by Swami Kriyananda, from Meditation for Starters
Meditation, properly speaking, begins once the thoughts and emotions have been stilled. It is a state of intense inward awareness, a state in which one’s attention is no longer engaged in cheering onward the parade that life marches past us of projects and problems, but is wholly engrossed in the superconscious experience. Meditation may be defined also, more loosely, as any practice of which the goal is superconscious awareness.
For there are three states of consciousness: not only conscious and subconscious (about which most people know at least something), but also superconscious (about which few people know anything).
The conscious mind is our normal waking state of awareness. It represents only a small part of our total consciousness. A far larger part of it lies in the subconscious.
The subconscious, popularized in modern times by Sigmund Freud, is the hidden but often dominant part of our psyche. We experience something of the subconscious during sleep. The subconscious is active also during our wakeful hours; it influences our behavior, our very attitudes toward life. The subconscious is like the vast ocean with its floor of mountains, valleys, and broad plains.
Conscious awareness protrudes from this ocean like a little island. Invisible to the island dweller is the great underwater region around him: the innumerable habits, tendencies, and unformed impressions that underlie the conscious mind. They represent a dimmer, but nonetheless very real, part of our total awareness.
The superconscious, by contrast, represents a much higher degree of awareness. Indeed, it is the true source of all awareness. The conscious and subconscious minds filter that higher awareness, merely – stepping it down, so to speak, like the transformer that converts a high voltage to a lower and makes it available to our homes.
Superconsciousness may be compared to the infinite sky overhead, with its vast panoply of stars. We know that the stars are always there, shining. We can only see them, however, when the sunlight doesn’t fill the sky and obscure them. The sunlight, in this analogy, represents ego-generated thoughts and feelings, which blot superconscious awareness out of our mental sky. That superconsciousness is always with us, however. It is simply not dynamic to our normal waking consciousness.
Superconsciousness is situated, as the name implies, above our normal state of wakefulness. From that higher level come our occasional deep insights and inspirations, when our minds are in a calm and uplifted state. Those insights may penetrate the light of ego-wakefulness like brilliant comets, which have sometimes been seen in the sky even in bright daylight.
The superconscious is the realm of true vision. It contains the ecstasy experienced during periods of intense prayer or inward upliftment, when the ego’s restlessness has been temporarily stilled.
The conscious mind, dependent on the intellect, seeks reasonable solutions to its problems. The subconscious mind influences the intellect by prompting it with deep-seated feelings, habit patterns, and personal tendencies. (Our conscious decisions are never so independent as we like to believe them!) Harmful habits, though difficult to banish from the mind, can – by repeated, conscious effort – be redirected into positive channels.
The direct way to attune ourselves to superconsciousness is by meditation. The essential attitude for correct meditation is one of listening. The difference between prayer and meditation is that in prayer we talk to God, whereas in meditation we listen for His answer.
In meditation, the mind must be kept receptive. You can’t think your way into deep meditation. Nor, indeed, can you think your way to deep insights and inspirations. You can only receive wisdom: You cannot concoct it. A truth must be perceived, in that calm awareness which is superconsciousness.
Meditation, then, is not creating answers: It is perceiving, or receiving them. And this is the secret of creativity.
Meditation is listening. The mind must suspend its normal activity of analyzing, of weighing alternatives, and of generally “talking” so much that one cannot hear melodies that the superconscious is playing to it.
Meditation is a process of returning to your own center. It is learning to relate to life and to your environment from who you are, and not from the way other people try to define you.
The average person’s life is an eccentric flywheel. I don’t mean a flywheel with an offbeat personality! I mean simply a flywheel that isn’t properly centered. The faster the wheel turns, the more violently it vibrates. When it reaches a certain speed, it may actually fly into pieces.
Most people, similarly, are in danger of flying apart. They whirl through life, vibrating ever more violently because they are off center within. It is safe to say that few people live even close to their center, which is who they really are! They live at their periphery. They are constantly, as the popular expression puts it, “on edge.”
Again, most people are like out-of-tune musical instruments. Because they can no longer hear the basic notes in themselves, their interactions with life and with other people produce only discords.
Meditation is the way to “fine tune” your instrument. A violinist, while tuning his strings, must listen carefully to certain key notes. We, too, must listen to what life is trying to tell us – through outer circumstances and through other people, as well as through the whispers of superconsciousness.
Daily meditation will lead you to the peace you’ve been seeking so long. The peace of your soul awaits you at the center of your own being.
How much or how long you meditate is up to you. It depends on how deeply you’ve come to enjoy the practice. We aren’t talking, here, of a roast in the oven which requires a certain baking time. And we aren’t talking of distances – like a mile run, which can be finished sooner by running faster. I do suggest that you make meditation a daily practice. That, too, however, is up to you.
The more regularly and the more deeply you meditate, the sooner you will find yourself acting always from a center of inner peace.
