Showing posts with label satchidanandam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satchidanandam. Show all posts

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Yin and Yang of Meditation

Meditation has many benefits and no drawbacks (except for those not mentally balanced). But there are certainly yin and yang aspects of meditation. 

For example, meditation can be used for the benefit of the ego: concentration for the mind and vitality and self-awareness for the body. Or, meditation can be used to attune oneself to the higher Mind of the soul. 

Most of what is taught and most of those who practice meditation are seeking ego-oriented benefits such as calmness, inner peace, and mindfulness. Their meditation practice begins with the intention of  "I want.....this or that result." Since this intention is the basis for practically all ego-directed actions, few ever consider an alternative.

Among those who seek higher consciousness, meditation can take the form of an act of devotion, focusing on some form or image such as one's guru, a deity, or even a state of consciousness (such as samadhi, nirvana, moksha, etc.). The devotional approach can remain in the realm of an "I-Thou" act of worship or it can intend to or simply evolve into, merging into one's form of devotion.

There are those meditators who seek spiritual upliftment, consciousness, or even psychic powers for personal (ego) gratification! This can be the initial motivation behind meditation, or, it can be the result of back-sliding when the ego claims for itself the insights or powers which may appear as a result of one's otherwise sincere meditation practice. Such are the temptations that await the dedicated practitioner. 

And, let's face the truth here: the ego is our starting point even while ego transcendence is the well-established goal! A paradox to be sure. 

Let's pause for a moment to consider this "ego thing." Paramhansa Yogananda, the now-famous author of "Autobiography of a Yogi," defined the ego as "the soul identified with the body." Since ancient times and in the highest spiritual teachings of all great civilizations, our true nature and the goal of our existence is to "know thyself" as greater than the ego: as a child of the Infinite! As from the Vedas: "Tat twam asi." ("Thou art THAT!)

Admittedly, the details of what THAT is and how we realize THAT may vary in the fine print of scripture, commentary, and intellectual permutations. But beyond THAT there is no argument!

Returning now to where we left off: "devotion." As devotion is, in an energetic sense, the equivalent of dedication, a meditator (aka a "yogi") may not think of herself as being of a devotional temperament but the intensity of her focused dedication to meditation amounts to the same thing. A meditation intention and practice that seeks to still the mind by way of one-pointed focus on a mantra, sound, or other "meditation-object," and which essentially seeks to dissolve the ego-identity and sense of separateness, can be said to be a form of devotion, albeit more by concentration of the mind than by focusing upon expanding the heart's "natural love," though in fact the latter may be, and ultimately must be, the consequence.

Put another way, progress in meditation takes dedication and devotion to the goal and to the practice. Such dedication is surely a form of love as much as any classical feelings or forms that devotion might traditionally assume.

It can also be said that one always begins upon the spiritual path (and meditation) from the only point of reference we have: the ego! Gradually, as we progress, we morph into self-offering of the little self into the great Self as one's consciousness expands beyond the ego and body.

We see this transformation taking place in the lives of meditators who truly go deep into the practice. We even see amongst some of those who practice yoga postures a certain level of awakening that can rightly be called "spiritual" even if, initially, unintended.

At the risk of going into deep philosophical territory, there is another aspect of the yin and yang of meditation. It goes something like this (using non-technical terms whether from Vedanta, Shankhya, yoga, or Buddhism):

There's a part of ourselves that yearns for stability, constancy, and unchanging reality and truth. There's also a part of ourselves, which like all nature around us, that is always changing and which delights and invigorates in our creativity and engagement in life.

The reconciliation of these two could be described as the awakening of our ever-watchful Self (soul) into the awareness of and participation with the ever-changing reality of creation which swirls in flux around us.

By contrast, the ego, that part of our consciousness which identifies with the body, personality, and the seeming separateness of all created things (physical and mental), isn't so much watchful but wholly engaged. The difference between the ego's desires and emotions and itself simply doesn't exist. As a result, the ego experiences the ups, downs, boredom, and occasional peace in an unceasing and ultimately exhausting and monotonous inevitability. In short, we suffer, for no pleasure can be known without fearing and later experiencing its ending or its opposite. Pain, by contrast, feels "eternal" when we are overcome by it.  

The alternative to being awash in the ocean of emotion and change is to dive deep into the ocean of peace within. Thus is born the practice of entering into the mindful or watchful state. In the meditative state of quietude, the ceaseless rising and falling of our thoughts, energies and responses comes under our calm scrutiny. We can see flux for what it is: empty, fleeting, and separate from the Self. The deeper we go into this state the more we realize that we are and can be untouched by the waves at the surface of the sea of our senses (and our mind). 

