Swami Krishnananda - The Yoga of Meditation, @Yoga
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The Yoga of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda, The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram
The Yoga of Meditation
by
Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Society
Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India
CONTENTS
PART I
Meditation - Its Theory and Practice
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PART II
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The Yoga of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda, The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram
PART I
MEDITATION - ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE
Chapter 1
The Meaning and Method of Meditation
The art of meditation is not a job to be performed as one does the duties
of one's profession in life, for all activities of life are in the form of a
function of one's individuality or personality which is to a large extent
extraneous to one's nature, due to which there is a fatigue after work and
there are times when one gets fed up with work, altogether. But meditation is
not such a function and it differs from activities with which man is usually
familiar. If sometimes one is tired of meditation, we have only to conclude
one has only engaged oneself in another kind of activity, calling it
meditation, while really it was not so.
We have to make a careful distinction between one's
being
and the
action
that proceeds from one's being. What sometimes fatigues the person
is the latter and not the former. We may be tired of work, but we cannot be
tired of our own selves. So it naturally follows that whenever we are tired of
a work or a function, it is not part of our nature but extraneous to it. If
meditation is also to become a work or a function of our being, it too would
fall outside our nature And one day we shall not only be tired of it but also
be sick of it, since it would impose itself as a foreign element upon our being
or nature, and it is the character of essential being to cast out every foreign
body by various methods.
Aspirants on the spiritual path are generally conversant with the fact that
meditation is the pinnacle of Yoga and the consummation of spiritual
endeavour. But it is only a very few that really gain access into the centrality
of its meaning and mostly its essentiality is missed in a confusion that is
usually made by equating it with a kind of work or activity of the mind,
which is precisely the reason why most people find it difficult to sit long in
meditation and are overcome either by sleep or a general weariness of the
psycho-physical system. It is curious that what one is aiming at as the goal
of one's life should become the cause of fatigue, frustration and even disgust
on occasions. People seek to know the secrets of meditation on account of
dissatisfaction with the normal activities of life and detecting a lacuna in the
value of earthly existence. And if even this remedy that is sought to fill this
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The Yoga of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda, The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram
gap in life is to create a sense of another lacuna, shortcoming or
dissatisfaction and if there should be factors which can press one into a sense
of 'enough' even with meditation and make one turn to some other
occupation as a diversion away from it, it has to be concluded that there is a
serious defect in one's concept of meditation itself.
When we carefully and sympathetically investigate into meditation as a
spiritual exercise, we come face to face with certain tremendous truths about
Nature and life as a whole. Before engaging oneself in any task, a clear idea
of it is necessary, lest one should make a mess of what one is supposed to
do. The question that is fundamental is: 'How does one know that meditation
is the remedy for the short-comings of life'?
An answer to this question would necessitate a knowledge of what it is
that one really lacks in life, due to which one turns to meditation for help.
Broadly speaking, one's dissatisfaction is caused by a general feeling which
comes upon one, after having lived through life for a sufficient number of
years, that the desires of man seem to have no end; that the more are his
possessions, the more also are his ambitions and cravings; that those who
appear to be friends seem also to be capable of deserting one in crucial hours
of life; that sense-objects entangle one in mechanical complexities rather
than give relief from tension, anxiety and want; that one's longing for
happiness exceeds all finitudes of concept and can never be made good by
anything that the world contains, on account of the limitation brought about
by one thing excluding another and the capacity of one thing to include
another in its structure; that the so-called pleasures of life appear to be a
mere itching of nerves and a submission to involuntary urges and a slavery
to instincts rather than the achievement of real freedom which is the one
thing that man finally aspires for.
If these and such other things are the defects of life, how does one seek
to rectify it by meditation? The defects seem to be really horrifying, more
than what ordinary human mind can compass and contain. But nevertheless,
there rises a hope that meditation can set right these shortcomings and, if this
hope has any significance or reality, the gamut of meditation should
naturally extend beyond all limitations of human life. Truly, meditation
should then be a universal work of the mind and not a simple private
thinking in the closet of one's room or house. This aspect of the nature of
meditation is outside the scope of the notion of it which many spiritual
aspirants may be entertaining in their minds. An analysis of the nature of
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The Yoga of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda, The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram
meditation opens up a deeper reality than is comprised in the usual
psychological processes of the mind, such as thinking, feeling and
understanding, and it really turns out to be a rousing of the
soul
of man
instead of a mere functioning of the mind.
