Course in Meditation: Part 3

Swami Kriyananda
Video Transcript

Class number three and we're going to be talking about the importance of attitude
in meditation. Many people think that meditation is just sort of a mechanical
practice. In fact, if you don't have the right attitude, you'll never be able to go very
far. For example, it's quite obvious surely that if you were to come to meditation in
sort of a resistant frame of mind, in a hostile frame of mind, you wouldn't get very
far. Do you remember what Jesus said that if when you go to the temple you have
something against your brothers, go back and smooth things out with your brothers
before you go to the temple? What he meant in that passage is much broader than
some little misunderstanding you might have your brothers. What he meant was
that you should go to the temple with that kind of attitude that's conducive to inner
calmness and the temple that we're talking about is the temple of your own body,
the temple of peace.

There are certain basic attitudes that you need to develop as a part of your normal
outlook on life if you really want to meditate deeply. Otherwise, it's going to be
taking one step forward and one step back and really not getting anywhere. For
example, meditation is a means of uniting yourself with life. Therefore, you should
feel that unity. Meditation is a means of learning to be completely honest with
yourself, to go beyond your delusions. Therefore, you should be completely
truthful. Meditation is a means of withdrawing your identity from things, outward
things; therefore you shouldn't be covetous. Meditation is a means of learning to be
self -controlled, self-contained and not feeling that your energy has to run out
towards sensory delights, therefore, non-sensuality. Meditation is also a means of
raising yourself above the body and the personality and all the inner desires and
attachments and interest that you have.

So we come to some of the basic teachings on the path of yoga and meditation
which are outlined by one of the great sages of ancient times in India. His name was
Patanjali. He wrote the only book that is really recognized universally as a Scripture
on yoga. Yoga means union, union of your lower self with your Higher Self; union
with life - integration of your personality so that you don't work at odds with
yourself. Union in the sense of no longer having all sorts of–complete in yourself -
union of the little, little self with the Infinite Self; union of the aspiring devotee with
his Lord. All of these could be comprised in the simple word yoga or union.

Many people think yoga means doing a lot of physical postures and in fact, those
are not classically a part of yoga although they have been admitted as helpful in
making the body harmonious. You can forget the body and meditate more deeply
but real yoga is what is known as Raja Yoga. Other pathways are also called yoga
like the yoga of devotion, the yoga of actions, the yoga of intellect. All these in a
sense bypass because they depend upon different aspects of human personality
and human nature. You may be more active by nature, more contemplative by
nature, more emotional and feeling by nature but all these things should lead you
to that state of inner calmness. Anybody who follows a path of union through these
qualities will find that he achieves that state of calmness which is known as
meditation.

Meditation is the path of Raja Yoga. Raja or royal yoga is that highway on which
these by-paths of human attributes in that soulfulness that is beyond human
attributes. You see it's not a matter of sectarian difference, my ways better than
yours or anything like that. All of these ways need–in fact, Raja Yoga embraces
learning to develop your feelings, learning to develop clarity of intellect and
perceptions, learning to serve, all of these are part of your total self-development.
But what we're talking about here now is the need for getting yourself completely
calm, internalized and having that kind of attitude that will make it possible for you
to recognize that one on all levels, be it inwardly by a integrated personality,
outwardly and physically by a harmonious body that's really working together, all
the parts working in harmony with one another or unity in the sense of love for all
creatures as a part of your own self, unity in the sense of embracing that oneness.

All of these aspects of the meaning of yoga are embraced first of all in attitude. In
other words, one of the things you seek to achieve as I said is a sense of love and
unity. Well, you can't come to meditation with an attitude that isn’t love. You have
to have a love that is in your hearts. Well, one of the first rules that Patanjali gave is
harmlessness, not wishing ill to anything. You might say, “Well, why didn't he say
love everybody?” Love in a human way then we love some people and don't love
others, some because they have certain qualities. We don't love others because
they lack those qualities. We hate others perhaps because they are close to those
qualities where if we get rid of the natural tendency of the human ego to wish harm
to others and in an effort to defend itself or promote itself, aggrandizement then
automatically there comes that kind of all-embracing attitude that is harmlessness.