The Shiva Self, recumbent and watchful, penetrates the center of the Shakti Self of prana, energy and creation even as the Shakti Self, in the presence of Shiva, inclines to be still to receive Shiva within her Self. 

This uniting of Observer, observing and observed
becomes a dance of Bliss, sometimes withdrawn and sometimes immanent in all creation. Even those descriptions which separate God the Father (the Infinite Spirit) from creation cannot fully satisfy the continuum of consciousness both within and without. 

Paramhansa Yogananda's famous poem, "Samadhi," flows in and out of creation even if it is also understood that Bliss stands apart and whole from the creation and serves as creation's Father-Mother. 

But such philosophical niceties go beyond, far beyond, anything practical and helpful for those engaged in meditation practices. Even for us, we find we flow in and out of our own creation (our mind's activity). 

Nonetheless, to experience a state unconditioned by awareness of body and ego identity is powerfully transforming, healing, and enlightening. Few meditators, I suspect, aspire to this state; fewer experience it. But not because it is beyond our means.

For indeed, this unconditioned state is the center of our Being and is always present. Whether by Self-inquiry ("Who am I?") or by inner stillness achieved through meditation practice, it exists perennially behind our mental flux. "Be still and know that I AM God." (Psalm 46:10).

Watching one's thoughts is a frequent instruction given as the practice of meditation. But I wonder how many of those using this technique are not, in fact, drawn forcibly into participating with their thoughts and their reactions to those thoughts (rather than remaining truly watchful and unaffected). 

The challenge of watching our thoughts is that our thoughts are the basis for our separateness. Our emotional response to our perceptions, moreover, cements our identity to those so-called realities. Like the oft given image of perceiving a snake in the dim light of dusk in the path ahead when in fact it is only a rope, we make our share of false conclusions and all too often proclaim, "That's my story and I'm sticking with it." The sense of separateness and its cocoon of beliefs, memories, opinions, desires, impressions, and fears is deeply embedded into our the matrix of our sense of self-identity.

In the East, the mind is considered the sixth sense: separate and apart from the Self. In the West, we think, as Descartes declared, "I think, therefore I am!"

Therefore, because thoughts are the issue, it is generally more useful to have and to focus upon a "meditation object." Universally, the breath is the simplest and most available "object" because we all breathe and no beliefs are necessary. There are other reasons as well. The watching of breath can be with or without a word formula or mantra. 

Other reasons for watching the breath include the observable fact that in the effort to concentrate deeply, we naturally hold or quiet the breath. It is the last obstacle to complete concentration. It is also, ironically, an excellent "object" of meditation for the reason that focusing on the breath can quiet the mind and when restless thoughts subside, the breath becomes quiet. Anyone who is given even a modest amount of training can demonstrate these facts and benefit from this practice immediately.

Thus it is that the breath has become (and likely always has been) the most common focus for meditation throughout time and the world.

But, it remains an "object" until or unless our sense of separateness begins to dissolve. One can say, intellectually, that we enter the breath or the breath enters us or anything else you want to say. But nothing that can be said can truly describe the experience of oneness. (All words require subject, verb, and object and this very logical necessity is inadequate to describe the state of being that is actually experienced in real time.)

The experience of oneness can occur spontaneously and does happen to many people, whether as children or adults. It can happen in meditation even when not held out as a goal or a possibility. But mostly it is best if the meditator seeks the state and has some training and intuition in the possibility.

Nothing is lost in such a state even if on a profound level the ego-mind suspects that it is an existential threat to its separateness. In this, the ego is both correct and incorrect. Testimony of the ages and the sages is that nothing is lost in the realization of the state of oneness and everything worthwhile in life (happiness, that is!) is found. But such is the price of the pearl of great price: the very real-seeming threat of extinction.

No wonder some teachers and traditions describe this state in negative terms: "nirvana" (no vanas, or no mental activities of the ego-construct). Buddha gave no description of the undescribable. The yogis, however, describe the state as satchidanandam: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss. 

Some aver that bliss is a passing phase on the path to nirvana; some say (as Yogananda does) that samadhi IS the state of bliss. Well, no matter because all who have achieved it say it is the end of all striving, the end of suffering, and the summum bonum of existence. Let us not split the hairs of Holy Grail!

