Meditation With and Without Seed
The next step is our method of meditation. What do we mean by
meditation? Meditation cannot be the same for every man. Though the
same in principle, namely, the steadying of the mind, the method must
vary with the temperament of the practitioner. Suppose that you are a
strong-minded and intelligent man, fond of reasoning. Suppose that
connected links of thought and argument have been to you the only
exorcise of the mind. Utilise that past training. Do not imagine that
you can make your mind still by a single effort. Follow a logical
chain of reasoning, step by step, link after link; do not allow the
mind to swerve a hair's breadth from it. Do not allow the mind to go
aside to other lines of thought. Keep it rigidly along a single line,
and steadiness will gradually result. Then, when you have worked up to
your highest point of reasoning and reached the last link of your
chain of argument, and your mind will carry you no further, and beyond
that you can see nothing, then stop. At that highest point of
thinking, cling desperately to the last link of the chain, and there
keep the mind poised, in steadiness and strenuous quiet, waiting for
what may come. After a while, you will be able to maintain this
attitude for a considerable time. For one in whom imagination is
stronger than the reasoning faculty, the method by devotion, rather
than by reasoning, is the method. Let him call imagination to his
help. He should picture some scene, in which the object of his
devotion forms the central figure, building it up, bit by bit, as a
painter paints a picture, putting in it gradually all the elements of
the scene He must work at it as a painter works on his canvas, line by
line, his brush the brush of imagination. At first the work will be
very slow, but the picture soon begins to present itself at call. Over
and over he should picture the scene, dwelling less and less on the
surrounding objects and more and more on the central figure which is
the object of his heart's devotion. The drawing of the mind to a
point, in this way, brings it under control and steadies it, and thus
gradually, by this use of the imagination. he brings the mind under
command. The object of devotion will be according to the man's
religion. Suppose--as is the case with many of you--that his object of
devotion is Sri Krishna; picture Him in any scene of His earthly life,
as in the battle of Kurukshetra. Imagine the armies arrayed for battle
on both sides; imagine Arjuna on the floor of the chariot, despondent,
despairing; then come to Sri Krishna, the Charioteer, the Friend and
Teacher. Then, fixing your mind on the central figure, let your heart
go out to Him with onepointed devotion. Resting on Him, poise yourself
in silence and, as before, wait for what may come.
This is what is called "meditation with seed". The central figure,
or the last link in reasoning, that is "the seed". You have gradually
made the vagrant mind steady by this process of slow and gradual
curbing, and at last you are fixed on the central thought, or the
central figure, and there you are poised. Now let even that go. Drop
the central thought, the idea, the seed of meditation. Let everything
go. But keep the mind in the position gained, the highest point
reached, vigorous and alert. This is meditation without a seed. Remain
poised, and wait in the silence and the void. You are in the "cloud,"
before described, and pass through the condition before sketched.
Suddenly there will be a change, a change unmistakable, stupendous,
incredible. In that silence, as said, a Voice shall be heard. In that
void, a Form shall reveal itself. In that empty sky, a Sun shall rise,
and in the light of that Sun you shall realise your own identity with
it, and know that that which is empty to the eye of sense is full to
the eye of Spirit, that that which is silence to the ear of sense is
full of music to the ear of Spirit.
Along such lines you can learn to bring into control your mind, to
discipline your vagrant thought, and thus to reach illumination. One
word of warning. You cannot do this, while you are trying meditation
with a seed. until you are able to cling to your seed definitely for a
considerable time, and maintain throughout an alert attention. It is
the emptiness of alert expectation. not the emptiness of impending
sleep. If your mind be not in that condition, its mere emptiness is
dangerous. It leads to mediumship, to possession, to obsession. You
can wisely aim at emptiness, only when you have so disciplined the
mind that it can hold for a considerable time to a single point and
remain alert when that point is dropped.
The question is sometimes asked: "Suppose that I do this and
succeed in becoming unconscious of the body; suppose that I do rise
into a higher region; is it quite sure that I shall come back again to
the body? Having left the body, shall I be certain to return?" The
idea of non-return makes a man nervous. Even if he says that matter is
nothing and Spirit is everything, he yet does not like to lose touch
with his body and, losing that touch, by sheer fear, he drops back to
the earth after having taken so much trouble to leave it. You should,
however, have no such fear. That which will draw you back again is the
trace of your past, which remains under all these conditions.
The question is of the same kind as: "Why should a state of Pralaya
ever come to an end, and a new state of Manvantara begin?" And the
answer is the same from the Hindu psychological standpoint; because,
although you have dropped the very seed of thought, you cannot destroy
the traces which that thought has left, and that trace is a germ, and
it tends to draw again to itself matter, that it may express itself
once more. This trace is what is called the privation of matter--
samskara. Far as you may soar beyond the concrete mind, that trace,
left in the thinking principle, of what you have thought and have
known, that remains and will inevitably draw you back. You cannot
escape your past and, until your life-period is over, that samskara
will bring you back. It is this also which, at the close of the
heavenly life, brings a man back to rebirth. It is the expression of
the law of rhythm. In Light on the Path, that wonderful occult
treatise, this state is spoken of and the disciple is pictured as in
the silence. The writer goes on to say: "Out of the silence that is
peace a resonant voice shall arise. And this voice will say: 'It is
not well; thou hast reaped, now thou must sow.' And knowing this voice
to be the silence itself, thou wilt obey."
What is the meaning of that phrase: "Thou hast reaped, now thou
must sow?" It refers to the great law of rhythm which rules even the
Logoi, the Ishvaras --the law of the Mighty Breath, the out-breathing
and the in-breathing, which compels every fragment which is separated
for a time. A Logos may leave His universe, and it may drop away when
He turns His gaze inward, for it was He who gave reality to it.
He may plunge into the infinite depths of being, but even then
there is the samskara of the past universe, the shadowy latent memory,
the germ of maya from which He cannot escape. To escape from it would
be to cease to be Ishvara, and to become Brahma Nirguna. There is no
Ishvara without maya, there is no maya without Ishvara. Even in
pralaya, a time comes when the rest is over and the inner life again
demands manifestation; then the outward turning begins and a new
universe comes forth. Such is the law of rest and activity: activity
followed by rest; rest followed again by the desire for activity; and
so the ceaseless wheel of the universe, as well as of human lives,
goes on. For in the eternal, both rest and activity are ever present,
and in that which we call Time, they follow each other, although in
eternity they be simultaneous and ever-existing.
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