Meditation

Lord_Ajitnath, a surpreme preacher in jain religion in the typical Meditation Pose - Padmasana - Lotus Pose

Given the abundance of existing forms of meditation, the fundamentals of meditation cannot be formulated in general terms. Once the basis of one type of meditation has been grasped, it is no longer valid for the next. Here, spiritual research is useful, because from a spiritual point of view, the term ‘meditation’ must have a core content, a kind of primordial idea or existence in the spiritual world. Once this archetypal idea has been grasped, the fundamentals of meditation can be derived from it, which have universal content. Finally, based on this understanding, human beings can look at the different types of meditation with strength to differentiate and classify them.

Wikipedia on meditation

Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state,while not judging the meditation process itself. Techniques are broadly classified into focused (or concentrative) and open monitoring methods. Focused methods involve attention to specific objects like breath or mantras, while open monitoring includes mindfulness and awareness of mental events. Meditation is practiced in numerous religious traditions, though it is also practiced independently from any religious or spiritual influences for its health benefits. The earliest records of meditation (dhyana) are found in the Upanishads, and meditation plays a salient role in the contemplative repertoire of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Meditation-like techniques are also known in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in the context of remembrance of and prayer and devotion to God. Asian meditative techniques have spread to other cultures where they have found application in non-spiritual contexts, such as business and health. Meditation may significantly reduce stress, fear, anxiety, depression, and pain, and enhance peace, perception, self-concept, and well-being. Research is ongoing to better understand the effects of meditation on health (psychological, neurological, and cardiovascular) and other areas.

Etymology

The English term meditation is derived from Old French meditacioun, in turn from Latin meditatio from a verb meditari, meaning "to think, contemplate, devise, ponder". In the Catholic tradition, the use of the term meditatio as part of a formal, stepwise process of meditation goes back to at least the 12th-century monk Guigo II, before which the Greek word theoria was used for the same purpose. Apart from its historical usage, the term meditation was introduced as a translation for Eastern spiritual practices, referred to as dhyāna in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, which comes from the Sanskrit root dhyai, meaning to contemplate or meditate. The Greek word theoria actually derives from the same root. The term "meditation" in English may also refer to practices from Islamic Sufism, or other traditions such as Jewish Kabbalah and Christian Hesychasm.

Definitions

Difficulties in defining meditation

No universally accepted definition for meditation

Meditation has proven difficult to define as it covers a wide range of dissimilar practices in different traditions and cultures. In popular usage, the word "meditation" and the phrase "meditative practice" are often used imprecisely to designate practices found across many cultures. These can include almost anything that is claimed to train the attention of mind or to teach calmness or compassion. There remains no definition of necessary and sufficient criteria for meditation that has achieved widespread acceptance within the modern scientific community.

For more information, see the article Meditation in the English Wikipedia.

Summary

This first part of the Wikipedia article on meditation makes it clear that it is scientifically impossible to define a generally accepted, precise definition of meditation and that the term has become increasingly diluted in modern usage. Prof. Dr. Almut-Barbara Renger from the Institute for Religious Studies at the Free University of Berlin sums it up as follows: “In the 21st century, ‘meditation’ has become a term that is used in many different contexts – for theories and practices related to transcendence as well as for those that are understood in an inner-worldly sense.”

Approach from spiritual research

Modern science sees the material as the beginning of all existence. Matter is that which is real. According to current thinking, human evolutionary history began with the split between the last common ancestor population of chimpanzees and humans. This means that humans are highly developed animals.

However, Plato already held the view that ideas are the “archetype” (paradeigma) of all things. The idea therefore has an independent existence. It provides the basis for everything that exists materially on earth. Thus, the idea is that which is real, the general, the universal. Findings from spiritual research to this day confirm Plato's insight. Once humans have developed the necessary ability, they are capable of grasping and characterizing the archetype or archetypal idea of, for example, a concept such as “meditation.”

Inner tranquility as the basis of meditation

Before Rudolf Steiner discusses the way of meditation, he emphasizes the importance of developing inner tranquility.

Rudolf Steiner

He mentions that the practical rules for developping inner tranquility have no arbitrary origin and that all true teachers of the spiritual life are in agreement as to the substance of these rules, even though they do not always clothe them in the same words.

The creation of inner tranquility is indeed common to many forms of meditation, only the terms used to describe it differ, for example:

• practicing mindfulness (Vipassana meditation),,
• body scan (MBSR),
• adopting the witness attitude, sākṣī (Heinz Grill)
• mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn and MBSR),
• confronting oneself, at certain times, as a stranger (Rudolf Steiner).

The development of inner tranquility is a common feature of the many different forms of meditation and is achieved by observing the body, the breath, thoughts and feelings, and by focusing attention on an object in the room or on something else concrete.

According to Rudolf Steiner, five minutes a day is a sufficient amount of time for a person to concern themselves with something quite different from the objects of their daily occupation. He suggests:

„During these periods the student should wrest himself entirely free from his work-a-day life. His thoughts and feelings should take on a different coloring. His joys and sorrows, his cares, experiences and actions must pass in review before his soul; and he must adopt such a position that he may regard all his sundry experiences from a higher point of view.“

Through the practice of confronting oneself, like a stranger, a person is able to develop their own so-called "higher being“ and this higher life will make its influence on their everyday life:

„The tranquility of the moments set apart will also affect everyday existence. In his whole being he will grow calmer; he will attain firm assurance in all his actions, and cease to be put out of countenance by all manner of incidents. By thus advancing he will gradually become more and more his own guide, and allow himself less and less to be led by circumstances and external influences. He will soon discover how great a source of strength is available to him in these moments thus set apart.“

Interjection

It has been mentioned that the pursuit of inner tranquility is a common feature across the diverse forms of meditation. With regard to the further steps of deepening the realization of the highest, two diametrically different and opposing movements can be identified in the approaches:

• The search for realization is directed inwards (e.g. Vipassana)
• The search for realization is directed outwards and then retroactively or correspondingly inwards (e.g. Rosicrucian path, anthroposophical path of training).

