by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 12
 July 2001

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - ON MEDITATION - Part 1

The Object of meditation.

"Based on lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

  Any yoga you perform which does not aim at this source of enlightenment, and is based on ignorance, is meaningless, does not yield results and is falsity.

And what follows interestingly from there ? Rememeber the words of Sri Aurobindo "All life is Yoga". Living life and Yoga are same thing really. Therefore if I go through the life without acquiring this knowledge, I am wasting my precious life.

Once this is understood, this goal has to be sincerely pursued. This ofcourse is not easy. Concentration does not come easily even for highly enlightened souls, what to talk of worldly people. But as again Sri Aurobindo suggests, " once there is sincerity in our approach, this problem of diverse thoughts- wandering of mind- works itself out by the general force of the supreme consciousness that is behind all our thoughts."

The effort is as much on the part of The Divine, as it is on the part of ours. He , the Divine is indeed the answer to that eternal question, that profound question of The Kena Upanishad:

Kenesitam patati presitam manah - Who directs the mind to go to the thought it thinks?

And the answer is given as "Yenaahuh manah matam, tadeva bramha." The Bramhan or The Divine is that by which the mind assumes its mental faculty, the mind of the mind. Being the essence of mind Himself, The Divine, once He takes charge of our minds, the very path of thought is traversed with His assistance only.

This intervention of the Divine is a very interesting observation. The supreme consciousness being always present in the background of our thoughts and coming to our assistance at our time of need, is well explained by the philosophy of Sanatana Dharma with its concept of the soul ascending and the supreme descending to lift it up. A great comforting thought indeed for all sadhakas. As we ascend, the supreme consciousness also descends - perhaps by two steps to our one step - to take charge like the mother of a toddler. The moment she sees that her crawling baby has stood up and taken one step, she forgets all work and rushes to assist the baby and herself takes several steps with the baby.

So meditation has to be understood as a state of deep concentration with the divine as the object. It is the basis of all Tapasya.. As it is said, meditation with concentration is merely an image of Divine Tapas.

Thus is explained the source object which is the basis of all meditation and from what, all benefits of meditation flows.

In the next chapters we shall discuss what happens while meditating and how the benefits of meditation are perceived. -   to be continued.