose its dominion and even its very existence in the infinite. Hence the absurd tragedy of our present predicament: our principle instrument of conscious awareness and bulwark of our identity – our mind – while being primarily responsible for our civilisation, learning, outer prosperity and material advancement – is by its very nature also the primary obstacle to our spiritual progress and happiness. The blessing which elevated mankind from the animal consciousness, now stands as the curse obstructing our path to the divine.
Because the fulfilment of our yearning – peace, light, love and joy – lies in the infinite, then it is towards the infinite that our aspiration – and hence our evolution – must turn. To achieve what we seek and need, we must needs raise and expand our normal consciousness from its habitual preoccupation with the finite, into the realm of the infinite.
In practise, this means raising – little by little – our seat of consciousness from our mind, to our spiritual heart. Our mind is king of the finite; our heart, gateway and loving guide to the infinite.
This process of bringing our awareness from the mind and into the spiritual heart is the most urgent need of our time.
At the heart of the human condition lies a contradiction which gives rise to a unique and dramatic tension. This contradiction is in the very character and attributes of the various levels of our being: body, vital, mind, heart and soul.
There lies between the “lower” three levels of our being – body, vital and mind – and the “higher” levels of heart and soul, an essential difference of nature. This difference informs both good and bad, and results in much of the drama, struggle, conflict, inspiration and creative genius that is the stuff of human history and progress.
In our bodies, vitals and minds, we are finite; in heart and soul, we are infinite.
We are one being, true: yet when we identify as being the body, vital or mind, or any combination of these, we see and believe ourselves to be, and act as though we are indeed a finite being inhabiting a finite world. When we enter into our spiritual heart and soul, we realise ourselves as spiritual beings of a limitless universe.
There is a radical difference – even a yawning gulf – between a finite and an infinite consciousness. They see themselves and their worlds in completely different, often opposing terms.
And humans are both – finite and infinite. At once.
Yet this contradiction, this tension, this paradox, only exists when perceived from the finite portion of our consciousness, especially from our minds – for the finite alone is incapable of comprehending or embodying the infinite … while the infinite can easily house the finite.
Hence the only way to remove this tension and resolve this contradiction is to identify with our spiritual selves. To transcend, then transform the finite, the finite must enter into, surrender to, and lose itself in the infinite. This is meditation.
The soul is our source, the only part of us which is eternal – yet we have of the soul, only a vague awareness. We have become estranged from our own true self.
If you ask people if they have a soul, most will immediately answer, “Yes”. But ask them to prove it; you will likely get a blank stare of bewilderment. We have an intuitive awareness that we have a soul, yet no tangible experience of it. We can point to our bodies; we can run around to prove the existence of our vitals; we communicate using our minds; and we know our hearts from feelings of peace, love and joy – yet how to prove we have a soul?
Like God, the soul cannot be defined: it is what remains when all that can be defined is removed. The soul is beyond mortality, form, time and space, beyond thought, sound and silence. The soul is all-knowing and all-pervading; all Light, all Delight.
The soul is the spark of the divine within us, connecting us with the supreme consciousness, with God. Without a soul, we cannot exist, for the soul is the root and sum of our consciousness, the source of which all other levels of our being are partial, imperfect expressions.
While the soul is everywhere, we feel its presence most clearly when we can rise beyond the mind to meditate thoughtlessly deep within our spiritual heart.
Since we have no direct means to perceive our soul, we can only strive to approach it by degrees. To reach the 5th floor of a building, we ascend via level 4. Similarly, by immersing ourselves in the spiritual heart we gradually perceive, and ultimately know and become the fullness and perfection of our soul.
Make a list of all the qualities you most treasure; the qualities you, and the world, need most urgently.
Your list might include peace, love, oneness, joy, fulfilment, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, wisdom, courage, strength, belonging, kindness, tolerance, patience, beauty, sweetness, perfection, satisfaction.
All these qualities are to be found in our spiritual heart, the place we point to when we say “I”. Indeed, they are to be found nowhere else. “Home is where the heart is” because our heart is where we feel most natural, most comfortable, most fulfilled, most complete, most at home.
We cannot see the spiritual heart, so how can we be aware of it? How can we concentrate on it?
If you close your eyes and someone holds a rose in front of you, you will know it is there by its fragrance. Similarly, we know we have a spiritual heart by the fragrance of its qualities, its emissaries, and we can concentrate and enter into the heart by invoking, loving and absorbing ourselves in these qualities.
The spiritual heart is the 4th level of our being, at once housing and yet extending infinitely beyond the first three levels of body, vital and mind. The heart is our portal and guide to the spiritual realm, to our deeper, more real, eternal self.
Our heart is like the mother to our lesser parts, always offering love, compassion and concern, yet requiring infinite tolerance and patience, and often ignored.
The heart connects directly with reality through the identification of oneness. Our heart reveals itself and communicates most eloquently through a smile.
