by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 14
 Sept - Oct. 2001

CHAPTER FIFTEEN- ON MEDITATION - Part 3

The Benefits of Meditation - on the mind, knowledge and the bliss sheaths

Continued from Chapter thirteen which dealt with The Benefits of Meditation

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

We have now seen how the process of meditation can bring in great benefits in our physical body and vital breath level. The acquiring of great physical prowess and will force is often so tantalising that there remains the danger of remaining at this level and abandon further pursuit of spiritual development and lose sight of the ultimate goal. This is the characteristics of demoniacal (asuric) nature.
   
However, if it were the irrevocable nature of beings to remain confined to only egocentric desires and remain bottled up within the annamay and pranamay kosha, then all lives will be simply wasted. There will be no hope for evolution of a superior being. Fortunately that is not the will of the Lord. Development and evolution is inherent in the creation. So everyone eventually must be assisted to rise beyond this Aparardha or the realm of lower existence and enter the Parardha - the realm of higher existence. And it is within the power of the spirit which the man is. Sri Aurobindo has said "man is a spirit" and he describes it as a self liberating spirit. Man is a self liberating spirit. Its transcendence - its upward movement from plane to plane is its nature. This rule is acting upon us all the time, triggered by our individual efforts and sustained by the assistance from the Bramhan.

Meditation also provides this triggering effect. It is true that many of us remain happy in acquiring a certain degree of physical prowess and mental will. In our ignorance we mistake it to be great spiritual achievement and stay put there for long period of time. In a manner of speaking we live like Asuras. Many of us waste away our entire life living like asuras being content with some achievements of physical yoga and mental discipline. We live as asuras and die as asuras.

  But this self liberating spirit can, if it wishes to, surrender itself to divine influence and rise from sub human asuric existence to a higher divine existence. It can come out from the lower realm -the aparardha - and continue its journey in the higher realm - the parardha.

We may take the help again of the symbolic representation from our puranas which abound in illustrations to drive home a good point.

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