The practice of meditation frees one from all affliction.
This is the path of yoga. Follow it with determination
and sustained enthusiasm. Renouncing wholeheartedly
all selfish desires and expectations, use your will to control
the senses. Little by little through patience and repeated
effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.
Although meditation is becoming more popular and more appreciated in some ways, it doesn’t seem that we truly understand its implications and its true importance. Yes, it can improve both physical and psychological health, and it can help improve our performance in a number of areas. It slows the aging process and regenerates the brain. We need meditation to help us withstand the enormous stress of our seemingly apocalyptic world. Yet all of these acknowledged benefits represent a limited understanding of what is truly at stake.
First of all meditation is not a “technique;” the various methodologies that have developed in cultures throughout the world are not “meditation” in the true sense. Instead they are means by which people have been able to enter into an altered state of consciousness through which they experience a deeper level of reality. The various methods of meditation are meant to disconnect us from the outer world of the senses and reconnect us with our inner being. Perhaps as Western materialists we might be surprised that this enterprise re-energizes our psycho-physical vehicles.
Meditation is something that people have adopted since ancient times as a way of overcoming the illusion of this world. Instead we attempt to fit meditation into our illusory world-construct. To truly grasp the import of meditation you need to be willing to turn your world inside out. The ancient wisdom traditions tell us that consciousness is the fundamental reality. Mind is secondary and matter is tertiary. Some super-materialist philosophers have suggested that consciousness is an illusion. But, if so, who or what is having the illusion?
The gist here is that meditation practice, traditions, etc. defy our current models of reality. To try to understand meditation in terms of the scientific-materialist paradigm is like trying to catch the wind in a box. The materialistic way of looking at things is not wrong, it is just hopelessly incomplete. We need to know who is looking. Who is it that experiences touch, taste, vision, smell and sound? Somehow you have to admit that there is an essential ingredient through which any of these can have any meaning or existence.
When Krishna says “The practice of meditation frees one from all affliction” this doesn’t necessarily mean it will cure your hemorrhoids. It might actually, but the practice of meditation goes to the root of suffering: the belief in a separate self identified with the body. It connects us with our inner being which is prior to space, time and becoming. These all exist within the mind. Everything is created through the imagination. When mind becomes quiet we know ourselves to be beyond illusion.
Unless you are a devoted aspirant or perhaps an enlightened being all of this may sound outlandish. Certainly it seems irrational to deny the reality of the senses. Our consensual reality is such a “given” that we are rarely able to get beyond it. Our sense of identity is intractably intertwined with it. No matter how bad life seems or unhappy we might be we hold onto this identity for dear life – until death does us part. Even then we might have trouble letting go.
Meditation helps us to awaken to our true identity. It requires persistence or “determination and sustained enthusiasm.” To overcome the conditioning of this, not to mention countless prior lifetimes, requires consistent effort. If you have ever attempted to overcome a bad habit you know how hard it can be. Here we are talking about the habit of samsara (i.e. cyclical pattern of suffering) for which this world is, perhaps, a big rehab program. In any case, according to tradition, it is a big opportunity.
The next message from Krishna in the opening lines above indicates our biggest psychological obstacle to overcoming the illusion of suffering (or is it the suffering of illusion?) He enjoins us to “renounce wholeheartedly all selfish desires and expectations.” Holy sh*t! This is the ego’s whole game! We want the world to go our way when we want it to. “Selfish desire” arises out of the illusion of separateness. Somehow an imaginary fragment of the universe thinks it can control the rest. A dear friend is fond of reminding me “let go and let God.” The ego is an illusory being who imagines himself apart from the whole, then wants to control the whole situation. It’s hopeless. Meditation means letting go.
What we do seek to control in meditation are “the senses.” The senses themselves are not “bad” or “evil.” They simply condition awareness to turn outward and away from inner reality. The point is not to become comatose. In fact, it is to intensify inner consciousness, to be awake inwardly. We have been conditioned to attune ourselves exclusively to the outer display of the senses. The sensory level of attention keeps us distracted and fragmented in our awareness. An essential aspect of all meditation, or contemplative practice, is to turn attention inward.
When we successfully attune to our inner being we find an inner resource of strength, courage, peace and joy. Research indicates that the brain functioning of experienced practitioners begins to change over time so that the meditative state continues into ordinary daily activities. “Patience and repeated effort” is the key to positive self-transformation. The “Self” represents an awakening to our inner unity. We are not just part of the whole but also contain the whole. We are spiritual holograms.
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