It is necessary to overcome one’s personal limits

From a spiritual point of view, for development of meditation, it is necessary to direct the next steps outward. After developing inner tranquility, which becomes a first guiding force for life, human beings must overcome themselves and get to know a greater whole. Here, the statements of spiritual researchers and great philosophers are essentially in agreement:

Heinz Grill formulates this in relation to the path of yoga with meditation as follows:

"A new and greater awareness is added to the previous consciousness. The soul expands beyond the usual genetic limits to a greater comprehension. So at the beginning there is a person who is born in karma or in the flesh, and at the end, one who is born in the spirit or purusa."

Sri Aurobindo speaks of a greater spiritual being that wants to enter into the previously limited nature of human beings and thus transform them:

„The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.“

How is it possible to overcome oneself in the practice of meditation?

Meditation based on the thoughts of spiritual researchers

Rudolf Steiner recommends taking writings that have their origin from a 'revelation during meditation' as a starting point. These were written by „the seekers of the spirit". In this way, the "substance" or content of meditation is formed from the thoughts of "divine science“. Steiner describes:

„This meditation is the means to supersensible knowledge. But the student in such moments must not merely indulge in feelings; he must not have indefinite sensations in his soul. That would only hinder him from reaching true spiritual knowledge. His thoughts must be clear, sharp and definite, and he will be helped in this if he does not cling blindly to the thoughts that rise within him. Rather must he permeate himself with the lofty thoughts by which men already advanced and possessed of the spirit were inspired at such moments. He should start with the writings which themselves had their origin in just such revelation during meditation. In the mystic, gnostic and spiritual scientific literature of today the student will find such writings, and in them the material for his meditation. The seekers of the spirit have themselves set down in such writings the thoughts of the divine science which the Spirit has directed his messengers to proclaim to the world. Through such meditation a complete transformation takes place in the student.“

Thus, meditation that is based on thoughts written down by people already advanced in the spirit and were conceived in inspired moments in which a complete transformation takes place within the individual, shows that these thoughts carry within them a fiery, transforming spiritual power. The individual now learns about spiritual laws and, through this way of meditation, grows beyond and at the same time finds knowledge about their eternal, essential being.

„When, by means of meditation, a man rises to union with the spirit, he brings to life the eternal in him, which is limited by neither birth nor death. The existence of this eternal being can only be doubted by those who have not themselves experienced it. Thus meditation is the way which also leads man to the knowledge, to the contemplation of his eternal, indestructible, essential being;

Self-study through meditation on inspired thoughts is part of Raja Yoga, a classical yoga path. Raja Yoga translates as "royal yoga". It is also known as „eight limb yoga" and was described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutra. The fourth rule (Niyama) lists the discipline of Svadhyaya. Svadhyaya means the study of the scriptures and, at the same time, self-study in the sense of studying the self. The term "scriptures“ refers, for example, to the Bhagavad Gita, the Vedas or texts with a spiritual or philosophical background – in other words, literature with deep spiritual content.

Extinction of thoughts and feelings?

Traditional and modern meditation guides often refer to the „extinction of thoughts“

Modern spiritual research comes to a different conclusion:

When asked what meditation is, Swami Sivananda distinguishes between worldly and divine thoughts:

„All worldly thoughts are shut out from the mind. The mind is filled or saturated with Divine thoughts, Divine glory and Divine presence.“

Swami Shivananda

Rudolf Steiner points out that meditation should by no means lead to the extinction of thinking but that

"His thoughts must be clear, sharp and definite".

Heinz Grill's research also confirms this statement. Grill writes, when a wise thought is the focus of concentration and mediation then "intensified thinking in the light of the thought" begins. The individual begins to transcend oneself and learns to exist in a greater whole. This means go beyond oneself courageously

"On the one hand, the practitioner must detach themselves from intellectual or habitual thinking and from internal bodily feelings, but on the other hand, the practitioner must even more intensively begin to develop the free consciousness of thinking. In many meditations, emptiness is taken as the aim, which means becoming empty of all thoughts and impulses of will. In this type of meditation as I describe it, this process of emptying or distancing oneself from all old feelings and emotional movements also takes place. In addition, however, particular care is taken to raise a content for thinking that is free of the body, that has nothing to do with personal concerns. Embarking on this path of intensified thinking in the light of a thought requires the practitioner to adopt a careful, disciplined attitude directed forward, towards the free dimension (just infront) of the head. This exercise requires the individual to demonstrate a kind of spiritual daring to cross boundaries. They must, in a sense, draw back from themselves and bring something else to the foreground in the light of thought. They must bring to the foreground the foreign, the unknown, or that which cannot immediately give them anything personally."

Conclusions for the practice of meditation

Taking these spiritual research findings into account, the following principles of meditation can be formulated in practical terms:

• Learning and creating inner tranquility
  • Observing thoughts, feelings, the body or another concrete object.

• Consciously choosing a thought
  • Taken from wise, spiritual literature written by people who were or are capable of spiritual research.

• Only this thought is the focus of concentration and meditation.
  • Distractions or drowsiness are noticed and attention is brought back to the content. The body is at rest, the consciousness is highly active. The content of the thought is created in a vivid imagination. Another expression for this activity is the formation of a mental picture. A person imagines or creates the content of the thought in the space just infront of the forehead.

• The soul is living in the thought
  • The thought, persistently held with alertness in concentration, begins to live. New subtle feelings arise. The thought comes to meet a person. It is experienced as a movement from thought to person – from outside to inside.