What is Meditation

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Meditation is something that most people have heard about, few have any true conception about and even fewer have actually experienced. Like all other subjective experiences it cannot really be described in words. The reader must try to find it for himself to know what it is really about. The experience is real whereas a description is really non-experience, especially in the case of meditation. However, we will do our best to throw some light on the subject.

Let us first define the way that modern psychology has categorized different factors of the mind. The subconscious or unconscious mind can be roughly divided into three groups as follows: the lower mind, the middle mind and the higher mind. The lower mind is concerned with the activation and coordination of the various activities of the body, such as respiration, circulation, the abdominal organs, and so on. It is also the area of mind which gives rise to instinctive urges, and it is from this part of the mind that complexes, phobias, fears and obsessions manifest.

The middle mind is the part of the mind that concerns itself with data that we use during the waking state. It is this part of the mind that analyzes, compares and reaches conclusions in relation to incoming data. The results of its work manifest to our conscious attention as required. It is this part of the mind that gives us answers. For example, most of us have been faced with a problem which we cannot solve at the time, only to find that answer surfaces to consciousness at some later time. It is the middle subconscious that has done the problem solving without our awareness. This is the realm of rational or intellectual thinking.

The higher mind is the area of so–called superconscious activity. It is the source of intuition, inspiration, bliss and transcendental experiences. It is from this region that geniuses derive their flashes of creativity. It is the source of deeper knowledge.

Throughout our waking hours we have consciousness of certain phenomena. We are conscious only of a small part of the activities of the mind, usually in the realms of the middle mind. It is this consciousness that is allowing you to read these words and to be aware of their meaning.

Another part of the mind is the collective unconscious that Carl Jung did much to bring to scientific acceptance. It is in this part of the mind that we have records of our evolutionary past. It contains records of the activities of our ancestors and the archetypes. It is the part of the mind that links us to all other human beings because it is the blueprint of our common past.

Behind all these different pars of the mind is the self or the very core of existence. It is the self that illuminates everything that we do, though we are not aware of it. Most of us assume that the centre of our being it the ego, yet the ego is really no more than another part of the mind. It is the self that illuminates even the ego.

So what happens when we meditate? When we meditate we are able to take our consciousness to the different parts of our mind. Normally, as we have already explained, our consciousness is confined to surface activity in small areas of the middle or rational part of the unconscious. We are able to move away from intellectualization during meditation.

It is the usual experience of most people who start to meditate that they see grotesque apparitions, or they become aware of deep rooted complexes that they perhaps didn’t know existed within them. They realize they have fears that they were not aware of before. The reason is that the consciousness is now functioning in the domain of the lower mind. The consciousness is now highlighting complexes, fears, etc., of which it was not previously aware. Before it was only aware of the manifestations of these fears in the form of anger, hatred, depression, etc. Once these deep-rooted complexes are confronted they can be removed and greater happiness attained in life. Also many people become very aware of the internal processes of their body during meditation. This is because the consciousness becomes aware of the activities that control these bodily functions.

Higher stages of meditation are difficult to attain if we don’t remove most of the compulsive fear that we have in the lower mind. It is not possible to go into deeper states of meditation because these complexes are so compulsive that they seem to almost automatically draw the consciousness to their attention. Though there are many other places where the consciousness can to, it seems to be drawn like iron to a magnet to the lower mind’s activities. It seems to take perverse delight in dwelling on our fears, phobias and anxieties.

In higher state of meditation the consciousness moves to the higher mind, or the region of superconsciousness. The consciousness rises above rational thought and we see the activities that seem to be closer to reality. The meditator enters the dimensions of inspiration and illumination. One starts to explore the deeper truths and aspects of existence. One enters new spheres, new lands of existence, which until this time seemed impossible and mere figments of the imagination.

The culmination of meditation is self-realization. This occurs when even the higher mind is transcended. The consciousness leaves the exploration of the mind and identifies with the central core of one’s existence, the self. At this point it becomes pure consciousness. When a person achieves self-realization it means that he has contacted his central being and now identifies his existence, his life, from the viewpoint of the self and not from the standpoint of the ego. When he acts from the centre of his being, the body and mind operate almost as separate entities. The mind and body cease to be the real him; they are merely manifestations of the self, his true identity. So it can be seen that the aim of meditation is to explore the different regions of the mind and eventually to transcend the mind completely.