The practice of ajapa japa is one of the most ancient forms of meditation. It has been mentioned in all the ancient scriptures and literatures. Funnily enough, ajapa japa is part of pratyahara, dharana and it is part of dhyana as well. This one practice encompasses the three levels of pratyahara, dharana and dhyana. Traditionally this is the only practice of meditation given to society. Other forms of meditation were transmission between guru and disciple. The most common form of meditation is ajapa japa; it also has many stages. The first stage of ajapa japa is physical relaxation and stillness. We practised this meditation immediately after yoga nidra. The depth of the experience of breathing, the experience of mantra, the experience of visualization is totally different from what you would have in a normal situation of sitting down, closing the eyes and meditating without any prior relaxation.
After relaxation, when the mind is steady, quiet and not dissipated and distracted, you move into meditation. That is the right mood of mind for meditation as well. There are people who come back from work and say, ‘I’m too stressed out; I need to meditate.’ They sit down to meditate and do a few minutes of antar mouna or ajapa japa, or this or that, and say, ‘Now I feel a bit better.’ In that situation you have just come from a stressful situation and you are releasing the stress; you are not meditating. At that moment, meditation becomes the means to release stress and tension. Meditation becomes meditation when you practise it after having released all of the stresses and tensions, like after yoga nidra. So the first component is relaxation.
The second component of ajapa japa is developing a sharp and clear, precise and accurate visualization. When we say, ‘Move the breath through your spine,’ be aware of the actual breath moving through the vertebrae, not just imagining your spine like a plastic thing. Take your awareness down into the spine and go up with the breath, feeling each and every part of your back and spine. When you come down the front, it is not just visualizing a tube; you are moving inside the skin from top to bottom. You are moving up inside the skin in the spinal passage. You are moving down inside the skin in the frontal passage. This awareness has to be intensified and developed. First it is imagination, then it is visualization, and then it is an experience. Come to the point of experience, not only imagination and visualization. Come to the point of experience where you see the movement of the breath and you can feel the movement of the breath under your skin.
The passages will change. The first basic one is from navel to throat, throat to navel. Then it is from navel to eyebrow centre, and eyebrow centre to navel. Then we breathe in up our spine and breathe out down the front. Then again we breathe in up the front and breathe out down the spine. So it is a circular breath that we are visualizing. Clockwise, anti-clockwise. Forward, backward. The visualization eventually has to become perfect.
Paramahamsaji used to say that when we are trying to concentrate, focus and meditate, three components come together. First, I, the individual, who is sitting down with eyes closed in a body posture, getting ready to meditate. So it is I, the first person. The second component is the practice which we are utilizing to meditate, in this case it is ajapa japa, breath awareness. The third component is the aim of meditation which we are trying to achieve, whether it be self realization, shanti or simple relaxation. Physical, psychological or spiritual, what is the aim?
With visualization this practice becomes easy as the prana also moves. The pranas are moved. Right now we are only moving our awareness, yet later on you will have to move your pranas. How will that happen? The way to move prana is through visualization and through experience of the movement in different regions of the body. When as a karate or a kung-fu practitioner you have to break a plank of wood with your bare hands, do you depend on brute strength only? You don’t. Rather you are focusing your prana to specific areas of your hand, like the side of the hand. When pranas infuse this part you can break a plank, a brick or a brain. If pranas are not infused, you can go on hitting and your hand will become raw. You may bleed, your bones may break, just by hitting and hitting. Ultimately, it is the pranas which have to do the trick for you. You have to help your pranas with your mind. The only way you can help your pranas is by visualizing and experiencing their movement in different pathways as defined in the ajapa japa sadhanas, like inhaling through the back, exhaling through the front, inhaling up the back, exhaling down the front; then reversing, inhaling up the front, exhaling through the back, inhaling through the front, exhaling down the back. Once the movement is clear and defined and your breath and awareness move together, then you add the mantra component, not immediately.
This is the basic understanding of meditation and the ajapa japa sadhana which we are doing as a practice of meditation, ajapa japa. Japa is the first niyama and manahprasad, happiness, is the first yama. In raja yoga you have five yamas and five niyamas; in hatha yoga there are yamas and niyamas, the bhumikas. In yoga the first yama is happiness and the first niyama is japa. There is a clear and scientific explanation as to why japa has been given the first place in the niyama system. When you are engaged the whole day for twenty-four hours in the world, even in sleep you are thinking in your unconscious mind about your troubles, problems and difficulties. The stresses and tensions keep building up in your deeper layers of consciousness. You can break that pattern by thinking something totally different, which is not mundane or worldly. Japa provides the window for the mind to escape from the worldly and sensorial dimension into a dimension which people can call spiritual. In the spiritual dimension, when you are totally disconnected from everything else, you are self-contained. In that self-contained state, you remember what is positive and benevolent.
22 March 2023, Bihar Yoga Tradition Teaching for Teachers, Ganga Darshan, Munger