Meditation, a Supranormal State
Talk by Shri Yogendraji, circa 1978
Meditation was known in India even before Patanjali's time. So in the early Upanishads and even in the Vedic period, people were found to be sitting under a tree - motionless and in deep contemplation. It was a way to acquire contact with the reality: when the Self going outwards is stopped from doing so; is restrained. So contemplation and meditation were the ancient characteristics of people who were looking for knowledge.
Later on, it was made a part of the study system of Yogic tradition. It was given a particular sequence where it fits in and where it should remain. So in the sequence of yoga study, the external or Bahiranga yoga was explained first because that was something on which a man can have control and can act consciously. But the control of the mind was a difficult process, and so the processes that belonged to mental culture, which they called as intrinsic or interior yoga, were deep down.
Now meditation has nothing to do with the external. Sitting quietly, keeping the mouth and eyes shut and pretending that there is something like meditation, doesn't make for meditation at all. Since meditation comes after a certain period and not immediately, it requires certain qualifications from a man. Like a man who says he's a typist, can be tested immediately. "Here is a typewriter, sit down and type." And when he bungles, you know that he doesn't know it. In meditation, a man can pretend and say he's meditating and an outsider cannot know whether he is in meditation or not.
So Patanjali arranged it in such a way that meditation doesn't come first. So one may go to a teacher and say, "Teach me meditation." Well, meditation just doesn't come that way because it's a state of consciousness which is above the normal. Now, how can you create a supranormal state out of an average man? What technique have you showed him? Just sit down with the same mind, the same level of consciousness; does this make any change in his consciousness? It cannot. Therefore, various techniques have been prepared by which a man can be brought to a level of understanding meditation and continuing with it. It is always very difficult for an average man to understand much beyond his range of thinking. Meditation is a stage beyond his normal consciousness. They say that the Chitta or the personality of an individual is bound up in so many things, that meditation cannot take place unless all these things have been so levelled up that they don't rise and take possession of his Chitta.
So all these factors that distract him have to first be removed. And still there are so many schools, so many teachers throughout the world who go on teaching meditation to any man coming from the street. The thing is not as easy as you think. So Patanjali said that before you reach this stage, it is essential that certain physical practices are done. If a man cannot sit in a posture and keep it correct but changes it every second, what mental concentration can he have? So the first thing is to control the body through a discipline of its own kind consisting of muscular, nervous, and other control, which is purely physical and under one’s own conscious knowledge.
Then comes the control of the respiratory movements which affect the thinking processes. If they are continuous, the thinking will continue without any restraint and any type of meditation will become impossible. Now a man, not accustomed to giving sufficient time and practice, cannot understand what is meant by this. And therefore, initiating an individual into meditation immediately is only a fraud, just to earn a little money.
What is true meditation? True meditation is where no thought surfaces upward. It's like a tranquil lake in which the water is just still. No momentum. Absolute quietness. Now, can any man say that when he sits and tries to meditate, his mind is quiet or even one-pointed? It is not.
Therefore, Patanjali laid the first condition right in his first chapter, that before attempting yoga, you must understand and get acquainted with what are all the stages and levels of consciousness. When it comes to these levels, you have to leave the first floor to walk up to the seventh floor but you cannot have both. But what is happening is that the average man tied to an ordinary consciousness, wants to have an experience of a supranormal consciousness at the same level which just cannot be done. They are both self-contradictory.
So, meditation belongs to a higher category of consciousness and cannot be experienced in the average life. This has to have a new character of its own apart from the daily routine experiences at conscious level. People seem to be unable to disassociate themselves from this level to which they are bound. So many people are anxious to experience the highest or willing to pay any price for it. In their hunt for something, you can find them running around the whole world wherever they think there is an 'Ashram.' But they do not know that all teachers and owners of such Ashrams are not necessarily those who have reached the higher levels. But since that is the only thing they know, they get trapped and sometimes get quite frustrated.
Meditation, to be successful, firstly needs a healthy body which does not allow for any disturbance. A man in pain, with some disease, cannot concentrate or become one-pointed. So, Patanjali's own prescription is first steadying of the mind and body. Posture steadies the body. Control and restraint can steady the mind from taking on its modifications. They say even the feeling of the presence of Ishwar, being unaffected, feeling that He's all around us, that itself lifts you up from the average consciousness. You keep your mind away from going outward, you keep it inward and you've started on a progress towards meditation. Effect from outside is reduced, so it remains in a conditioned stage and there you can do whatever you like with it. Then when it becomes one-pointed, you carry it further and the mind is engaged into something which you have given it to consider – a thought, an idea, a symbol, anything. Then once attached to it, if your mind can follow it up as if it is that itself; in that condition, it is concentrated. And a new life, a new consciousness, a new understanding begins to dawn on you, which you had never known before. Because under ordinary cognitive conditions, what the senses reflect and what the reason can diagnose through your own past experience, you only know up to that much. Here, there is a new level that has been reached where the ordinary knowledge which you have acquired in your lifetime doesn't amount to anything. It has to be forgotten.
A new consciousness begins to dawn.
