Once we have made up our mind to learn and practise meditation, we will find that there are numerous techniques to choose from. Over a period of time, we may evolve our own methods of meditation, which are different from those of others. However, the essential nature and underlying principles of all techniques remain the same.
In this section, we will go into the three important techniques of meditation that I love the most. They are very easy to understand and simple to practise. They are (i) Shavasan-Meditation, (ii) Finding the real answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ and (iii) Experiencing the Inner Stillness.
This is the most novel and easy technique of meditation. It was first conceived and evolved by me during my one-month stay in the sacred Himalayas for deep and intense meditation in 1973, immediately after my medical internship. This technique is blessed by the highly evolved spiritual masters from the holy mountains. I have taught it to thousands of my students from India and abroad ever since.
A book about this technique was first published in 1978 in the Marathi Indian language. It was prefaced by the then Prime Minister of India, the late Hon. Mr Morarjibhai Desai. Now it is in its twelfth edition.
While practising Shavasan-Meditation, one has to lie comfortably on the floor and go through certain stages to reach the final state of no-thought awareness.
We may get easily discouraged from learning and practising conventional forms of meditation because we have to face numerous problems right from the start. One of the most important is our inability to sit in one pose – whether simple or difficult like the lotus pose – with a straight back.
Most people from the West are not even able to sit on the ground for a few minutes, let alone for a longer period of time in meditation. If we experience such a problem at the very first step of learning meditation, we may quickly lose interest. Subsequent lack of motivation will make meditation a boring affair. Naturally, we will not be able to pursue it for a long time. As the effects of meditation become evident only after several months of sincere practice, we may deprive ourselves of the immense joy we could have experienced through meditation.
As sitting on the floor is difficult, beginners have to strain themselves during meditation. This discomfort does not permit them to transcend body awareness. This can be compared with the level of discomfort experienced while travelling in a crowded train, where we can hardly relax. It is often said that the practice of meditation requires perseverance, grit and determination, but these virtues are surely not meant for sitting in an uneasy posture, fighting pains in different parts of the body. Many teachers attach undue importance to sitting posture and literally force their students through the grind of meditation. As expected, the poor students end up with higher stress levels than before.
In Shavasan-Meditation (S.M.) we are supposed to lie on the floor in a very comfortable position. It allows us to be in that posture for a long period of time without any discomfort or pain. Thus we can easily transcend body awareness, followed by mind awareness and subsequently experience a thought-free state. That is why we can learn and practise S.M. very easily, regardless of whether we are 14 or 80 years old.
There is one more valid reason for practising meditation in a comfortable position of the body: meditation is an inner state of no-thought awareness, and it hardly matters whether our body is in a sitting position or is comfortably lying on the floor. One more advantage of S.M. is the minimum amount of time required for the mind to become completely silent. In today’s busy world, every minute saved matters.
Unfortunately, many people honestly believe that they are supposed to endure pain and discomfort without a whimper of protest during meditation. The reality is very different and more beautiful.
The essence of meditation is to develop a cordial and comfortable relationship with ourselves. As mentioned elsewhere in this book, the first step is very important, because it decides the direction of the following steps. Being comfortable right from the beginning makes sense in this context too. In S.M., our body is lying comfortably on the ground – we are not forcing it to do anything, but are actually trying to be very friendly and co-operative with it. It starts responding equally well. With this approach, we begin to enjoy meditation and over a period of time we naturally start developing a taste for it. Once we start liking our meditation, further progress on the path becomes very easy.
S.M. gives an early experience and a taste of success in meditation. This early success becomes a source of encouragement and inspiration for the long term. Modern psychologists say that if young children get an early taste of success, their interest in studies automatically grows. It is therefore necessary that a child is encouraged to think that if they study well, they are capable of doing well in any subject.
Psychologists recommend that if children are initially taught the fundamental but very simple and easy to understand concepts of a subject, soon they develop a feeling that they can understand the subject well. Naturally, they will feel confident in themselves. Once they develop confidence, things become much easier for their teachers: they can play a facilitator’s role and provide guidance whenever needed by the child. With self-confidence, a true liking for the subject, early experience of success and timely guidance from a supportive teacher, a child can learn more complex concepts in a given subject with far less difficulty.
This is all applicable in meditation too. It is very important that we start getting positive results as early as possible. Being able to say ‘I can meditate’ is of paramount importance, as far as our progress in the field is concerned.
The most important thing is to reach a state of no-thought awareness through meditation. As no-thought awareness grows, the inner joy also grows proportionately. Initially, we are likely to fall asleep while doing S.M., but after some practice, this tendency automatically reduces.
With the help of S.M. we can experience freedom from thoughts, expanding awareness, bliss and effort-free naturalness. Many people have learned this technique from my associates, my colleagues and me, and have benefited immensely from regular practice. I am sure the reader will also benefit in the same manner. Best of luck!
