According to the Hindu pattern of society, human life is conceived to serve four purposes: dharma or righteous living, artha or acquisition of property, kama or the fulfilment of desires, and moksha or liberation. The whole human life of one hundred years is divided into four stages of twenty-five years each. The first stage covering twenty-five years is known as Brahmacharya order, a period of studentship. The boy leads a celibate and virtuous life devoting his time to studies and service of his guru. The next stage is household order.
When the boy has attained maturity, he marries and leads a family life for the next twenty-five years. He leads a happy and prosperous life through righteous living. This is the order where he tries to give expressions to his desires and finally when he has fulfilled most of his desires, he enters the life of austerity known as vanaprastha order, forest dweller, and spends his next twenty-five years. It is easy for an average Indian to get his desires fulfilled by the time he reaches his fifth decade at the age of forty or forty-five. Any traces of unfulfilled desires are exhausted in the vanaprastha period, and after that he enters the life of sannyasa, devoting his last days purely to spiritual quest. The fulfilment of desires in a systematic and legitimate planned way is one aspect of the spiritual life that cleanses the personality completely.
Finally, with the agreement of household members, the person embraces sannyasa order and devotes this period for obtaining liberation from the unending process of transmigration. If you have to remain in the material life, in society, you are forced to maintain your relations with society and if society compels you to be corrupt, you do not have to agree with society, but after all, you have to live and this is how one must live. You know the truth, and you may know the whole world is corrupt, but at the same time you must keep peace with society.
This is how a yogi has to do and it is also the message of the Bhagavad Gita. You live in the world; you do all your karmas; you do all your duties, but remain unattached. The knowledge of the past and future is given to them who are not attached with the world at all. Otherwise the knowledge of the past creates mental troubles. By logical deduction you can know the future; you can know what you shall be as you sow the seed, so you reap.
Meditation is a way which leads an individual to a higher life. In recent times, the subject of transcendental meditation has aroused keen interest in western minds and people like to know more about the subject. Many people feel that meditation is difficult; every great project we undertake is beset with many difficulties and so is the case with meditation. For those who want to know how they should meditate and how to be familiar with the inner lands of their personality, the following explanation will be of immense help.
The practice of meditation is divided into three stages, the first one is called withdrawal, which means a process of going in and it also means an act of negation of the empirical or the outer consciousness. When you are aware of the outside things around you, it is called outer consciousness, empirical or objective consciousness. When you are not aware of the external phenomenon, but you are aware of the internal working of the mind, it is called subjective or thought consciousness. When you are neither aware of the thought process nor of any external surroundings, it is called unconsciousness. When the consciousness has freed itself from objective, subjective and unconscious states of manifestation and abides in self-awareness, it is called super conscious state.
In this state, the consciousness transcends all the limitations and becomes universal. Meditation is nothing but a strict watch over the activities of the mind. First when you sit down for meditation, you must keep your spinal cord erect. If you cannot keep it straight, sit against a wall, and you are also allowed to make use of a chair. Usually that is not the right way because when you sit down on a chair, the legs swing below and the blood is attracted by the force of gravity and the twine currents in the body do not make a complete circuit.
Place your hands in the proper position and close your eyes. After closing your eyes, for a full three or five minutes, do nothing but maintain steadiness of the physical body. Just sit down quietly and let your lungs, heart, respiration, circulation and the entire physical systems become free from all tensions and after about five minutes, you start the chanting of the sound Om. The sound should vibrate throughout your body so as to bring peace and tranquillity. When you pronounce Au, the mouth assumes a circular shape and on pronouncing Hum, the sound appears to terminate at a point. So, it is a circle, terminating in a point.
You must constantly visualize that your consciousness is in the form of a circle and is ultimately becoming a point. This process repeating with every chant of Om is very powerful.
Chanting should be slow and gradual because it takes time for a circle to become a point. Chant the Om mantra in a rhythmic and melodious sound for half an hour. This will check the oscillation of mind. For checking the oscillating nature of mind, one can take the use of an Indian rosary, a mala. Repetition of mantra with the help of the rosary for about half an hour will make the mind introvert and one-pointed. Now at this stage, japa may be stopped and concentration on your chosen deity or any elevating form may be taken up.
You have to visualize the form in your mind as clearly as you can see by trying to form the mental image of the same. If the mental image disappears, after a short time, do not try to bring it back as it might create mental tensions. If you practise it everyday, you will find that the period of these conscious retention of the mental images will gradually increase. It must be understood that it is your own consciousness which comes to you in the form of mental images. If you meditate on a triangle, it is nothing but your own consciousness.
1968, Wageningen, Holland