Meditation With and Without Seed

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.