Magic tricks often rely on distraction: the magician will set up a scenario, then draw our attention away to something else. While we are watching what his left hand is doing, his right hand completes the “trick”, so that when we return our attention to the original scene, the “magic” is complete and we are duly amazed.
So is it with meditation.
Here both the subject and object of the magic act is our conscious awareness. We start with an opening scenario with which we are all too familiar: a morass of stress, tension, restlessness, confusion and dismay.
This mess and stress are kept under guard by our mind’s focus and attention. While we pay them attention, they loom large and inescapable: because they loom large and inescapable, we are more in their thrall.
To dispel such a spell, needs magic.
Meanwhile, in the next room, our vast inner wealth of peace, light and bliss is locked away in the safe of our spiritual heart.
The meditation exercise now performs the role of the magician’s distraction: we are invited to focus all our attention on something, either internal or external. It might be our breathing and counting, a flower, a beautiful scene, soothing music, a mantra or a divine image.
While our focus is thus occupied, our mind-guard is distracted, leaving our tension and stress unobserved and unattended.
While the mind’s back is turned, peace, light and bliss tiptoe in from our spiritual heart next door, silently disarming and dissolving stress, tension and confusion wherever they are found, straightening furniture, opening curtains, establishing order and calm.
By the time we have completed our meditation exercise and return our attention to the original scene of our awareness, the magic act is complete…
Abracadabra! – our consciousness has been transformed.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. Either place the flower in a vase or hold the flower by its stem in front of you.
Gaze at the flower with your eyes half-open, half-closed, so that there is little else in your peripheral vision.
Feel that this flower is the most beautiful, sacred, precious thing in the world, and you have been entrusted to care for and protect it. Love the flower with all your heart. Admire, appreciate and adore its beauty, simplicity, delicacy and fragrance.
Imagine the flower has its own breath, and breathe in time with the flower. While breathing together, breathe in from the flower all its best qualities, which in turn become your own: as you breathe in the flower’s simplicity, your mind and thoughts are simplified and stilled; as you breathe in the flower’s beauty and purity, you feel beauty and purity blossom within your heart, spreading and wafting like the flower’s fragrance, to envelop your whole being.
Concentrate on one petal of the flower: imagine the whole world has been reduced to just this petal.
Now close your eyes and imagine the flower is blossoming inside your own heart, and from there it is expanding to encompass your whole body.
You have become the flower. Its beauty, delicacy and fragrance are your own.
The flower is complete and perfect in itself. It matters not whether it is appreciated or admired. Its exquisite beauty and fragrance remain the same even if no-one would notice it. Our spiritual heart is the same. Our inner peace and satisfaction are not dependent on any outer circumstance or the approval of anyone else in the world.
Our heart is an ever-blossoming, ever-fresh, ever-beautiful, ever-fragrant perfection-flower.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. This exercise can be done either with your eyes closed or else open and resting on a simple object such as a flower or candle flame.
Focus exclusively on your breathing. Slow your breath and make the flow of breath as calm and controlled as possible. Imagine that someone has placed a tiny thread right in front of your nose: focus on that thread and ensure it is absolutely still and unwavering.
When your breath is calm and controlled, please imagine that what you are breathing in is not air, but joy: pure, unalloyed joy.
This joy is not associated with any particular incident or experience in your life: it is the pure essence of joy, the inner thrill that accompanies the experience. Enter into and expand this inner thrill, allow it to permeate your consciousness.
As you breathe out, exhale the opposite of joy, which is sorrow, sadness, depression: any negative thought or feeling.
Feel this joy, this bliss circulating within you, percolating throughout your whole being, charging every cell of your existence with a current of delight.
Feel this joy welling in waves from your heart, blazing like the sun in all directions, flooding everything and everywhere. Feel pure bliss beaming through your smile, radiating from your eyes, shining within and around your face and your whole being.
If you were to stand outside of yourself and look back at yourself, or gaze into a mirror, you would see the most beautiful, radiant being of bliss.
This bliss, this delight flows unendingly seemingly without a source and knows no boundary, no limit, beyond time and space. Feel that you are first flying in an unhorizoned sky of bliss: then you become that ever-expanding sky.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. Focus exclusively on your breathing. Slow your breath and make the flow of breath through your nostrils as calm and controlled as possible.
When your breath is calm and controlled, please imagine that what you are breathing in from the atmosphere is not air, but power.