The soul does not rise into activity under normal conditions. Man is
mostly, throughout his life, confined only to certain aspects of its
manifestations when he thinks, understands, feels, wills, remembers, and so
on. All this, no doubt, is partial expression of the human individuality, but it
is not in any way near to the upsurge of the soul. The difference between
normal human functions and soul's activity is that in the former case, when
one function is being performed the others are set aside, ignored or
suppressed, so that men cannot do all things at the same time; but in the
latter, the whole of man in his essentiality rises to the occasion and nothing
of him is excluded in this activity. Rarely does the soul act in human life, but
when it does act even in a mild form or even in a distorted way, one forgets
the whole world including the consciousness of one's own personality and
enjoys a happiness which always remains incomparable. The mild
manifestations of the soul through the channels of the human personality are
seen in the ecstatic enthusiasms of art, particularly the fine arts, such as
elevating music and the satisfaction derived through the appreciation of high
genius in literature. In such appreciations one forgets oneself and becomes
one with the object of appreciation. This is why art is capable of drawing the
attention of man so powerfully and making him forget everything else for
the time being. But in the daily life of an individual there are at least three
occasions when the soul manifests itself externally and drowns one in
incomparable joy; these are the satisfactions of (1) intense hunger, (2) sexual
appetite and (3) sleep. In all these three instances, especially when the urges
are very uncompromising, the totality of the being of a person acts, and here
the logic of the intellect and the etiquettes of the world will be of no avail.
The reason is simple: when the soul acts, even through the senses, mind and
body, which are its distorted expressions, its pressure is irresistible, for the
soul is the essence of the entire being and not merely of certain functional
faculties of a person. While the joys of the manifestations of the partial
aspects of the personality can be ignored or sacrifice for the sake of other
insistent demands, there can be no such compromise when the soul presses
itself forward into action.
The outcome of the above investigation is that when the soul normally
acts, there is no consciousness of externality, not even of one's own
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The Yoga of Meditation by Swami Krishnananda, The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram
personality, and hence the joy experienced then is transporting and
enrapturing. And we have observed that meditation is the soul rising into
action, not merely a function of the mind. This will explain also that
meditation is a joy and cannot be a source of fatigue, tiresomeness, etc.,
when rightly practised. But meditation wholly differs from those channelised
spatio-temporal manifestations of the soul, itemised in the above paragraphs.
In meditation the soul's manifestation is not through the senses, mind and
body, though its impact may be felt through any of these vestures before it
fully reveals itself in the process called meditation.
The Sadhaka attempts to manifest the soul gradually in the meditational
technique. The senses are had media for the soul's manifestation, because the
sensory activity is never a whole, one sense functioning differently from the
other and being exclusive of the other, while the soul is inclusive of
everything. Hence, when there is a sensory pressure from the soul it
becomes a binding passion, almost a kind of madness, as it does not take
into consideration the other aspects of life. The body, too, is not the proper
medium for the soul's expression, for it is inert and is almost lifeless but for
the vital energy or the Prana pervading through it. The only other medium
through which the soul can reveal itself is the mind which, though it operates
in terms of the information supplied by the senses, has also the capacity to
organise and synthesise sensory knowledge into a sort of wholeness, and,
hence, is in a position to reflect the soul whose essential character is
wholeness of being. Thus, the process of meditation has always to be
through the mind though its intention is to transcend the mind. The mental
activities, being midway between the operation of the senses and the soul's
existence, partake of a double character, viz., attraction from objects outside
and the longing for perfection from within. The more does the mind succeed
in abstracting itself from sensory information in terms of objects, the more
also is the success in meditation. For this purpose Sadhakas develop a series
of techniques to draw the mind away from the objects of sense and direct it
slowly to the wholeness of the soul. The main forms of this method, to put
them serially, in an ascending order, would be (1) concentration on an
external point, symbol, image or picture; (2) concentration on an internal
point, symbol, image or picture; (3) concentration on universal existence.
An external point, symbol, image or picture is chosen for the purpose of
concentration, so that the mind may not suddenly feel itself bereaved from
sense-objects and yet be tied down to a single sense-object. Some seekers
concentrate their minds on a point or a dot on a wall, a candle-flame, a
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