Wear loose-fitting comfortable clothes. Lie comfortably on the floor in a supine position (on your back). Keep your legs spread, about one and a half feet apart, with the feet turned outwards. Keep your arms away from the side of your body, with your hands about one foot away from your sides. Keep your head in a comfortable position either in the centre or turned to either the left or right side.
Internalize your attention and locate tensions in different parts of the body, starting with your feet and ascending right up to your head. Give enough time to each part of the body, to be aware of the tensions there. Once you notice tensions, release them by gently moving that part a little bit, until your whole body is completely relaxed and tension-free.
After lying comfortably in the position described above, gently turn your attention to your chest and observe how it automatically rises and falls with each normal act of breathing. Don’t control or concentrate on your breath. Just be aware of the movement of your chest.
Turn your attention to all the thoughts that keep coming to your mind all the time. Just let them come, stay and go according to their natural tendency. You should neither fight against certain thoughts nor get carried away with others. Keep witnessing all these thoughts without having any personal reaction to them.
• Do this in the morning, preferably before your breakfast, for about 10–15 minutes.
• Repeat it twice in the evening – firstly after you return from work, and secondly when you are in bed ready to sleep.
• If possible, do it before lunch in the office too. Maybe just for five minutes, sitting in a chair in a semi-reclined position or stretching your body with your head resting against the wall.
• Don’t be in a hurry to enter the state of meditation or rush to come out of it. Do everything at a leisurely pace.
• Don’t worry if you fall asleep in the beginning. Later on the quality of your regular sleep during night will improve and the hours of sleep will decrease.
This technique involves asking a very simple question, ‘Who am I?’, and exploring it thoroughly to find the real answer about who we actually are. It is rather a strange kind of question one could ask and start looking for the answer within oneself.
The question must be asked and answered with utmost sincerity, honesty and intensity. Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi, the great sage of India, made this form of meditation popular. It is a very simple type of meditation that is easy to understand and practice, irrespective of any religion. Finding a true answer to this question is really a great challenge.
It requires a great deal of perseverance and patience to find a real answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ We need tremendous motivation to pursue this question to the end.
Everybody knows how intelligent, how handsome or how capable one is. At least, it is possible to know about these things without too much difficulty. But very few of us know what we actually are. There is a difference between our knowledge of what we are and the understanding of others about how we look to them. Our worldly affairs are governed and controlled more by our notion about ourselves than what we actually are. In general, we are not aware of our real self because we are never introduced to it.
If we do not discover our unmanifest and not easily perceptible real ‘I’, our life remains based on a weak foundation. All our thoughts, emotions, actions and behaviour are structured on this weak foundation, and we will naturally tend to remain unstable and insecure. The inner sense of instability and insecurity keeps continuously affecting our worldly life.
To develop an urge to know our ‘true’ self, we have to become thoroughly dissatisfied with all that we are doing with the help of our ‘false’ self. Unfortunately, most people do not have enough courage to be completely dissatisfied like this. Unless we are able to actually experience the extreme suffering of such dissatisfaction, we will never develop enough motivation to explore what real happiness is.
That is why most people waste their valuable life in getting tossed between ‘lukewarm happiness’ on one hand and ‘lukewarm suffering’ on the other. Ultimately, as we reach the end of our life, we suddenly realize that we have achieved many things, like going through higher education, earning lots of money and recognition, but within us we are still not truly happy, satisfied and contented. This is the tragedy of many older people: they experience a sense of frustration and emptiness for having wasted their life chasing after and accumulating unimportant things, then due to old age they no longer have enough energy to lead their life differently.
It is therefore necessary that we start working towards our real goal while we are still very young. We should develop an intense urge to ask the fundamental question, ‘Who am I?’ and start pursuing it in earnest from our youth. We have to remember that even if the whole world seems to know us well but if we don’t know our true self well, it is worth nothing at all. On the other hand, if we know our true self well, but the world doesn’t know us at all, this is of greater value and significance.
Whenever we face grave problems and do not find proper solutions to them, we may suddenly realize that the real cause of all our problems and our suffering is that we do not know ourselves well enough. Once we know that self-ignorance is the main cause of our problems, we develop a genuine need to remove our ignorance and start doing something concrete, by asking, ‘Who am I?’ with all our heart and mind involved in the question.
If there isn’t enough intensity and earnestness in asking this question, it is reduced to a superficial verbal question. If the question is superficial, the answer is bound to be trivial. Verbal solutions are not the real answers to this question. The urge to get the real answer to this question should become the top priority in our life. Interestingly, we will not get the real answer to this question unless it is asked properly.