He said the same thing for truth that it is a negative quality in the sense that he
talked about non-lying, non-desire to tell lies and in that way automatically you
want the truth. Truth is that which remains when you weed out every wish to hide
yourself from the truth, to delude yourself, to pretend that something is other than
you are, that you are different from what you are, and so on. When you get rid of
that wish to kid yourself, then automatically you tune in on what really is so that
becomes truthfulness.

Another quality that he talked about was not coveting anything that isn’t yours.
Just be content with what you have. Know that what is yours by right will come to
you in its own time and in its own way. You can work for it but don’t work with
desire. When you’re working with desire, you’re not living here and now, you’re
living in the future, you’re living out there in space where that car might be found
or that new fur coat or that new house or whatever it might be. The more you can
learn to live complete in yourself, the better off you’ll be.

Another thing that he said as a basic attitude is to be self-controlled, self-contained

in a different way. That is to say nonconsensual self-control, concentrated in
yourself, recognizing that your real power comes from within and not from outside
yourself. The more you can live in that way, not spilling your energy out in sensory
and sensual ways, the more you can live in your own inner power, the more you will
see you have power over everything you try to accomplish whereas if you scatter
your forces – – too much talk is a way of not being self-controlled, too much action
is a way of losing your control, losing your cool you might say. Too much sensual
indulgence on a sexual level also is not good because it spills your forces, you
scatter them. Anything that takes your mind too much outside-- now does this
mean you shouldn’t talk? You shouldn’t do anything? - No, of course not. It means
you should be moderate and be self-controlled in the sense that being
concentrated on what you do but not being bound by anything and if ever you find
something that binds you, that conditions your happiness then give that up for a
while until you feel you don’t need it.

Another quality that he talked about is acceptance, to learn to accept. I’m sorry, I
put that wrong. Acceptance as a quality to what he was talking about is
non-acceptance so I’m contradicting myself what he meant in the non-acceptance
was in not accepting even that which is yours. You shouldn’t covet that which isn’t
yours but don’t accept even that which apparently is yours. In other words, don’t
identify yourself with your body. Don’t identify yourself with your personality.
Being, as it were, watching, always have a part of your mind that is sort of watching
everything and saying, “That isn’t what I am. That isn’t my reality. I’m watching it.”
Be in this world, live in this world as if you are a guest in this world that you’re here
for a time but you know that what you have and what you do and the people that
you’re surrounded by aren’t yours in eternity so that a part of your mind is always
living in eternity. Another thing, therefore, is always sort of withdrawing yourself
from attachment. All of these things are part of the attitude.

Now I talked of acceptance and that is, too, a very basic part. It could be tied into
truthfulness because when you accept things as they are and not wish that they be
anything other than what they are then, you can become. And why do people get
upset? - Largely because they would like things to be different from what they
are. They get angry. They get cross. They get depressed. They get falsely elated. All
because they have desires that are either being disappointed or fulfilled but in no
case are they the reality.

I have often thought of the quiz shows on television and how excited people get
and you see them jumping up and down but that great excitement that they feel
because they got a new dishwasher that wears off in time. The dishwasher becomes
old stuff. Maybe it’s broken down anyway, maybe there’s something wrong with it,
who knows? But the fact is if they allow themselves to condition their happiness by
these things instead of accepting them – – it’s good to have a dishwasher if you
need one but don’t let your happiness depend upon such things because then you’ll
find that you’ll never get it all right whereas if you can be strong in yourself, you will
find that you can enjoy everything in this world and without the fear of losing it.
This is important. Even in the enjoyment of things the worldly person has very little
joy because they’re always afraid of losing it, always thinking, “When will it break
down?” Always thinking, “When will it get stolen from me?” And so on…

Then there’s a positive side to all of these qualities. One is cleanliness. Now physical
cleanliness is good for meditation. If you cleanse yourself, if you take a shower
before you meditate, you will find it easier to raise your consciousness. Of course,
an unclean body if you have been working in the fields or whatever then that makes
you body conscious and it tends to pull the mind down but there’s something more
to it, too. When you go out, well, a very obvious example is a smoky environment.
You go to a party, everybody is smoking, you come home and the smell of smoke
clings to your hair. It clings to your clothes, it clings to your body and it will be there
– – well, not only that but something of the world clings to your clothes and to your
body. I mean when you come back to your meditation room to really free yourself
from all those vibrations, from all those impulses of other people’s thoughts and
desires, to free yourself from all of that, it would help to take a bath before you
meditate. Cleanse yourself. In that cleanliness you will find that it’s much easier to
raise your consciousness and meditate deeply.

