CHAPTER ONE: Meditation

Every great person talks about meditation. Why do you think that is? When I started meditation, I entered a new world.

Meditation is like what a charger is to a mobile phone. Whenever the mobile phone’s battery goes down, you find the charger and plug the phone in to charge, just like the process of meditation recharges the mind. When I want pure energy, I go into meditation to get charged by it. Meditation is just like a door into a new world. Once you open the cosmic door, you become the master. Thereon, you don’t need any direction about what to do in life to attain peace and knowledge. You automatically get the direction like the internet. You can access any information or anything you want. With the flow of cosmic energy throughout your body, from the Sahastrara (crown chakra) the Muladhara (root chakra), your whole body becomes like flowing water. You can effortlessly fill your mind with energy and vibration. You become fully free.

All philosophies are related to ideologies or regulations. But I am not governed by ideologies and regulations because I do not consider anyone ideal. I just surrender myself to nature. Most people do not know about invisible bondage which leads to the limitation of our thoughts. In reality, there is no limitation. Divine world starts with no condition. Acceptance of everything - good or bad - is the key. Love and compassion are nature. They are the greatest power and source of energy. If you want to receive this energy, you need to just connect with love and compassion.

Heaven and hell are not geographical, they are dimensional. If you become positive, you see heaven around you. And if you become negative, you see hell around you. The greatest meditator the world has ever known, Gautama Buddha, insisted that there is no need of any ideology, philosophy or concepts about life. Whether God exists or not is meaningless, irrelevant. Whether moksha or liberation exists or not is meaningless.

If you want to be a successful, prosperous, good and a real human being, you must learn how to meditate. In reality, there is no mind without thoughts. The mind is always buzzing with various thoughts. In meditation you reach a point where your mind is not burdened with thoughts. Then you can get cosmic energy. This process is not tedious. You just must sit down with consciousness without doing anything or thinking about anything.

You know yourself. Your likes and dislikes. But at the top level, you like everything. You can fill your mind with anything and everything. You can enter a flower, witness its beauty, and create a beautiful image because in the thinking process, you are not physically present where the flower blossoms. Due to meditation, you can control your mind. Once you can control your mind, you can create your own reality. Imagination plays the main role in this process. What you want becomes clear. The picture gets clear. It helps you to become a real and natural person and not be an artificial one who wears a mask in society. As you become real, you can see more reality in your life. After meditation you become a calm, peaceful, happy and loving person who talks with trees, rivers, air, skies, clouds, stones and mountains. You become fearless without getting suppressed by anything. There is no division between good or bad. Man makes this division because the mind says so - this is good, or this is not good. Our mind creates limitations. If you see everything as beautiful, you will see everything as good and nothing as bad.

Here, I give you the Key of Wisdom.

Try to understand why this has happened. Do not believe anything because I say so. Man, as he is, is a repressed being. He is not allowed to do anything. He just follows the rules. He is not a free agent but a kept slave, and the whole society is a big prison. The walls are fragile and the glass walls transparent. You cannot see them, but they are everywhere. Your morality, culture, religion are all walls. If you want to be free, meditate. In Hindu philosophy, one sentence provides a big picture of reality, ‘I Am Brahman, or I Am the Infinite Reality.’

This will help you to know your power. When you start meditation, you should sit in padmasana, cross-legged. Sit focused under a tree (Peepal tree) because the door to the world’s greatest university is under a tree. Close your eyes as the eyes are the door to the mind. Become aware of your breathing - in and out. Do not put any effort into the breathing process. Keep it natural. You can then connect with cosmic energy. It takes time. The more conscious you become, the more prana you get. After you attain consciousness, you live with it in the day, at night and even in sleep. Your whole life becomes one with consciousness. It is my experience. It keeps you healthy and happy. It is bliss. Once you pass the tunnel with no end, it is infinite.

This is our mind. Once you know the mind, you know the whole universe.

In Hindu philosophy, ‘prana’ means life force. This prana flows in channels called ‘nadis’. The Shiva Samhita states that there is a total of 350,000 nadis in human body while the other text says, there are 72,000. This cosmic energy makes us pure and keeps us healthy. So, it’s important to be aware of two points – the breath coming in and the breath going out.

I feel morning and evening are the best times to do this exercise. Do it just for an hour with focus without indulging in anything else. Once you become attuned to it, it will not be a problem. You walk on the street, and you should be aware.

