I have said this before, but here it comes in again. Before you can pass on from meditation to contemplation you must be able to give up wishing and hoping entirely, at least during the period of practice. The mind can never be single while wishes occupy it. Every wish is also a seed from […]
The old teachers of meditation held that there is a twofold contemplation at the top end of our line of thought, one which gives intuition about the object, whereby the mind obtains its closest touch with that object, receiving its highest lesson, while the second lead to the beyond of the mind. Just as our […]
There are certain definite ways in which we can practice contemplation. In all cases one should go through the three stages in order to reach the top of one’s thought: (I) the attention must be centered on the object; (2) thought must be active with reference to that object alone; (3) the mind must come […]
An esteemed friend has asked me: “Is it not correct to do that sort of Meditation in which one stills one’s own thinking, and remains in a state of active expectancy of an intuition?†This arose apropos of a statement of mine that Patanjali had taught Meditation as a continued mental effort to understand some […]
Contemplation is always to be seen to some extent in true worship. Worship is a faculty different from thought, different even from love; it is the little self finding itself within the greater self, as though the sun reflected in a pool of water should look up at the sun in heaven and feel a […]
Another form of contemplation, in great favor in the school of Shri Shankaracharya, is the contemplation of one’s own true nature. Look at the body and consider its various parts. Gaze at the hand; look at it intently as mere dissociated form, until you realize that “such a queer thing cannot be Iâ€. Apply the […]
The next two sheaths are the mano-maya and vijnana kosas. These constitute the antah-karana, which is four-fold-namely, the mind in its two-fold aspect of buddhi and manas, self-hood (ahamkara), and citta. (1) . The function of the first is doubt, samkalpa-vikalpatmaka, (uncertainty, certainty); of the second, determination (niscaya-karini); of the third (egoity), of the fourth […]