When we are afflicted with a disease like malaria, we don’t treat each symptom like fever, pain and shivering, one by one. We just treat the disease and the symptoms automatically vanish. So deal directly with the mind and symptoms like stress and strain will disappear. Vishvas meditation is mind management.
 
There is no attempt, however, to control the mind; the idea is to go beyond it. The mind is compared to a monkey drunk with the wine of desire, stung by the scorpion of jealousy and possessed with the demon of pride. Lust, greed, jealousy, anger, ego, tensions, reactions, grudges, depression, stress and strain are, however, the symptoms and not the disease.
 
The common misconception is that meditation is concentration of mind and various techniques are taught to achieve this. Meditation has got no technique. There are techniques for concentration. Concentration is a mental exercise between the mind and the object of attention. But meditation is neither a mental exercise nor a practice. Meditation is a direct and natural process beyond the mind itself. Meditation is not concentration; it is the mother of concentration.
 
Remember, concentration is where one tries to control thoughts, where thoughts get dissolved naturally, enhancing your powers of concentration, memory, will, right thinking and fitness.
 
When your thought current is interrupted – which means that all thoughts are fixed on one object – it is concentration. But when the flow is uninterrupted, that is meditation. This is when the thought is not fixed on any one object, rather we just remain a non-doer and directly watch thoughts as a neutral energy without any judgement, analyses, participation, visualisation, imagination, contemplation, suppression, repression, condemnation or concentration. Meditation is a non-doing entity where you are simply a seer, witness, you are an observer of the mind’s happenings. To watch is our true nature. It is a natural, nondoing state. No effort is required to watch. We all have full potential to look within directly as we all are blessed with the ‘Third Eye’. 
 
Meditation is mind management. It is not forcing the mind to be quiet. It is to find the quiet that is there already. We are children of bliss. We suffer from stress and strain because we gave all the powers to the mind and made it our master. Not only that, we consider ourselves nothing but the mind.
Mind is matter. It has no power of its own. It is useful in the external world but in the spiritual, internal world, it has to be overcome. Otherwise we will be the victims of mental and physical diseases. Meditation is seeing the mind as a witness, a neutral energy. It is not interfering with the intricacies and doings of mind. Just be a seer, be a witness. We just stay in our own source, in our true nature: All-bliss.
 

We are happy when the mind is cheerful. We are depressed when the mind is gloomy. We are at the mercy of the mind that waxes and wanes. We consider ourselves nothing but mind. It is blasphemy to consider ourselves as victims of an unforeseen incident when the unending Bliss is flowing within all of us. Meditation is mind management. Meditation is homecoming.

 

Swayam Vishvas
The writer is a member of the Vishvas Foundation. E-mail: vishvas@vishvas.org

Mantra is a Sanskrit word derived from two roots: manasa or mind and tarana or save. Mantra is something that saves, which uplifts. Who we are today is based on what we identify with. If i identify with the body or the mind then i am a finite person limited by my own finite identification. What is needed is a tool which chips away at this finite identification and helps us become infinite in our awareness and capabilities. Mantra is one such tool.

A mantra contains a string of syllables, set to a meter. The mantra is chanted in a certain set way to get results. Mantras and their sound conceal an image of the deity they represent. When chanted, they produce a specific form of that deity, so a Rama mantra will produce a specific image of Rama, within the consciousness of the one who chants. But initially, this image will form only for the duration of time that the person repeats the mantra. Later on, as the mantra becomes more potent within our consciousness in terms of its ability to produce an actual form of the deity, this image remains with us for longer periods.

We are eventually led to the point where the deity actually becomes present within the sadhaka. This may sound somewhat fantastic, but Ramakrishna Paramhansa, it is said, could see the divine Mother Kali whenever he wanted and eventually his identification with his body had been destroyed that only God was present there. His ability to go into superconscious states is well known.

Mantra sadhana is ideally done in private, where the practitioner feels safe, in a clean and dry place after the sadhaka has bathed and completed ablutions. No food should be eaten at least two hours before the practice is undertaken. The body must remain as still as possible. If you are trying to achieve a goal, then don’t publicise your sadhana.

Most Vedic mantras require specific intonation of specific syllables, which may be impossible for you to master correctly. A Vedic mantra incorrectly recited is unlikely to yield result.

Mantras can be repeated in three major ways, the most common with your oral speech or vaikhari. This may destroy tamas in the practitioner, but still relies on oral speech and if your Sanskrit is not good then there is a danger that you may not get any result. Furthermore, the problem is that you are unlikely to remain still during recitation.

Upamsu or using your lips is another method, but produces no sound. Finally comes the manasika method that is recitation of the mantra in the mind. This method is best for achieving concentration and mental peace and it should eventually lead to the start of severing the identification of the practitioner with the self. Identification with the deity follows eventually.

Counting of mantra numbers may be useful in the beginning for the first few years and can be done on a rosary of 108 beads. Later on as mantra recitation becomes a daily practice and the need for a rosary diminishes quite significantly. Eventually the identification of the self with the body may so diminish that the practitioner may enter a state of divine bliss in which one may forget to chant the mantra itself, so overpowering is the silence of divine bliss.

THE SPEAKING TREE

Manish Pandit

The writer is a consultant nuclear medicine physician in the UK, an astrologer, author and a film-maker. www.saraswatifilms.org