Love is the heart’s staple diet; music its universal language.
Our spiritual heart is ever new, all-loving and all-wise, continually expanding, deepening and blossoming.
Level three is where most of us spend most of our time, energy and focus, the locus for most of the conscious awareness of present-day humanity, the level which rules the world – for better and for worse.
We are speaking of the Mind.
It is the mind which sets humans apart from the animals. The root of “human” and “mankind” is the Sanskrit “manas”, meaning “the mind” or “the intellect”. Thus was mankind originally defined as “the thinking animal.”
The mind is our onboard computer. It receives all the information from our senses – what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch – processes it all through what it has already learned, and creates models of understanding through which we relate to ourselves and the universe.
In our hierarchy of concentric circles, the mind encloses the body and vital, so it has power to influence and control both body and vital and bend them to its will.
The mind is an ardent seeker of both knowledge and control. The mind applies its instruments of understanding: observation, experience, inquiry, logic, reason, analysis, the scientific method, to establish laws governing the world and behaviour. To the mind, knowledge is power, expressed through the expansion of itself, its ego and dominion: thus the mind seeks its fulfilment through extending and inflating itself. Knowledge, philosophy, science and technology are limbs of the mind, means by which it seeks identity, and to establish dominance and exert control.
Our present-day world is a projection of our minds’ majesty, immensity, ability, agility, fragility, facility, fecundity, creativity, audacity, ingenuity, intricacy, complexity, perplexity, perspicacity, superfluity, superiority, ambiguity, absurdity, disparity, disunity, duplicity, obduracy, autocracy, inflexibility, inadequacy, insecurity, instability, insincerity, impurity, inequity, iniquity, poverty, rapacity, hostility, cruelty, calumny, calamity – and insanity.
There are two convenient ways to represent a model of our five levels of being. One way is as a 5-story building, where the body is the ground floor and each succeeding level is the next floor above. This model is useful to understand some aspects of the relations between the various levels.
However perhaps a more accurate model may be to represent the levels of being as 5 concentric circles, the innermost circle being the body. It is clear from this model, that each successive circle will not only be larger than the previous, it will also encompass each of the “lower” levels. And so it is – each successive “higher” level has direct influence and control, or jurisdiction over the smaller circles within it.
Level 2, the Vital, is our life force, source of our vitality. Just as our physical body is formed from the realm of physical matter, so our vital derives from the immense field of cosmic energy.
With the vital energy now permeating the body, it is able to enter the field of action. The body can get up, move around, run, jump and dance. The body and vital are interdependent: the body needs the vital to enable it to act, while the vital needs the body to be able to express itself in the world.
The body with the vital is now a force of potential action, awaiting instructions. Like water, which in flood can cause massive destruction, or can be harnessed for irrigation and power generation, the vital-enabled body can just as easily build or destroy. Our body-vital combination requires direction and guidance. For this we must look to the next higher level of being, that most marvellous manifestation, the Human Mind.
… infinitely more complex than the physical Universe around us.
While no model can ever adequately represent the multifarious levels of our consciousness, nevertheless for our purposes it is helpful to envision ourselves as comprising five essential levels of being. Each level has its own distinct modes of consciousness, its own qualities, capacities and sometimes defining limitations. Of course we are one Being, and every level is intricately and intimately intertwined with each other level in myriad ways, some obvious and most mysterious.
The most apparent level of our being, the first we can consciously grasp and identify with, is that which embodies us here on earth, our physical form. Of all the levels of our being, our body is the only one most of us can actually see, point to and touch.
Our physical body is composed of physical matter and for the most part, obeys known laws of physics. We can draw a line around it, enclose it, we can weigh it and measure it. Being composed of physical matter, our bodies are conceived, born, grow, age, die and return to the physical elements from which they were formed.
Medical science and anatomy have given us a fair understanding of how the body works. Through general sciences we can observe how our bodies operate in and interact with our broader physical universe, which for the purposes of this model, serves as an extension or projection of our physical consciousness.
Our bodies are astonishingly intricate and marvellous instruments, yet in and of themselves they are essentially useless, inert matter. For the body to be able to act in the world, it needs the presence of the second level of our being, the Vital.
The highest moments in our lives, the pinnacle experiences, are but glimpses of our deeper selves, our true nature.
When we are swept off our feet with happiness; when we gasp at the sheer beauty of a sunset; when our heart melts in the smile of an innocent child; when we are lost in wonder at the towering majesty of mighty mountains or the twinkling mystery of far galaxies; when we thrill to pure poetic perfection; glow with the flame of inspiration or soar on the wings of song; when we are seized with the revelation of a new truth; when we exult in silent speechless bliss of rapt meditation – these moments are signposts to the Beyond, the eternal reality within.