But cleanliness is on a much more than physical level - to have pure thoughts clean
thoughts. What is purity? Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall
see God.” Purity of heart, well, you could look at it this way. Earth - if it’s out in the
garden where it belongs, it’s just earth and good, clean earth. We talk of it is that,
don’t we? But if you bring it into the kitchen, aren’t you likely to be scolded by your
wife if you’re a boy or man or aren’t you going to feel in any case that you’ve
brought dirt into the house? What was clean and good outside becomes dirt when
it doesn’t belong there. So when we have desires that don’t pertain to our true
nature, then they are not clean. There are some desires that are cleaner and some
desires that are less clean than others, strictly in relation to whether those desires
help us to rise or pull us down from that. A desire for things particularly isn’t the
important thing but if you, for example, desire money in order to help other people
then that can be an uplifting and expansive kind of desire. But if you desire money
just to be rich and be a miser, then it can be a self-limiting desire. It’s not so much
the thing as the direction of your energies and desires. That is clean and pure which
helps to lift your mind up into calmness. To love beautiful scenery without being
attached to it and thinking, “I won’t be happy till I get back to the country.” To love
beautiful music but to be able to enjoy silence, too. Nevertheless, basically these
are good desires. They can uplift you. Whereas to love the kind of music that makes
you tense and nervous, to lower your consciousness this--like rock music has been
proved to scientifically to have a lowering effect on the energy in the body and the
mind, to agitate the nervous system. It’s bad for you, in fact, whereas classical
music, some of it is very uplifting. Spiritual and devotional music, chanting as I was
doing at the beginning of this class, all of this is very good.

So cleanliness means to have those kinds of thoughts and feelings that make you
feel clean, that make you feel you’re--that make you feel uplifted and the more that
you can live in that kind of environment and the more you can surround yourself
with people who live and think that way, the more you will find that this teaching of
Patanjali’s will be a reality for you and you will change your whole consciousness.

Contentment – it’s been described as the greatest of all virtues because when your
content, then it’s easy to think in terms of kindness. It’s easy to think in terms of
forgiveness. It’s easy not to be angry. It’s easy to have all noble and uplifting
qualities and thoughts whereas if you’re a malcontent then you will find that
nothing pleases you and in that lack of pleasure, lack of happiness then you will get
angry, get frustrated. You get depressed. You get discouraged so contentment–
many people imagine that they will only become contented if everything goes right
for them - when their desires are fulfilled, when those nasty neighbors move away,
nicer ones come in, when they finally get that raise at the office, etc., etc., etc.
No. Contentment is something that you have to practice as an actual quality so that
whatever comes say, “I accept it.”

You will find – – you might as well anyway. I remember some person a few decades
ago, grandiose he said, “I accept the universe,” and somebody said, “Well, by God,
you better.” In fact, however, very few people accept a great deal in life but to
speak of the universe – – the universe can take care of itself. They can’t accept their
daily surroundings. They can’t accept the people they are with. They don’t like their
work. They don’t like their homes. They don’t like their wife or husband. They don’t
like their neighbors. There are so many things that can displease you if you have a
mind set to be displeased. And if you ever think to get it together so that you can
finally be happy, you’ll be waiting a long time, probably past the end of this life and
into who knows whether or how many incarnations but if you practice contentment
as a deliberate quality. Just say, “From today on, I don’t care what goes on, I am
going to be contented in myself.” Then you will find that also in your meditation
you can go more deeply.

To think that you can find joy in meditation as one of the attributes of God if you sit
there and think, “When am I going to find joy,” just sure that you’ll never find it and
wanting God to prove it to him, prove it to you that he can make you joyful. He
won’t. You’ve got to have the attitude of the meditation before you can attain deep
meditation. You have to have an attitude of calmness. You have to have an attitude
of forgiveness. You have to have an attitude of love, an attitude of contentment.

