MOTHER was trying on her new fur coat. It was very expensive. Her young daughter watched her curiously and remarked: imagine how much suffering the poor animal would have had to undergo for you to have this fur coat! Mother turned to her daughter angrily: how dare you speak about your poor father like this. These days you young people have no respect for elders!
Our mind leads us its own way, sometimes strange ways, in the way it thinks and responds. Thoughts rise and fall chaotically within our mind; nothing is logical; they rise, live and fall. It is not thinking; it is just association. Association causes dilemmas. Fathers turn into poor animals.
When we bring your thinking process into consciousness our desires too become conscious. As of now they are mostly unconscious. You realise only after a while that whatever led into a problem is just association, not your desires.
We try to suppress desires or fulfil them. Suppression does not work. Fulfilment does not remove desires, it creates more desires. Bring your desires to consciousness from unconsciousness. If the desire is really worth fulfilling, the desire itself will have its energy for fulfilment. If not it will disappear. Either way you are in relaxation.
Energy is the source of desire. The same energy that converts food into muscles, circulates blood, moves your body. Between body and energy desires happen; they are closer to energy than body; they are more powerful than body. If you change your desires your whole body can change. Writing is the best way to raise desires to awareness.
Once a week give an appointment to yourself for 30 minutes and ask your Being what it wants. Just listen to your mind and note down. Whatever is necessary will stand, whatever is not will disappear. Many of our desires are not our own deep desires. We have life and energy to live only our own desires.
To mind your mind we need contemplation, concentration and meditation. Guiding our mind is contemplation; centring on one subject is concentration; when mind disappears into that subject and no mind remains it is meditation. When you become aware of this table it is contemplation; when you centre yourself on the wood it is concentration; when your mind become the wood it is meditation.
Meditation makes you aware of the reality. It liberates you.

– Paramahamsa Nithyananda

Any technique, any method which raises your consciousness is meditation.

Meditation can even be a simple breathing technique. It can be a simple repetition of a word or simply sitting. In the Zen tradition, just sitting is meditation. Your may think this is the easiest thing to do but in fact, just sitting is the most difficult meditation. Anything can become meditation if it raises your consciousness.

What is the Right Way to Approach Meditation?

The first thing is, be sincere. Keep an open mind. Have the openness to experiment. Be enthusiastic.

There is a beautiful term in the Zen tradition to describe the attitude – the beginner’s mind. It means looking at every single thing in life as new, so everything in life is excites you.

The second thing is, be optimistic. Bliss is a perfectly realizable goal for you, even if you are completely unfamiliar with meditation.

Once a man approached the great enlightened master Ramana Maharishi and asked him. ‘Bhagavan, am I qualified for spiritual life?’

Ramana answered him with a question ‘Are you alive?’

The man was startled. He said, ‘Yes of course!’

Ramana replied, ‘That is enough. You already have the necessary qualifications  for spirituality!’

The very aim of human life is enlightenment. The possibility of becoming lies in the Kundalini shakti, an extraordinary potential energy which is hidden inside every human body. If it can be awakened, it will take you to a different plane of consciousness a different plane of Existence.

What is Meditation?

Relating to Space – the Only Element that can Reflect Consciousness

Meditation is falling in tune with nature, with Existence. This is your natural state, your true state of bliss. This is connecting with the Ultimate Consciousness.

You see, the universe or the macrocosm is made of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and space. In the same way, the body, the microcosm, is also made of the same five elements. We can relate to the macrocosm, the Whole, the Divine through any or all of these five elements. The microcosm can experience the macrocosm by relating with these five elements that pervade both.

Relating to the macrocosm through the earth element is worshiping through idols or deities. Deities are made of the earth element, such as clay, brass, copper, etc. So worshiping through them is worshiping through them is worshiping through the earth element. Relating through the water element is offering abhishekas, holy baths to deities or bathing ourselves in holy rivers. Relating through the fire element is performing homas, fire rituals. Relating through the air element is chanting mantras, divine chants. Relating through the space element is meditation. Through these five ways, we can relate to the macrocosm.

Understand, out of the five elements, space is the only element that can reflect consciousness. The four grosser elements, earth, water, fire and air cannot relate with or cannot reflect consciousness. Only space can reflect consciousness. And the way to relate with space energy is meditation.

Imagine for a moment that the first half of this column is empty. Imagine that the tape you are listening to you is silent and has no content for just two minutes. What happens?

Your mind races. Thoughts flood you. What has happened, you wonder, what has gone wrong? Why are there no words?

Nothing has gone wrong, nothing at all. Your mind cannot tolerate silence; that is all. Thoughts and words are a call of your Consciousness telling you that your center is unfilled.

There are two kinds of people. One kind is the people who follow words and seek meaning behind the words. Another kind is those people who ignore the meaning and seek the source of thoughts.

Seeking words and thoughts cannot fulfill you. When you seek words you move into the outer world. You move into the space of sense objects, which results in pain or pleasure. However many times you may experience the physical or sensual pleasure led by your thoughts, you still keep seeking the same pleasure. What one calls karma, is really the effect of these unfulfilled desires.

The meaning of thoughts and words is not to provoke movement towards these external experiences that can never be fulfilled but to move towards the center, the core of your being. Only there you will find the comfort in silence.

Words soothe your superficial mind the same way as scratching an itch seems to provide some comfort. In actual fact it makes the problem worse. It is the same with words. More words you use more confused you are. Be careful of all these scholars and philosophers who use highly complex language and words to propound their theories. They themselves do not understand what they are saying, so they are forced to confuse others by using complexity as a tool.

Whenever you ask questions, more questions arise. This is seen as the measure of intelligence in our system of education. When one really understands, one realizes two things. Firstly, one realizes that questions and answers do no lead to any understanding at all. Secondly, one realizes that understanding happens when thoughts cease.

Truth resides in silence. Truth resides in contemplation. As you move inwards towards the source of words and thoughts, mind become still in simplicity.

This stillness, this silence leads to fulfillment.

Nithyananda

When you have even one glimpse of pure consciousness, no Karma can influence you. Your frequency becomes much more than the frequency of Karma. Karma can work on you only as long as you have thoughts. In conscious awareness you go beyond thoughts. So , naturally you will start ruling over Karma. Any meditation when done intensely can give you a glimpse of consciousness – the Truth.

That is why they say, meditation is like exposing your film directly to the sun. If the camera shutter opens for one second, whatever is in front of the camera will be recorded on film. If the shutter is left completely open, what will happen? If the sun’s rays directly fall on the film, what will happen? Whatever is recorded will be erased.

When you took birth, for a moment the camera shutter opened and life entered your body. Whatever was there in the scene outside at the moment was recorded. By the word scene, I mean the planetary positions at that moment. That is why the time of birth is very important. Based on that, your consciousness functions. However, during meditation, I consciously keep the shutter open for quite some time! So naturally, whatever is recorded will be erased!

So the first time the shutter was opened was when you took birth. The second time the shutter is opened is when you are initiated. This time the shutter is kept completely and naturally open so that the sun’s rays enter and wipe out all you Karma. That is why when you are initiate by a master, you are call dvija – twice born a new life. And the man who operates your camera, who holds the shutter open for the period of time, is called the guru. He is the master!!