There is difference between ‘awareness’ and ‘attention’. When you pay attention to anything, it is exclusive. Doing so, you have withdrawn your attention from everywhere else. Awareness is a very different concept and is not exclusive. It is just being conscious.

Now coming back to the main practice of breathing – bring your focus between the eyebrows. You will feel one spiritual light playing between your eyes on the forehead. This is the ‘energy chakra’. Your breath will become too small and mix with this spiritual energy ball. According to science, when you are breathing air, you are just breathing air - oxygen and other gases.

During schooling, I learned this. But they did not teach us anything about prana. But I have realised something magical behind this air - it is prana-vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing prana with air. You may have heard about samadhi. I was very intrigued to know about gurus who achieved samadhi, how for days together, with no air penetrating, they still remained alive? I got the answer from meditation. Prana can enter and flow anywhere without air.

Throughout this process, imagination plays an important role. Many times, you go on imagining and nothing happens, but sometimes, unknowingly, in ordinary life also, things happen. Say for example: you are thinking about your friend and suddenly there is a knock on the door. You might say it is coincidence that the friend arrived. Now, remember and analyse this event. Mind sends a signal to the other. Somewhere, your attention must have been near the third eye. If your attention is on the third eye, only imagination is enough for a phenomenon to occur. It works like TV.

I have been practicing this and you can try it too. First feel your head, heart, belly and legs. Feel that the prana is entering your heart. When you are going to sleep, feel good and positive, and then you will wake up with all positivity and gratitude.

Once you start doing this, your life will become fully meditative. You will be able to take swift and correct decisions and your mind’s power will increase, with each passing day. Sleeping will also become meditative. Once you discover ‘dreamless sleep’ and can still be aware in it, there will be no fear of death because this dreamless sleep is like death. In the same context, Buddha said, “Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most”.

Buddha had already discovered this reality. If you can sleep dreamlessly, just for four hours at night, then you will start waking up with positivity. It is a secret. There is also another way of gaining power over death, direction over death. If you can come to feel that ‘death is just sleep’, you will be able to direct it. If you can direct your dreams, you can direct your death also. You can choose where to be born again, to whom, when, in what form; you can become the master of your birth also.

Osho has given us a beautiful quote. This happened in real life. Meditation made me childlike. I feel everything like a child. Let me share with you the secret of infusing newborn life into an existing body. How is it possible? Start meditation and feel everything. Love everything. You have already forgotten your past life and the unwanted memory. You start a new life. I feel like sleeping more and more because my mind works 90 percent in the subconscious state. All power arises from the sleeping process. Your mind creates everything that ordinary eyes cannot see. It has an infinite view that helps you to see the world’s reality in the truest sense.

The ‘Eightfold Path’ given by Buddha helps in providing a beautiful and magical life:

1. Right View

2. Right Intention

3. Right Speech

4. Right Action

5. Right Livelihood

6. Right Effort

7. Right Concentration

8. Right Mindfulness

Do not take it as an effort. “Energy flows, where attention goes”. I use this sutra for mediation. Everything is energy. Our whole body is a form of energy. Once you can find the center, you will become the master.

The Three basic centers are - Head, Heart and Navel with navel being the given center, the original one. Give attention to this point (center), and you will feel something different. Listen to soothing music of your choice and once you’re at peace, become aware of your heart. Repeat this method again - listen to soothing music of your choice and observe your heart. Did you feel something? Energy.

Whenever you listen to music, don’t just listen but feel its sound. Sometime, suddenly miracles happen. Mantras have no power in themselves. But their vibrations have powers. Our feelings give them power. Words are mere words because man has made the language for the ease of communication. Which language do birds, trees, air, river use to communicate? Silence. If you can combine your feelings with silence, you can become the master and talk with air.

Meditation makes you pure. Like a child. But a child gets angry, he has greed - so why do you call him pure? What is so pure about childhood? Innocence! The child is devoid of any division between what is good or bad. That unawareness is innocence! Even when he gets angry or greedy, he does it as a pure and simple act without applying his mind. But he needs wisdom for the real world. As time passes by, the child grows and so does his mind. The more he grows, the more impure he becomes. Now the anger in him will be a ‘considered’ emotion, not spontaneous. Sometimes, the child will suppress the anger if the situation permits and sometimes the anger will be transferred to another situation instead. Many times, our life becomes unreal, we become confused and are not able to make fast and correct decisions. Meditation brings wisdom. It sharpens our brains.

