Meditation and Motivation

Med­it­a­tion is a fash­ion­able term, a word that calls and may still stir one's atten­tion. As it grows ever more com­mon, much mis­un­der­stand­ing sur­rounds it too. If one focuses res­ol­utely on a thought, on life's mater­i­al aims, on the object of desire, that is not yet med­it­a­tion. What is more, it is not an intel­lec­tu­al activ­ity at all but a spir­itu­al prac­tice rooted in tra­di­tion, so that to do without the tra­di­tion is to rob med­it­a­tion of its very essence.

Med­it­a­tion is an attempt to inter­pret human exist­ence. The first ques­tion of con­scious life is why, the search for causes. Once this has some­how been made clear, the ques­tion of the moral life fol­lows, the how. Finally there remains the ques­tion of abso­lute, tran­scend­ent exist­ence: to what end? The vari­ous forms of med­it­a­tion and its prac­tices of ever deep­er intens­ity may help answer all three ques­tions. Spir­itu­al know­ledge is the ripe fruit of mys­ti­cism, and its cul­tiv­a­tion is a divine, spir­itu­al qual­ity. In the end, know­ledge ripens into med­it­a­tion.

The mil­len­nia-old tra­di­tion of yoga sets out the place and role of med­it­a­tion. It is not a prac­tice for begin­ners. If we liken the eight-level sys­tem of yoga to a tree, then restraint and prac­tice may be com­pared to the roots and the trunk, the sit­ting pos­tures and breath con­trol to the branches and the crown, with­draw­al and con­cen­tra­tion to the inner bark and the flow of sap, and finally med­it­a­tion and trance to the flowers and fruits of the tree.

In other words, med­it­a­tion is one of the highest attain­ments and prac­tices of yoga. Atten­tion with­drawn from the outer world, inner aware­ness, is often already taken for med­it­a­tion. Yet the mys­tic­al branch of yoga leads the prac­ti­tion­er step by step towards the first-hand exper­i­ence of cos­mic aware­ness. The senses open onto the outer world, and man lives facing out­wards. When this dir­ec­tion is reversed, the idea of the goal changes too. Abstrac­tion from the world is at the same time a turn­ing towards the high­er real­ity; neg­a­tion in itself leads nowhere. Once the out­ward activ­ity of the senses has been brought under dis­cip­line – since yoga is the stilling of the waves of the mind – the prac­ti­tion­er, in inner con­scious pres­ence, may gain dis­tinct­ive exper­i­ences. The spe­cial­ist lit­er­at­ure tells of extraordin­ary phe­nom­ena of light and impulses of sound. The prac­ti­tion­er may feel as if divine nec­tar were pour­ing down from the crown of the head, and may exper­i­ence heav­enly strength and joy­ful peace. These steps of med­it­a­tion lead to the state of trance inde­pend­ent of all outer con­di­tions.

As for its motiv­a­tion, med­it­a­tion may be an attempt to solve the prob­lems of per­son­al exist­ence, it may be an escape, it may be a mis­un­der­stood desire for power, the will to mys­tic­al influ­ence, or the search for truth. The suc­cess­ful prac­ti­tion­er of yoga is inwardly act­ive and happy, and savours the spir­itu­al joy of exist­ence. One of the mys­tic­al aims of yoga is to sense the inner divine inspir­a­tion and to become attuned to the divine uni­verse. And the per­fect yogi, start­ing from him­self, sees the like­ness in every liv­ing being, happy or unhappy. The per­fect level of yoga-med­it­a­tion, then, we may take to be the enlightened state of con­scious­ness and good­will radi­at­ing out to oth­ers.