Meditation

Most people can successfully practice aerobics or body building, for instance, without knowing human anatomy or without understanding at all what they are doing or why.

Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately), this is not so with yoga and meditation. Without knowing exactly the nature of this process it is impossible to correctly realize it and therefore there can be no true meditation.

Meditation is the highest yoga practice (this doesn't mean it is difficult!). In fact, very few people can really meditate, and this for two main reasons:

• Very few know exactly what meditation is;

• Even fewer are willing to comply with it (lack of motivation)

We can control the mental agitation by two means: by concentrating the mind either externally or internally. Internally, we focus on the "Self" or the consciousness of "I am". Externally, we focus on anything other than the "Self" or "I am".

"Not everybody that stays motionless with the eyes closed is meditating. Meditation is an accurate science, therefore it cannot be practiced in total ignorance. Only those who study it with a serious inner motivation can successfully practice it."

When we take up some recreation on putting the ball into the hole (golf), the other thoughts are slowed down or stilled. We feel we have played a good game when we have achieved perfect concentration. The happiness we experience comes, not because the ball being put in the hole eighteen times, but because we have achieved perfect concentration eighteen times. At that time, all the worries and problems of the world disappeared.

Generally we have learned to focus the mind externally on objects. When the mind is fully concentrated, time passes unnoticed, as if it did not exist. When the mind is focused, there is no time! Time is nothing but a modification of the mind. Time, Space, and causation and all external experiences are mental creation.

An important point here is that the object of meditation has to be very well perceived by the subject. In other words, the object must have a clear objective or subjective reality. A very vaguely defined idea cannot function as an object of meditation. The subject (the practitioner of meditation) must be able to "take hold" of at least one of the major characteristics of the object, if not of all of them.

Learn the Techniques of Meditation