As you exhale, breathe out all weakness, insecurity, lethargy and fear.
This power you are breathing is not aggressive or destructive: far from it! This is dynamic, positive power: the power of love, the power to build, to grow, to create, to progress. This power manifests through cosmic energy: the same cosmic energy by which the planets revolve around the sun; by which the flower blossoms; the same power that enables our hearts to pump, our eyes to see and our minds to perceive.
Every living being is sustained and nourished by this power, which – as our life force – flows in, through and around us at every moment.
You are charging your inner battery, plugged directly into the universal power grid. Let this power infuse and saturate your whole being.
Picture this comic energy coursing through your veins like a river of light, flowing freely from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet to the very tips of your fingers, both within and around you, surcharging your whole being with dynamic energy, capacity, inspiration and aspiration.
Feel that with this power within you, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish: there is no task too formidable, no dream too remote. Everything is possible. You are almighty, indomitable, unconquerable.
Now apply this cosmic power to your own meditation: feel it is not your effort, but the vast cosmos which is meditating, experiencing itself in and through you.
If you ask what quality we are most in need of, many will answer: “peace”. Peace is the prize universally lacking and universally desired.
This evening, please take a few minutes to practise the exercise “Breathe and Become Peace” (episodes 25 and 26).
After this exercise, remember back to what you were doing and how you were feeling at some busy moment earlier in the day. Ask yourself this simple question: do I feel calmer, more peaceful now than I was feeling at that time?
If your answer is ‘yes’, then follow up with another question: Where has this additional peace and calm I am now feeling, come from?
The inevitable answer is: ‘from within.’
Indeed – in which case, where was this peace at that time earlier in the day when we were not feeling as calm? If it has come from within, then it must have been within us at that time too, though somehow hidden from our conscious awareness.
If it was there at that time, why were we not feeling and experiencing it then? At that time perhaps we were focussed on other, external things, whereas now we have gone in search of peace, and sure enough, we have found it.
Isn’t it ironic that the one quality which we are most in need of, is actually within us and has been the whole time?
The greatest irony of life: everything we most need to be happy and fulfilled – peace, love, joy, wisdom, satisfaction – we already have within us, in infinite measure.
The problem is, we look everywhere else – all around us – for these things, without looking in the one place where we will actually find them.
Meditate – today and every day – to discover, enjoy and become: our treasure of treasures awaits within.
Imagine peace is now spilling over from the inner vessel in your heart, flowing into your mind, quieting your thoughts, so that your mind is now the smooth surface of a still lake; from there it flows into your feelings, calming and soothing your nerves and emotions; from there it flows throughout your physical body, easing and relaxing your whole being; from there it flows out into the room, spreading serenity all around.
There is now peace within you and all around you. From the crown of your head to the soles of your feet and to your very fingertips, you have become only peace. You are saturated, marinated in peace, you are the sea of peace. Above you there is only peace; below there is only peace; to your left and right and all around there is only an ever-expanding continuum of peace, peace, and peace…
Continue breathing in peace and breathing out peace: consciously imagine and visualise peace flowing into every part of your body; feel peace embracing, subsuming and inspiring every thought, feeling and emotion. You have become peace itself, your very name is peace.
Continue this exercise for as long as you need. Any thoughts or distractions which appear during this time, simply offer them to the sea of peace in which you are swimming and which you have become: thoughts will simply be lost and dissolved in the vastness of the peace-ocean.
Now imagine that deep inside your heart you have a safe. In this safe you keep not money and valuables but your inner, spiritual wealth. Fill this safe with all the peace you have breathed in. Carefully lock the safe. Now you know where your treasure, your inner peace is, for whenever you might need it.
Sit somewhere quiet where you can be alone and undisturbed. This exercise can be done either with your eyes closed or else open and resting on a simple object such as a flower or candle flame.
Focus exclusively on your breathing. Slow your breath down and make the flow of breath in and out through your nostrils as calm and controlled as possible. Imagine that someone has placed a tiny thread right in front of your nose: focus on that thread and ensure that it is absolutely still and unwavering, so smooth and gentle is your breath.
When your breath is calm and controlled, please imagine that what you are breathing in from the atmosphere around you is not air, but peace: solid, tangible, abiding peace. This peace is all around you and you are breathing it directly into the very depths of your being, where it starts to accumulate. You can imagine there is a vessel inside you, which is gradually being filled with peace.
