A Study of the Bhagavadgita : 58 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 27, November 2024, 06:10.
A Study of the Bhagavadgita:
Chapter 9: The Yoga of Meditation - 8.
Swami Krishnananda
Post-58.

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In the earlier stages, it is very hard to even carry on this concept of concentration. Have a concrete picture of God before you. There are people who keep a picture of   Lord Krishna, Devi or Durga, Narayana, Vishnu, or Siva. There are people who meditate on the Cosmic Being as represented in these forms because there is no way to adjust the mind to a total abstraction in the beginning itself. Hence, there is a portrait of this Great Master. Here is the Great Being portrayed in a particular form as an incarnation at least, though not in that Absolute form. That incarnation is the pathway for you to enter into that which is above the incarnation.

You will find it difficult even to think it for a long time. Even a picture of Krishna, Siva, Devi – how long will you go on thinking it? The mind jumps here and there, thinking twenty things. So the suggestion is that you have a puja room, an altar of worship, and a portrait in front of you. Why not open your eyes, gaze at this majestic portrait which is painted in such a way that it will please you aesthetically, and give you great satisfaction? How beautiful it is, how majestic, how powerful, how complete, how satisfying! I am one with it, so I become fully satisfied. I become completely perfect. I become beautiful. I become everything, as that on which I am concentrating is everything. Go on looking at it, and at the same time keep these ideas of self-fulfilment in the mind. After gazing for a few minutes, close the eyes and feel the presence of this portrait, this form, in your mind only, without opening the eyes. If you feel tired of contemplating like this, open your eyes once again and look at the picture. If you feel pain in the legs because you have already sat for half an hour, straighten your legs or just walk about for a few minutes. Then take a deep breath, wash you face with cold water, and sit again. The pain will go.

So, this process, this practice of meditating with open eyes on a portrait – a form that is concretely there as an image such as a statue, a sculptured piece, or a painted picture – and then contemplating the same thing with closed eyes, may continue. Let it continue like this for one, two or three months; then you will find that you no longer require any portrait. No picture is necessary. You can close your eyes and feel its presence anywhere you want. Wherever you sit, you can see that it is this form. Contemplate it. The power of your concentration will charge this form to such an extent that, after some years of practice, perhaps, you will feel the presence of this divinity everywhere, as if the whole world is filled with it. If you gaze at the sun for a long time and then look this way and that way, you will see the sun everywhere because of the power of the sun on your eyes; everywhere you will see the orb of the sun. In the same way, you will begin to see the form of this divinity everywhere on account of the concentration which you have been practicing for a long time on this particular form.

As I mentioned sometime back, you must be careful to note that this meditation is satisfying, and it should not be unsatisfying in any manner. The god whom you have chosen for your meditation is all-complete, and you do not want anything else in this world. “This god that I am meditating upon is all things, and everything will come to me from that god.” Faith is necessary. Do not doubt. If there is mere concentration through the will with lack of faith – with doubt that it may come or it may not come – then no, nothing will happen. Let this faith be there that it will certainly come.

The world is a single organic completeness and living whole, and therefore everything is touching you everywhere. God is touching you. You are on the lap of God, as it were. Faith is very important; without it, nothing will work. Mere intellectual study is no good because there are doubts, eventually. But if the faith says it will work, let the intellect say whatever it likes, but it will certainly work. There is nothing, no wonder that faith cannot work. It is a miracle worker. Such is faith.

With this kind of practice for a long time, you will see the divinity present everywhere. You will feel divine energy flowing into you from all sides, and an immense satisfaction that you cannot feel otherwise by the possession of anything in this world.

*****

Continued

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