In this, there is neither yin nor yang. Nor is this state the annihilation of our functionality in the human body and in this world. Quite the opposite: freed from the delusion of the limited ego-self, we are free to act in harmony with the divine Self.

The awakened Mind then participates freely in the swirl of creation's eternal flux. Stability at the center; movement at the periphery. A dance choreographed by the Higher Mind of God.

Yogananda stated "I killed Yogananda long ago. No one dwells in this form but He."

And why not? Is not both the outer world and the inner world a ceaseless flux inextricably linked in both energy and form? We only separate ourselves in the limited realm of the five (six, actually, including the mind) senses? Our sense of separateness is an illusion, one not difficult to unmask by paying attention, even by reason, and certainly by intuition: for those courageous enough to enter a brave new world.

For those who might benefit from several excellent videos on this subject (and much more, both science and metaphysics), I direct your attention to the movie Inner Worlds Outer Worlds. It can be viewed in four half hour segments for free on YouTube or the entire move for $3.99: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1LtuE8zRMo

Aligned with this is another movie called simply Samadhi. It is followed by four guided video meditations. Although these are strongly influenced by Buddhism terminology, Vedanta, Sankhya and Yoga terminology are also included. References to Egypt, native American, Christian terminology are also presented. 

In YouTube.com search for "Samadhi." The two-hour movie is in two one-hour parts and in various languages as well.

Similarly, four guided Samadhi meditations are excellent and are based on watching the breath. Search on Samadhi meditation.

While I personally and most of the readers of this blog practice the techniques taught by Paramhansa Yogananda and therefore don't "need" the resources above, they are well done and in their essence are not contradictory to what Yogananda taught, though their emphases and terminology may differ in parts.

Joy to you!

Nayaswami Hrimananda




Monday, August 20, 2018

Reflections from Vacation: Does Dirt Have a Soul?

Paramhansa Yogananda once stated that “I remembered my incarnation as a diamond!”

What do you do with THAT? Does every grain of dirt or rock possess a soul? If our souls are “as old as God” how do we get to the human level? Did we start at some exalted level and then became dumber, rock-like, as it were?

These are, admittedly, seriously Unimportant questions. Fitting for a lazy, summer afternoon when all of the world’s problems have finally been solved while sitting on the deck enjoying the view.

Here are some things as I believe I have learned them in the context of Vedanta and the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda:

God created all things.

God created all things by becoming them and planted within them the seed of His own intention to create. And why? It is the nature of Bliss to share.

God is beyond His own creation and remains untouched by it. God is Satchidanandam: ever-existing (immortal), ever-conscious (omniscient), and ever-new bliss (omnipresent).

God’s nature is triune: FIRST: There is the “Father” Spirit who is the source of creation and yet beyond and untouched by His creation. SECOND: There is the Mother of creation, or Holy Ghost, the initial and primordial vibration of God out of which all creation is made manifest, sustained, and withdrawn. This is the “Word” or “Comforter” in whom (by deep experiential attunement) “all things are known.” As all things in creation are vibrating, so the Aum Vibration (the Divine Mother) is the underlying reality, undifferentiated, of all things and thus described as a “virgin,” meaning untouched by the specific qualities (good, bad, indifferent) subsequently manifested by each item in creation. THIRD: There is the “only begotten son of God” which is the vibrationless reflection of the Father-Spirit which resides as the indwelling divine intelligence at the still, unmoving heart of every atom of creation. By planting His “seed” (or “His vibrationless bliss & His intention to create) in the womb of the (vibrating) Mother of creation, God ensures creation’s perpetuation.

The outflowing pulsation of the Holy Ghost (the Aum vibration) into creation steadily picks up “speed and substance” as it moves through the levels of creation. It begins to acquire a sense of its separateness, enjoys that I-ness, and begins to actively pursue perpetuating itself and the creation as a separate force, being, and entity from God. It is called maya, or the satanic force. It seeks others of like mind to further draw away from God into its own orbit of increasing darkness, no longer comprehending the light which gave it initial birth.

This outflowing force is countered by the soothing sound of the in-flowing power of Aum to draw all beings back to its Source in Bliss.

We are made in the image of God. We must, therefore, possess a triune nature as well.

There are three levels of creation: FIRST is thought (causal-intentional-idea-blissful); SECOND is energy (feeling-finer electrical and atomic forces-light-astral-subtle and prototypical life force and subtle forms), and THIRD is matter (objectified creation).

The soul appears on the casual level; the ego appears on the astral level; the human body appears on the physical level as a necessary extension of the ego’s desires and attachments.