When you breathe out, exhale the opposite of peace: restlessness, tension and stress. Just let go of these things: they are not yours and you have no right to hold on to them, so let them go, release them, allow them to flow out of you.
Imagine that you are breathing in this peace not only through your nostrils, but also through your eyes, ears, mouth, through the very pores of your skin.
Imagine you are a dry sponge which is soaking up and absorbing peace eagerly and thirstily.
After a while you will have breathed out all the restlessness and stress and your inner vessel will be full to the brim with peace: at this time you are now breathing in and breathing out peace.
The ideal of a secret paradise is woven through fairytales, myths, legends and religions of every race and culture.
This paradise might take the form of a garden, a bodiless realm of light, a heaven beyond the stars. We catch glimpses of such a realm in our sleeping dreams and in our inspired imaginations.
A belief or faith in such a realm is strong in most of us: spiritual seekers and idealists mould their lives in the hope of finding it while some embrace death for a chance of entering it.
This perfect realm is generally felt to exist somewhere else: out of our present reach.
Yet our secret paradise is closer than we imagine: we are living and breathing inside our ultimate secret paradise at this very moment – and every moment.
All the qualities we most treasure and yearn for – peace, love, light, bliss, fulfilment –are within us and all around us. We are in their midst; they are the fabric of our deeper consciousness.
Our problem is we do not perceive our secret paradise because we are so enmeshed in the distractions and complexities of our minds. Our minds are like a huge security fence excluding us from that very domain we most yearn for.
To enter into and become our secret paradise, we do not need to undertake austerities and we certainly do not need to die: we need only to silence our mind.
A silent mind is not merely the absence of sound: it requires the complete absence of thought. Our thoughts are so pervasive that we take their constant presence as inevitable – yet they need not be. Just as they can constantly change, so they can be brought under control and, eventually, stilled.
Inside the silent, thoughtless mind, our secret paradise blossoms.
It has been often remarked, that we come into this world naked and alone – and we depart, naked and alone.
To enter into pure meditation, we must also be prepared to stand naked – that is to say, naked of ego; and alone – without human company.
Our thoughts, desires, habits, attachments, prejudices, beliefs, ideas, ideals, likes and dislikes, fears and fantasies; everything we think we have and we are – all is outer baggage which only obscures our meditation-goal.
Meditation is the pure being which underlies all of these superficial layers of apparent self: this “ego.” Meditation is the ocean: ego is froth on its surface. Meditation is our source, the bedrock, the very basis of our being, upon which everything else stands, and shifts. It is the eternal, unchanging reality: to perceive this reality, we must strip away all that is changeable, all that exists only in time and space.
Meditation ushers us from the finite, through the portal of the infinite. There our nakedness is revealed as the completeness of pure Being; our aloneness blossoms into the fullness of perfect Oneness.
Sri Chinmoy has expressed pure meditation directly and exquisitely in his immortal poem, “The Absolute:”
“No mind, no form, I only exist;
Now ceased all will and thought;
The final end of Nature’s dance,
I am it whom I have sought.
“A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;
Beyond both knower and known;
A rest immense I enjoy at last;
I face the One alone.
“I have crossed the secret ways of life,
I have become the Goal.
The Truth immutable is revealed;
I am the way, the God-Soul.
“My spirit aware of all the heights,
I am mute in the core of the Sun.
I barter nothing with time and deeds;
My cosmic play is done.”
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar…”
William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”, 1804
Saints, mystics, poets, seers and seekers in every culture have sought the secret of life eternal.
The ever-growing annals of Near-Death Experiences and the findings of quantum physics offer present-day support to the notion that at least a part of us lives on beyond death. If so, what part? Are we immortal?
Our bodies die and decompose into their original elements. So for anyone who identifies only as being the body: we are not immortal.
We know that our flow of life energy ceases after the body dies; and that our thoughts and emotions constantly change and will therefore not likely last much longer, if at all, than the senses and energy needed to sustain them. So if we identify ourselves as being our vitality or our minds: we are not immortal.
What is left, and does it live on? If a part of us is immortal, then it must be within us now. If within us now, then it must be discoverable now.