These moments are clarion calls from the infinite, the spiritual realm. They are reminders to our long-dormant self-awareness that we are not merely a physical, emotional, mental finite self but we are something much vaster, grander, deeper, higher and finer: we are the eternal consciousness, the infinite universe, the immortal soul.
The spiritual life is the quest of self-discovery. Self-discovery is the ultimate of everything we love.
We love adventure – why? – our inner journey beckons from within. Each outer adventure we enjoy is a faint echo, a summons to embark on this ultimate adventure.
We love to play games – why? – life itself is a game. Self-discovery is the conscious realisation of and participation in the ultimate, cosmic Game.
We love to learn – why? – all learning is a precursor of self-discovery, the summation and consummation of all knowledge.
We love to be in love – why? – to be in love offers a hint and promise of the ultimate romance, our union with the Source of all being.
Clear your mind and recall any most inspiring incident, experience or feeling from your past… Fully immerse yourself in and treasure this memory for a while.
You will notice that what you have recalled, is just a single moment.
Not a span of time: though your golden moment may have come as the culmination of a series of moments, yet it will always be one moment that crowns them all, one moment that brings the fullness of an inner thrill, a flash of revelation, a glow of realisation, or a losing of oneself in a vastness grander, lighter, purer, brighter.
When our life flashes before our eyes at a time of great peril, what we actually perceive is a cascading cavalcade of moments, each one the distillation of our state of consciousness at that time.
While journey and process are both invaluable and essential, the goal and pinnacle of any meditation is likewise a single moment: an epiphany, an inner awakening, an elevation to a grace-filled state of pure being.
We do not so much attain such a state, as surrender ourselves into it.
Ordinary life is a haphazard configuration of moments mostly mundane. The spiritual life is a concerted, consecrated progression of ever-ascending, ever-transcending, all-illumining moments in quest of The Ultimate Moment.
Time is a mechanism that shields us – or allows us to hide – from the ultimate, eternal moment.
The Truth of our being is not to be found in time. It is ensconced in a single moment, the Eternal Now. Time is woven by the mind from the fabric of thoughts. Thinking, we weave ourselves into so many cocoons of oblivion. To go beyond time and perceive the Eternal Now, we must venture beyond thought’s grasp, beyond the realm of the mind.
When you walk past the building site of a new large building in the city, and peer through the window of the siding walls protecting the site, for months on end all you will see is a hole in the ground.
The hole gets deeper and larger. Every time you walk past, still there is only this huge hole in the ground. There is always activity in the hole, massive machinery moving dirt around. It seems the building itself will never manifest.
Then one day the building is there, shooting skywards and in no time it is complete.
The time taken to excavate the hole always seems inordinately long compared to the time taken to erect the building.
Yet this is the first principle of all construction: establish a solid foundation. The “hole in the ground”, the foundation, is the most important part of every construction, for upon it rests the entire edifice.
So it is with our meditation practice.
The concentration exercises we do in order to gain control of our minds – the breathing and counting, focusing on a candle or flower, mantras, creative visualisations – these are the “hole in the ground”, the unattractive but absolutely indispensible foundation upon which will stand all our future spiritual experience and accomplishments.
While this phase of our spiritual practice may sometimes seem dull and repetitive, yet it is of supreme importance for our spiritual life to blossom to its full potential.
Every day we practise our concentration and meditation, we lay another brick in the foundation of our future spiritual palace. Every day we do not practise, one brick is removed from that foundation and the whole structure becomes weaker.
When patience, determination and unshakeable resolve are constant companions of our spiritual quest, our perfection is destined.
Mantra is a most effective form of meditation practise because it simultaneously involves many levels of our being. The body is involved in creating the sound; we feel the vibration, resonance and cadence of the mantra in our very limbs. The mind is focussed on the meaning of the mantra and on the challenge of keeping errant thoughts and distractions at bay. The heart opens, blossoms, sings and shines through the mantra as its various inner qualities are summoned and blossom.
Mantra can be the entire meditation, or can be used to open or close a session. In a group meditation, the chanting of a mantra commonly signifies that the session is commencing or concluding.
There are many ways to chant a mantra.
A mantra can be chanted in silence, softly under the breath, or powerfully out aloud; in a slow or swift rhythm; alone or in company with others. How we chant a mantra will depend on our circumstances and the force or quality we are invoking.
The time to chant a mantra silently might be when others are asleep or needing to be undisturbed or when we are in a public place. We might chant a mantra softly while gathering our focus into a calm control. A mantra is to be chanted loudly when power, resolution and conviction are demanded, or when we are chanting together in a group.
When we need something immediately, we chant a mantra rapidly and with urgency: for example if we are falling asleep and must summon instant energy, or if we find our concentration wavering at a critical moment. Conversely, when we need a quality from deep within – peace, poise, vastness or tranquillity – then a slow cadence is required. Fast is for urgency; slow is for depth.
