The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita : 11.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday, 07 Aug 2023 06:55.

Chapter 11: The Yoga of Meditation - 4.

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The Ishta, or the object of meditation, is God-incarnate in that particular form, and if one has no trust in God Himself, what else can one be expected to believe in? There is a basic error in the very choice of the object, on account of which the mind distracts itself from the point chosen and flits from that thing to another thing, searching for that which it needs or requires. Really, it does not know what it wants. The psychology of meditation is to be mastered before one actually sits for Meditation. The Supreme Being is present in every object. God is everywhere. And it will be quite in the fitness of things for a person to choose any particular form, or concept, for the purpose of meditation, because God is present even there. But what is important is not the presence of God in a theoretical sense; rather, it is the recognition of it and the acceptance of it from one's heart, for which a little bit of understanding is necessary.

The all-pervading nature of God excludes nothing from its purview and inclusiveness, and that which we regard as the best thing in our life may be regarded as our object of meditation. Anything and everything can be a suitable object, provided we believe in its capacity. The purpose of meditation is to break through the fort of the mind which has guarded itself very securely in the prison-house of this body. It is tremendously attached to the particular things in the world. And the existence of the mind as an isolated unit of thought consists in its desires for the varieties of phenomena. To make the mind cease to exist as an isolated unit would be to cease from thinking of the particular, isolated objects.

The concentration of the mind on any particular thing, or object, continuously, without thought of anything else, will break the mind to pieces; the bubble will burst. A continuous hammering of a single idea upon the mind will see that the mind transcends itself, and one wakes up as if from a dream into a new perspective and awareness. The rising of the mind from phenomena to Reality is something like the rise of our mind from dream to waking. There is a tremendous difference in that which we experience, as there is a difference between dream experience and waking experience. We have to be sure that pure meditation is the state when the mind does not think of two objects, or does not entertain two ideas. When the mind is moving from idea to idea and is flowing with a series or current of thoughts, we may be sure that our meditation is not complete and the object chosen has not been properly considered. The only solution here is to go to the teacher, the Guru. There is some mistake. We have some unfulfilled desires.

It does not mean that there are people in the world with no desires at all. Everyone has some desire; yes. But it is the duty of the seeker on the spiritual path to sublimate his desires in a positive way. And how one is to sublimate impulses is to be known only from the teacher, because people do not have uniform desires; each one has a particular type of desire, and that particular desire has to be tackled in a manner that is befitting the condition in which it has arisen.

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To be continued

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