Meditation, a Supranormal State
Talk by Shri Yogendraji, circa 1978
Meditation was known in India even before Patanjali's time. So in the early Upanishads and even in the Vedic period, people were found to be sitting under a tree - motionless and in deep contemplation. It was a way to acquire contact with the reality: when the Self going outwards is stopped from doing so; is restrained. So contemplation and meditation were the ancient characteristics of people who were looking for knowledge.
Later on, it was made a part of the study system of Yogic tradition. It was given a particular sequence where it fits in and where it should remain. So in the sequence of yoga study, the external or Bahiranga yoga was explained first because that was something on which a man can have control and can act consciously. But the control of the mind was a difficult process, and so the processes that belonged to mental culture, which they called as intrinsic or interior yoga, were deep down.
Now meditation has nothing to do with the external. Sitting quietly, keeping the mouth and eyes shut and pretending that there is something like meditation, doesn't make for meditation at all. Since meditation comes after a certain period and not immediately, it requires certain qualifications from a man. Like a man who says he's a typist, can be tested immediately. "Here is a typewriter, sit down and type." And when he bungles, you know that he doesn't know it. In meditation, a man can pretend and say he's meditating and an outsider cannot know whether he is in meditation or not.
So Patanjali arranged it in such a way that meditation doesn't come first. So one may go to a teacher and say, "Teach me meditation." Well, meditation just doesn't come that way because it's a state of consciousness which is above the normal. Now, how can you create a supranormal state out of an average man? What technique have you showed him? Just sit down with the same mind, the same level of consciousness; does this make any change in his consciousness? It cannot. Therefore, various techniques have been prepared by which a man can be brought to a level of understanding meditation and continuing with it. It is always very difficult for an average man to understand much beyond his range of thinking. Meditation is a stage beyond his normal consciousness. They say that the Chitta or the personality of an individual is bound up in so many things, that meditation cannot take place unless all these things have been so levelled up that they don't rise and take possession of his Chitta.
So all these factors that distract him have to first be removed. And still there are so many schools, so many teachers throughout the world who go on teaching meditation to any man coming from the street. The thing is not as easy as you think. So Patanjali said that before you reach this stage, it is essential that certain physical practices are done. If a man cannot sit in a posture and keep it correct but changes it every second, what mental concentration can he have? So the first thing is to control the body through a discipline of its own kind consisting of muscular, nervous, and other control, which is purely physical and under one’s own conscious knowledge.
Then comes the control of the respiratory movements which affect the thinking processes. If they are continuous, the thinking will continue without any restraint and any type of meditation will become impossible. Now a man, not accustomed to giving sufficient time and practice, cannot understand what is meant by this. And therefore, initiating an individual into meditation immediately is only a fraud, just to earn a little money.
What is true meditation? True meditation is where no thought surfaces upward. It's like a tranquil lake in which the water is just still. No momentum. Absolute quietness. Now, can any man say that when he sits and tries to meditate, his mind is quiet or even one-pointed? It is not.
Therefore, Patanjali laid the first condition right in his first chapter, that before attempting yoga, you must understand and get acquainted with what are all the stages and levels of consciousness. When it comes to these levels, you have to leave the first floor to walk up to the seventh floor but you cannot have both. But what is happening is that the average man tied to an ordinary consciousness, wants to have an experience of a supranormal consciousness at the same level which just cannot be done. They are both self-contradictory.
So, meditation belongs to a higher category of consciousness and cannot be experienced in the average life. This has to have a new character of its own apart from the daily routine experiences at conscious level. People seem to be unable to disassociate themselves from this level to which they are bound. So many people are anxious to experience the highest or willing to pay any price for it. In their hunt for something, you can find them running around the whole world wherever they think there is an 'Ashram.' But they do not know that all teachers and owners of such Ashrams are not necessarily those who have reached the higher levels. But since that is the only thing they know, they get trapped and sometimes get quite frustrated.
Meditation, to be successful, firstly needs a healthy body which does not allow for any disturbance. A man in pain, with some disease, cannot concentrate or become one-pointed. So, Patanjali's own prescription is first steadying of the mind and body. Posture steadies the body. Control and restraint can steady the mind from taking on its modifications. They say even the feeling of the presence of Ishwar, being unaffected, feeling that He's all around us, that itself lifts you up from the average consciousness. You keep your mind away from going outward, you keep it inward and you've started on a progress towards meditation. Effect from outside is reduced, so it remains in a conditioned stage and there you can do whatever you like with it. Then when it becomes one-pointed, you carry it further and the mind is engaged into something which you have given it to consider – a thought, an idea, a symbol, anything. Then once attached to it, if your mind can follow it up as if it is that itself; in that condition, it is concentrated. And a new life, a new consciousness, a new understanding begins to dawn on you, which you had never known before. Because under ordinary cognitive conditions, what the senses reflect and what the reason can diagnose through your own past experience, you only know up to that much. Here, there is a new level that has been reached where the ordinary knowledge which you have acquired in your lifetime doesn't amount to anything. It has to be forgotten.
A new consciousness begins to dawn.