Man is creating hell within himself, and the hell is nowhere else but in his divided personality or split personality. And hell is not something geographical, hell and heaven do exist dimensionally. The personality, that is a whole one unit, with no inner divisions and no conflicts, will be heaven.

Whenever a man or a woman, with positivity, light, happiness, goodness, morality, and dignity pass us by, we feel positive vibrations. Why? It’s because of the energy field of their human aura.

Environment of our Seven bodies:

1. Etheric Body

2. Emotional Body

3. Mental Body

4. Astral Body

5. Etheric Template Body

6. Celestial Body

7. Causal Body

With an increased level of meditation, you can see your subtle body with opened and closed eyes. You can feel the world as a magical and spiritual world. When you are happy, your aura spreads to a long distance and is filled with a positive energy field. Everything you touch turns out good. You attract good opportunities and good people. But at this level, you accept both dark and light because darkness is part of the day - comes and goes like energy. Everything is changing one moment after another. Nothing is immortal. Life and death. Only darkness is a must. In this darkness, ‘brahma chetna’, the divine light, is living. Our soul can change bodies like clothes. Whenever the clothes become old and unusable, we throw them and buy new ones just like the soul that takes a new body. If your mind can transcend this darkness, you will become Buddha or the master of your soul.

Balance. Balance. Balance. It is essential in every situation. It is the Middle Path. Buddha developed the whole technique of meditation on this path known as ‘Majjhima Nikaya’, the middle path. Buddha says, “Always remain in the middle – in everything”.

Once a prince named Shorn took Sannyasa Diksha (sacred ceremony of initiation into ascetism). Buddha initiated him into sannyasa. When he took sannyasa, his whole kingdom was amazed, as the prince was a man of this world - indulging in everything to extremes. Wine and women were his milieu. No one had ever even imagined that Prince Shorn could become a sannyasi.

Suddenly, Buddha came to the town and the prince went to see him for a darshan. He fell at Buddha’s feet and said, “Initiate me. I will leave this world”. Those who had come with him were not expecting this and were taken by complete surprise. So, they asked Buddha, “What is happening? This is a miracle. Shorn is not this type of man. He has lived very luxuriously until now. We can’t even imagine that Shorn is going to take sannyasa. What has happened? Have you done something?”

Buddha said, “I have not done anything. The mind can move easily from one extreme to another. That is the way of mind – to move from one extreme to another so Shorn is not doing something new. It is to be expected because you do not know the law of mind, that is why you are taken aback”.

The mind moves from one extreme to another - that is the way of the mind. This isn’t a unique phenomenon; it happens every day. A person who was crazy after wealth, renounces everything and becomes a naked fakir. We think, “What a miracle!” but that’s not the case. An ordinary person who is not crazy after wealth cannot be expected to renounce it because only from one extreme can you move to another – just like a pendulum that oscillates from one extreme to another. So, a person who was crazy after wealth can also go crazy against it, retaining the madness – that is the mind.

After a few days, Shorn became self-torturing. Buddha allowed one meal per day for the sanyasis but Shorn would take one meal on alternate days. He became lean and thin. He was a beautiful man with a lovely body, but within six months no one could recognise him. He became ugly, dark, and sunburnt.

Buddha went to Shorn one night and asked him, “Shorn, I have heard that when you were a prince before initiation. You used to play the veena, sitar and that you were a great musician. So, I have come to ask you one question. If the strings of the veena are very loose, what happens?” Shorn said, “If the strings are very loose, then no music is possible”. To which Buddha asked, “If the strings are very tight, too tight then what happens?” Shorn said “Then too much music cannot be produced. The strings must be in the middle-neither loose nor tight, but just exactly in the middle”. Shorn said, “It is easy to play the veena but only a master can set it right in the middle”.

So, Buddha said, “After observing you for the last six months, I must tell you this that in life too music comes only when the strings are neither loose nor tight but just in the middle. To renounce is easy but only a master knows how to be in the middle. Shorn be a master, and let these strings of life be just in the middle – in everything. Do not go to this extreme and do not go to that one. Everything has two extremes, but you remain just in the middle”.

We have infinity in every direction. Our mind makes boundaries and barriers. These subtle boundaries are responsible for contraction of our thoughts and views because our belief system is what makes our surroundings, circumstances, and shapes our lives. So, do not worry about what will happen in the future. Our present situation makes our future. Most people don’t live in the present. They are physically at the workplace but not mentally - their minds wandering to other places.

In the second lesson, I will talk about Consciousness.