Whatever others have to say on this subject, ultimately we can only discover the answer for ourselves. We can either wait till we die, or…
Exercise
Sitting quiet and still with eyes closed, in your imagination separate yourself from your body. Feel that you are floating above your own body. You still exist. Now separate yourself from your thoughts – project them onto a screen, out of the way. You still exist, lighter and freer. Continue in this way, separating your consciousness from any part of you that is finite or changeable.
Eventually, you will find – and become – the answer.
There is so much wrong with the world – but what can I, just one small person, do about it?
Anything? Nothing?
How about … everything!
There is no such thing as “the world.” There is only what we perceive it to be – and what we perceive is a reflection of our own consciousness – which itself changes from day to day and even from moment to moment.
When we are happy, we see happiness and beauty all around us, even on a rainy day: “the world” is a beautiful place. When we are sad or depressed, we see only ugliness, even on a sunny day: “the world” is a gloomy place.
Yet it is the same world, isn’t it? Or is it?
A colour-blind person sees the world differently from how I see it, or how a dog sees it, or how a tree “sees” it. We have this conception that “the world” is a static, definable entity – it is anything but. There are as many “worlds” as there are sentient beings perceiving their environments, multiplied by each moment of awareness.
So – if we want to change or improve the world, how to do so?
Change ourselves, we change our perceptions and “the world” is changed.
We can never control what is happening around us. But we can absolutely control our perceptions and reactions, and thus, we CAN change the world.
Meditation – practised regularly – transforms our consciousness, hence our outlook on life – and hence our perception of the world around us.
Most of the time we perceive our world through the lens of an over-active mind. It’s like driving in dense fog. Clear the fog and suddenly we’re in different, clear, bright surroundings. Meditation clears that fog, enabling us to see and feel a world changed indeed.
We are used to dealing with specific expressions or feelings of love: we speak of being in love with someone, of loving a hobby or a song or the way reflected moonlight dances on the water on a September evening.
While each of these experiences can compel and overwhelm, yet they are mere glimpses of the ocean of Love which we embody, which we house within our hearts. They are rays of light from the blazing Sun of Love within. These glimpses of love are hints to us, signposts to the source within.
To uncover and to grow into this source is the goal of meditation.
Our hearts are all love, but mostly veiled: to reveal the source of love within we need, slowly but surely, to unlock the gates of our hearts. This is meditation.
We say: “Oh, I love this painting” or “I love so-and-so” and this is true – to a point. What we really love are the feelings which that person or object inspires within us. These feelings – of happiness, beauty, serenity, empowerment, freedom – are evoked by our recognition of something we share with the person or object: by a recognition of oneness.
Love is the expression of oneness, the deepest truth of our being.
It is thus Love itself which we truly love.
We love to be in love and to feel love, for love reveals to us our underlying oneness with something vaster than our tiny selves; love expands us by offering a glimpse of a much vaster, freer Self – a premonition of the possibility of true liberation and illumination.
Because love is oneness, it is inescapable. It is the one power from which none can hide.
Thank God the mightiest Power in the Universe is so … loveable.
Freedom has been the guiding light, the catch-cry, the struggle of humanity for aeons. “Give me liberty or give me death!” cried American revolutionary, Patrick Henry.
History is the continuing re-telling of the same struggle in various forms and guises: freedom from tyranny, freedom from slavery, from economic oppression, from injustice, from prejudice, from inequality, from censorship, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, artistic freedom.
In all – or most – of these areas, we have made tremendous progress. By any reckoning, we live in one of the freest societies ever.
As history has evolved, so the struggle for freedom has found different voices, causes and expressions. Why does this struggle, despite countless impressive victories, never go away? Are we just never satisfied?
The struggle for freedom is the cry of the soul.
The soul is eternally free. Intuitively we know this: we know we ARE the soul and we ARE pure and free. Whatever outer circumstances stand in the way of that inner condition, we will always fight against and ultimately, overcome. The whole history of human thought, warfare, philosophy, science, politics, art, religion and spirituality – all forms of human aspiration – are expressions of this deep yearning, this cry for freedom. And so it will remain.
So after all the progress: how many of us are truly free? Very few indeed, for we remain subject to two seemingly invincible tyrants: our own thoughts and desires. Until we can silence our thoughts and desires at will, we are not free. We remain slaves.
The next frontier of the battle for freedom beckons within each of our hearts and minds. Today’s freedom fighters meditate, to confront these inner challenges that beset us all.