In worldly life many things depend on how we ask a particular question. If a young man who is in love with a girl proposes to her in a dry tone, she is bound to turn down his proposal. For a girl, the asking of the question is not so important. She is far more concerned about the manner in which it is asked and with what level of sincerity it is asked. Her answer depends on these things more than anything else. In fact, if a young man is truly in love, he will not need to put it into words to convey his feelings. His sweetheart will realize his genuine love, without his telling her about it.
Compared with other trivial questions of life, ‘Who am I?’ happens to be a very special kind of question. It occupies our whole life and becomes the most valuable question we could possibly ask ourselves. If it is not, it should be.
Nothing is going to be achieved if it is asked mechanically. Moreover, nothing is going to happen if we spend our entire life repeating this question hundreds of thousands of times. Chanting it mechanistically will be a total waste of time and energy. However, if it is asked just once with great intensity and integrity, that will be enough. It will stay with us in the deeper layers of our being forever and it will keep influencing our life from there on, in a very subtle manner.
Many people are under the wrong impression that they don’t need to ask this question at all, because they think they already know the answer.
‘What is so difficult about knowing myself?’ is their usual response. They believe that they are the son of their parents, husband of their wife, father of their children, manager in a company, and so on and so on. The problem is how can a single person handle all these relations? There should be several ‘I’s to take care of them all.
Our experience suggests that although these relations belong to the ‘I’, the relations are not the real ‘I’. The real ‘I’ is certainly different from the relationships – it is present in the relations, but it is not only to be found there; it exists apart from these relations too. It is similar to what we do with our sense organs. We make use of our eyes to see, ears to hear, tongue to taste, nose to smell and skin to touch, but these sense organs by themselves are not our true ‘I’.
Even when performing all these functions, our ‘I’ remains separate from all these sensations. If it were not so, we would be divided into many ‘I’s, instead of one ‘I’. But it doesn’t happen that way.
When we are fast asleep, we are not aware that ‘I’ is a particular person, with a particular name and form. But when we wake up, we immediately know that we exist. Not only that, we also know if we have slept well. How can we say that we were not present during sleep? This means that our ‘I’ was present during sleep too. We may say that the real purpose behind asking the question ‘Who am I?’, is to understand that our ‘I’ during wakeful hours is the same as our ‘I’ during sound sleep.
It is very important that we observe certain precautions while asking the question. First of all, we have to wholeheartedly concede that we don’t really know what our real ‘I’ is and that is the reason why we want to do the search.
Naturally, if we don’t know our ‘I’, we should not waste our time thinking about it or forming preconceived notions about how our real self ‘should’ be or will be. It would be foolish to do so, because however great the imaginary notion about our ‘I’ may be, it can never replace our real ‘I’. Why do it then?
As a part of spiritual practice, some spiritual masters recommend that we should constantly remind ourselves by saying ‘I am the blissful spirit’ or ‘I am a bright light’. But by merely repeating these words, we will never be able to experience the luminosity or blissfulness of the spirit. In fact, it may actually prove to be a big obstacle if we do that.
The best thing to do is to ask the question with utmost sincerity without getting lost in any form of imagination whatsoever and just leave it at that. We will usually have to wait a long time before we reach the real answer – the answer to this question is as special as the question is. When we get the answer, we will realize that it is truly a very unusual answer.
Once we have asked this question properly, it will enter into the deepest parts of our being. It will completely take charge of our mind, body, intellect and emotions. The greater the intensity of the question, the nearer will be the answer. Paradoxically, if we are prepared to wait, the answer will come faster than expected, but if we are impatient it will take much longer.
It is similar to a seed that is sown in the ground. If we want the seed to germinate, we have to sow it and wait for some time until it starts sprouting. Just as the seed doesn’t germinate immediately after it is sown, the seed of this question also doesn’t germinate instantly after it is sown in the field of our mind.
We have to trust that, under favourable conditions, the seed that is sown in the soil will germinate in few days. If we worry too much about its sprouting, or keep digging every day to confirm its germination, we will surely destroy the seed. Similarly, once we sow the seed of the question ‘Who am I?’ inside us, we have to water it with prejudice-free searching, remove all the weeds of imagination on time, offer it the fertilizer of intense urge and provide enough air and water of patience for it to sprout early.
Whenever we get the real answer, we will not be able to recognize it as we do with our usual questions and their usual answers. In fact, if we recognize the answer to this question, the chances are that it is not the real answer.
This is probably the only question in the whole world to which when we get the real answer we don’t know it in the conventional sense of the term. Still, we certainly get the answer and also feel very confident that we have got it. With long-term effort and patience, the answer automatically comes to us in an uninvited manner.
After having got the real answer, our life fills to the brim with immense joy. Life becomes far more meaningful than before. We become free of all kinds of stress. We begin to enjoy absolute peace of mind and immeasurable happiness.
This technique of meditation is based on the teachings of the great philosopher and world teacher, J. Krishnamurti. It is a very subtle method of meditation that explains the importance of having a raw experience of every sensation, without using any words to describe it.