So studying yourself - Swadhyaya is the word in Sanskrit. Self-study is the literal

meaning of it and many people think it means, oh, studying the Scriptures but
“swa” means the self and what it’s really talking about is to understand yourself.
From a mental level it’s very difficult to understand yourself. It’s very difficult even
to see yourself as you are but if you can see yourself from a higher level, from that
calmness you can easily judge whether this quality is leading toward that calmness
or away from it. So, that quality, which to the normal rational mind may seem
perfectly good, you suddenly realize aren’t good. They may be good in the sense
that they help you to make a killing in the stock market but they may not be those
things which are conducive to a higher state of awareness so self-study is possible
really only in deeper meditation when you can sort of look down but it that point
look at yourself. Analyze yourself, if you will. See where you’re going wrong. You
will be able to quickly see what things you need to change, what things you need to
adjust, what things you need to develop, what new qualities you need to acquire
and then to also read the Scriptures, yes, of course, but also to have devotion to the
supreme Lord.

I forgot one of the qualities which is austerity, not in a sense, you see some of these
words you can’t really translate well because austerity has a connotation of
grimness and I’m not talking of grimness. I’m talking rather of don’t spill your
energy is the first one. Non-sensuality but the other is containing that energy.
Don’t only not send it outward but take it back and direct it upward toward your
goal. Jesus said not only that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart,
mind and soul but he added a fourth quality. He said strength. Some people think
strength means your work. What somebody who meditates understands
immediately what that means is the strength of your body, is your energy and if you
cannot spill that energy outward but bring it back and redirect it upward then you
are practicing real austerity which is to say that the redirection of misspent energy
in a wholesome and constructive direction in meditation. That means toward God.

Then the final one is devotion to the supreme God. Devotion is a very important
quality. Some people don’t understand. They think devotion means some kind of
mawkish sentiment. No, devotion really means being completely focused on
something that you very deeply want, when you want it with all your heart. Let’s
put it this way. You live next door to a restaurant. You know it’s a very famous
restaurant, you know what menu it has, you know that people come from far and
near to eat in that restaurant but if you aren’t hungry, you won’t go there even if
it’s close. But once you’re hungry and if you’re really hungry you’ll go and you’ll eat.
You can go to a restaurant that offers a lot less because you want it with your body.
The same thing is true with your wants of the heart when you really want to
meditate, then you’ll meditate.
There is a young boy, a young man I should say, came to a saint once and asked him
to teach him to meditate and the saint saw that he wasn’t ready yet because he
hadn’t that desire yet and he said, “Will come with me” because he knew that
argument wouldn’t do it so he said “Come with me.” They went down to a river and
he took this young man and before he knew what was happening he held the man’s
head under water, pushed it down under water and held it there until the man
started kicking and writhing in agony and then he let him come up. Then the man
spluttered like this in his desire for air then he said to him, “What did you want
most when I held your head under water?” “Air, air!!” He said, “When you want
God like that, come back to me. Then you’ll be ready to learn well.”

I’m not really recommending such a drastic [action] to you because even without
very much desire for meditation but enough faith to practice that you will reach the
point that it gives you so much delight, so much sense of fulfillment that you want it
more and more and more so at whatever point you are right now, if you meditate
as we saw earlier in the first class when I was talking with Danny?, it’s for everybody
and most people don’t have devotion but the thing is that devotion does grow.
You, however, have to help it to grow consciously.

It’s a great mistake that people make to think that by the intellect we can really
understand. An intellectual understanding is like armchair philosophy. An
intellectual understanding is like knowing that menu but not having the hunger to
eat. I’ve met a lot of intellectuals. In fact, I remember one discussion I had with
some students at Caltech in Pasadena on the spiritual principles and ideals and they
came up with all sorts of arguments against God, against the spiritual path, against
higher realities and so on. I had the blessing perhaps to be able to answer them
well. What did it do for them? I didn’t ever see any one of them, not one of them
later came and said, “Well, how can I learn to meditate?” They probably went home
and licked their wounds and thought of other arguments that they could come back
with.

See the intellect is never going to be satisfied and what you want for satisfaction is
to fill your heart with devotion to the supreme Lord. Why the supreme Lord? Why
not your own self? God is your own self but you are not that any more than the
wave can say it’s the ocean. The ocean has become all of the waves so when you
meditate, offer your heart’s feeling up to the Lord and we’ll talk a bit in the next
class about what we mean when we say the Lord, what we mean when we say God
and I’ll go into that at greater length but for now let’s chant together. Yogananda
used to say that chanting is half the battle and it would be good, in fact, if you could
learn some of these chants and you could write to us and find out, get a book from
us and learn them that way or some of our recordings but meanwhile sing this
chant with me, Door of My Heart.