The Process of Meditation

“Meditation is not a doing, but a happening”

Meditations and Rituals | Understanding Meditation
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Instructions for Meditation

No man has ever invented wisdom, he also cannot possess it or give it, at best he can transmit it. Wisdom is neither Eastern nor Western. It is beyond any duality – the light of the soul. Wisdom is simply there – for those who align to it. Wisdom consists in not running after things, but in learning to wait, until the time is ripe for something and to do what has to be done now. The inspiration of wisdom has to slip into the simple actions of everyday life: How and what do I eat? What about purity and my daily rhythm? What is the balance of meditation, study and activity?

Meditation is not a doing, but a happening, a being, in order to be receptive to higher impulses. To trace back the source of thought and to investigate, “Who am I?“ is the basic meditation. The secret concerning meditation is: We do not have to reach a state of meditation, but leave aside all other states which are not meditation.

Every experiment requires a certain preparation. Certain conditions have to be met. Without the right preparation we get into difficulties. The path of meditation is an experiment with oneself, a process of self-transformation.

Meditation takes us beyond the barriers of our ideas and conceptions to pure experience. This is experienced like an increase of voltage of the electric current. In this state of experience, there is no consciousness as an observer who could look at the event. The pure experience does not allow any thought. We do not know anything about the span of the experience itself.

While we are listening to beautiful music, we also get absorbed into the music after a while. A thought serves to explain something about the experience after it is over. People with a strong intellect find it difficult to go into a process of transformation, which goes via experience and not via meaning. The concrete mind tries to systematise and crystallises.

The state of awareness is compared to the transition from sleep to awakening: In sleep we are merged with existence. When we wake up, we know that we come out of sleep, but we do not know how we wake up. It is not our decision to wake up. Like a wave out of the ocean we emerge from existence into the awareness and awake. Then, thoughts come and we start with our daily activity.

With the daily activity we go out into everyday life. Our senses and mind are busy with a variety of things, which absorb us. In activity, we lose the awareness of our self. Through meditation, we recollect ourselves and return to the inner source. A movement of ebb and flow.

Where do the thoughts come from? The origin of life is the source of thoughts. The thoughts do not ask for a permission to come. They come as soon as we are awake, even if we do not want to have them. We can observe the thoughts, but cannot get a grip on them. Everything we think, also about ourselves, is not ourselves. Where does the “I am” come from?

To trace back the source of thoughts: “Who am I?” is the fundamental meditation. We are neither the thoughts, nor the feelings, nor the body. We exist as the soul having come out of the one existence and which is our original identity. “I am” functions as consciousness through the thoughts. We have adopted a name and a form, we belong to a gender, a nation and go through the senses into the outer world.

The best times for daily meditation are the twilight hours or a fixed time at an interval of 12 hours. We prepare an undisturbed place for meditation. We sit in a comfortable position with the eyes closed, the spine upright, if possible facing north or east. In addition we can light a candle and incense. The body is completely relaxed.

We close the eyes and utter 3 or 7 times the OM in a soft and uniform manner and listen to the sound. We visualise a golden lotus in the heart or on the front, unfolding and radiating in the inner. For 15 minutes, we observe quietly what is happening inside. There are adjustments happening in the body. Blockages are cleared for the free flow of energy. If thoughts emerge, we observe them. Slowly the speed of thoughts decreases. The mind enters into its centre.

Sound is the most powerful way to purify the mental, emotional and physical planes. A mantram generates a healing magnetism. With a mantram, the sound vibrations are essential, but not the speech nor the meaning. During speech we go out, during listening we move back to the origin of sound. The OM we utter helps to tune up to the silent OM, the sound of silence. We should not utter OM mechanically.

When the mind is talkative and agitated, the respiration is increased. By consciously aligning the mind with the respiration, the breathing rhythm slows down. The more the respiration slows down the more the mind also decelerates. Breathing is a happening within us and not a doing. We have to observe how the inhalation transforms at a certain point into exhalation and how the exhalation transforms into inhalation. There the thoughts stop. When mind and respiration merge with the pulsation, the silence of existence only remains.

The effect of meditation does not come from understanding, but from practice. If we utter the holy mantram OM daily, listen to it, and meditate for 5 to 15 minutes, after few months we will notice an inner growth which others do not know. With time, the outer life gets organised, connected to the inner life, and gleams of harmony show up in our life.