For example, if we eat an apple and we want to explain its taste to one of our friends, we will say, ‘The apple was very tasty.’ Similarly, while describing a beautiful scene, we have to make use of words. Imagine a situation in which we had the experience of the sweet taste of the apple and of the beauty of nature, but there was nobody around us with whom we could talk about our experiences. In a situation like that, it would be quite absurd on our part to start describing them to ourselves. We already know through our experience what we are going to talk about. There is absolutely no need to use any words to describe the experiences to ourselves. If we make use of words, it will only affect the purity of our initial experiences.
The sweet taste of an apple is its nature, whether we use any words to describe its sweetness to anybody else or not. Its taste remains the same whether we call it sweet or bitter or sour, or don’t say anything. The apple will taste the same to a person who is able to use words to describe its taste and a person who is dumb. The experience of the sweet taste is the same for both. Similarly, the experience of the beauty of nature will be the same for them both, but one will not be able to share his experience with others and the other may paint a beautiful picture, or write an article or a poem about the experience.
To have a raw experience we don’t need any words. Words are necessary only when we share our experience with others. I know that I have to make use of words to say that words are not necessary to have a raw experience of something.
Knowing this, we have to make sure that we don’t let any words interfere with any of our direct experiences. We have to use words with caution. Use them only when it is absolutely necessary, but avoid their use whenever they are not needed.
Unfortunately, most of us cannot differentiate between pure experience and its verbal description. That is why we tend to use words while having a pure experience of something, and by doing so we actually spoil the purity of the experience.
We have to always keep it in mind that the knowledge we are going to gain after regular practice of meditation is purely subjective experiential knowledge and not the conventional type of material knowledge. Many great sages and seers have endeavoured to describe their higher experiences to us. But none of them have so far been able to describe them fully and nobody will ever be able to do it in the future, because those experiences are essentially subjective in nature and are beyond all descriptions.
As we can experience the sweet taste of an apple without using any words to describe it, we can do this with other experiences too. Over a period of time, we become conversant with the process of having a silent experience of everything. Slowly, making use of the same process, we can get an experiential knowledge of our true self.
Words are necessary for knowledge of the external world, but they are not at all necessary for inner experiences. We don’t need to have command over any language to know our true self. But we certainly need it to do well in the external world.
While practising this technique of meditation, we can make use of all our sense organs. Krishnamurti used to talk about ‘just seeing’ and ‘just listening’. If we learn how to take every experience the way it comes to us, without contaminating its purity with any thoughts or words, in due course we develop great insight into ourselves. Such insight is in fact, the true self-knowledge.
A few years ago, a pregnant patient came to our Yoga Clinic to learn yoga for pain-free delivery. I told her that as this was her first experience of delivering a baby, she should keep her mind open to face the situation as it comes and not carry any preconceived notions about it. I suggested that she go through this unique experience boldly, freely and with an open mind. If the delivery is going to be painful, I said, it will be so. Why worry about it? If it is painful, let it be so. Go through the pure experience of pain as and when it comes. Do not carry any thoughts about it. At the time when you go into labour, just experience whatever happens in full awareness. Don’t analyse or resist the experience when it comes.
As expected, she had a normal delivery. She had some pain during the delivery, but it was bearable.
In fact, the pain of childbirth largely depends on the woman’s mental state. If, during pregnancy, she is constantly exposed to negative thoughts about painful delivery, she approaches childbirth with a fearful mind and therefore suffers much pain. If she receives proper mental training and knows what to expect and how to face the situation, it helps minimize pain to a large extent. Now, we get many pregnant women coming to our Yoga Clinic to learn about pain-free delivery through yoga.
We can try one more experiment. Whenever we experience some sensation in the body, we have to just stay with that sensation, without trying to explain it in words. If we are hungry, just experience the pure sensation of hunger, without using the word ‘hunger’. Do not think about eating anything to satisfy the hunger sensation. Just stay with the pure sensation of hunger.
I suggested this experiment to one of my obese patients. To my surprise, he came back after a few months and I could not recognize him. He reported that a few days after he started having the raw experience of hunger sensation, he realized that there was a vast difference between a ‘false’ hunger sensation and the ‘real’ one. He also realized that he had put on weight not because of over-eating, but because of his inability to differentiate between true and false hunger. It also occurred to him that what he was responding to was not the real sensation of hunger, but to thoughts and words about the sensation. Naturally, he used to eat more than he needed. Now he eats only when he is truly hungry and not when he gets a false hunger sensation. Later, his false hunger was substantially reduced and his sense and understanding of true hunger improved. He could keep his food intake and weight under control without any difficulty whatsoever, without the need to go on any crash diets.
Once we are capable of going through all our experiences in this manner, our experiential understanding about ourselves grows. With this understanding at our disposal, we can make excellent progress in meditation.