Paramhansa Yogananda described the ego as the “soul identified with the body.” This identification is temporary. The ego is a “bundle of self-definitions” and a bundle of countless impressions (vasanas), actions (karma producing vrittis), and samskaras (tendencies). Implicit in Yogananda’s definition is that ego possesses at least a modicum of awareness of itself as distinct from other selves: hence, a key attribute of ego is self-awareness.

Animals, nations, races, etc., have a mass karma which has its roots in their identification with their species and behavior and qualities of its nature.


Does dirt have a soul? If all things ARE God in manifestation then all things exist in the three-fold creation of casual, astral and physical. Thus all objects partake in the essence of God and thus can be said to have a soul at least in the sense of possessing at its heart the blissful intelligence and intention of God (beyond creation). It is that seed of intelligence that permits each object to manifest and sustain itself AS itself, so that dirt look like dirt, and chickens behave as chickens.

But: and there’s always a butt in the crowd, where’s the ego in dirt? The ego in dirt lacks self-awareness, so for all practical purposes you can say there’s no ego there. While certainly the divine causal consciousness of dirt has manifested the outer form of dirt, self-awareness is NOT manifested, though it is, by necessity and definition, latent. To quote an ancient sloka: “God sleeps in the rocks.” Still, dirt IS dirt and retains all of dirt’s manifold and wonderful attributes (which I will not bother to name). The existence of dirt suggests a rudimentary intelligence but there is no evidence an ego.

On the fungible level of dirt, minerals, gasses and the like, the innate God consciousness at their heart may be a kind of soul-force but they exhibit no sign of separate, self-awareness beyond the rudimentary intelligence that guides such forms of matter to behave in ways appropriate to their form and function.
Soul-force at this basic level can presumably merge and divide endlessly without distinction, gain or loss. All creation is, in effect, an infinite variety of divine sparks whose uniqueness relates to the form assumed.

We love nature and most animals because, inter alia, they are relatively ego-less. The ego arises with the perception of separateness which has latent within it the implicit potential for self-awareness. Thus a worm wriggles away if pricked with a pin just as simple cells and lower life forms attempt to avoid being eaten. The latency of self-awareness can evolve as the forms themselves contain an ever greater potential to express it. Some animals (dogs, horses, etc.) are more intelligent, or, put more correctly, more self-aware than others (think, e.g., chickens).

Yogananda claimed that the “missing link” would never be found because the appearance of the human form was not a mere accident or result of a mechanical or mindless evolutionary biology prompted by the impulse to survive and procreate. Instead, the human form, he insisted, resulted from an act of divine intervention. (I posit that his statement might have been a way to affirm that behind evolution is a superconscious, or divine, intention whose purpose was and is to evolve a form capable of achieving cosmic consciousness. But, so far as I am aware, he never explained this.)

To God, who is Infinite, time has little meaning. It might take “forever” to evolve the human body to be capable of perceiving God directly through intuition (in cosmic consciousness) but “what is time to Him?”

In the great drama of life from the God’s-I point of view, the purpose of the “drama of life is the fact that it is but a drama.” The creation exists as a great riddle the solution to which is to unmask the illusion of separateness and reveal the substance of creation as Ekam Sat: God alone exists. 

As a dog becomes identified to a human and to human voices, surroundings, comforts and behavior, it is not difficult to imagine that as the dog becomes increasingly self-aware and human it will attract a human body in its next life.

Thus the ego can be seen as an emerging self-awareness that identifies increasingly with its outer form and with protecting, defending and enjoying that form. Lower life forms suffer less or perhaps not at all when killed, chopped, destroyed (by nature, other animals or by humans) because they have relatively less egoic self-awareness.

Ironically, therefore, it could be said that dirt has a “greater soul” than most people because no apparent ego! But of course, having solved all the world’s problems, we might still not get this quite right, either.

I think the obvious is obvious: dirt doesn’t really have an ego (at least so far as WE are concerned). Nor does dirt seem to have the potential to realize its essential nature as a soul. It would appear that in the ordinary course of the soul’s awakening there is a long period of many incarnations in human form wherein the ego appears, plays, and, in time, decides to play no more and, instead, chooses to seek ego transcendence (freedom in the Infinite bliss of the soul).

What a story: the greatest story ever told and it’s not a dirty story, either!

Joy to you!

Swami RelaxAnanda

Next installment might be for your summer enjoyment: “If one needs a guru to become enlightened, how did the first guru get enlightenment.” [Submissions will be judged on brevity not accuracy.]