Meditation
Meditation is ever a popular topic in the headlines, with various studies extolling the practice’s benefits for stress reduction, physical health, and better brain functioning. But for many of those with a spiritual practice, meditation serves, above all else, as a pathway to the Divine.
Indeed, the supreme purpose of meditation is to know God, to reunite the individual soul with Spirit, to connect the little joy of the soul with the vast joy of Spirit. Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi and the founder of Self-Realization Fellowship (the organization I serve as a monk), describes meditation as concentration used to know God.
How Does It Work?
Through the practice of various techniques, one learns to withdraw the mind from all external objects of distraction and to put that freed attention upon God alone. Yogananda said that the sages of ancient India discovered that the key to entering this calm, interiorized state of meditation lies in scientific mastery of breath and the life energy in the body. To achieve that mastery, the ancient rishis developed the science and art of pranayama, life-force control. Pranayama, as practiced in the techniques of concentration and meditation taught by Yogananda, enables us to enter a state of deep inner stillness, in which the usual restlessness of body, breath, and mind are replaced by a wonderful experience of peace and superconscious perception of the presence of the Divine within us.
Meditation is central to the teachings of Yogananda, whose mission was to make available to all truth seekers a knowledge of definite scientific techniques for attaining direct, personal experience of God –– particularly Kriya Yoga (a sacred pranayama technique of meditation that works directly with the life energy in the body to produce higher states of consciousness in which one communes with the inexhaustibly blissful Spirit).
It is because our attention is constantly focused on the body and this outer material world that we don’t feel God’s presence in our lives; but with regular practice of interiorizing the life force and consciousness in meditation, we begin to experience God’s presence within.
Establishing a Practice
It is suggested that one have a period of meditation upon arising in the morning and before retiring at night. In the beginning, if one can put in even ten or fifteen minutes, this is a good start. One can also meditate whenever there are free moments throughout the day where one can find a quiet, secluded spot and take the mind inside.
Basic instructions in meditation – which anyone can learn and practice right away -- can be found in Yogananda’s books Metaphysical Meditations and Inner Peace. In his Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons, one learns Yogananda’s most powerful techniques of concentration and meditation. With these it is advised to set aside a longer period -- to practice the techniques, and then sit quietly and pray or talk to God in the language of your heart. Devotion or love for God is a key element in meditation and the search for God.
Normally the first experience in meditation is peace. As one continues to practice, peace deepens into joy, love, wisdom, and other attributes of God and of the soul. Since the ultimate goal of meditation is to realize God, one can know that progress is being made if the desire for God deepens. Yogananda said that the various progressive states of soul awakening are accompanied by an ever-increasing accession of inner peace and joy. In the most exalted states, soul and Spirit become reunited in ecstatic, blissful communion, or samadhi.
Jabali Muni.
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