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.