Next: 11.2 Meditation and Experience Up: 11. What Meditation Is Previous: 11. What Meditation Is Contents Index
In all our acting and thinking we shuttle to and fro between two poles of our being - advancing without and retreating within, in both of which we become more and more alive, until we are sufficiently mature to unite the two.
Advancing without. I may look at a flower casually as I pass. I have not been properly aware of its qualities, but only that there is a flower there. But I could pause attentively, and say:
``That yellow color is really nice. How yellow it is! And the shape is beautiful, as the petal turns this way, then that way! And the scent is delicious! And the texture - it is heavenly!''
When I thus pause I bring more of myself to the flower. In this moment I am wedded to the flower. We live together, without reservations. I give myself to the flower, and I believe that in some unseen way the life in the flower is also enhanced. At all events I am enhanced, to a point of great happiness. Let me enjoy this moment of rich living. Let me not lose any of it, even by thinking, ``What can I do to preserve this moment?'' I need not fear to give myself, for I cannot give myself away.
In thus bringing more of myself to the flower, I am more awake and alive than I was.
But there is death - the moment dies, the pause dies, the flower dies.
Retreating within. Still, I do not die. In a quiet place in my house, and in a quieter place in my mind and heart, the moment lives for ever. I recall it. ``A pale simulacrum of the moment'', someone may say. Not so. Pale simulacra result from pale living. Anyhow, now pause, eyes closed, and take the memory of that flower within, into the depths of your thought. Say to yourself, ``Here I am, a mind. Alas, a flat, dull and seemingly unprofitable mind''. Perhaps; but not so, if you say, ``Come in, little flower, into my lonely mind''. And you meditate with the flower. And soon you will be worshipping the flower and saying, ``Wonderful flower, holy flower - forgive me, forgive me, my pride and contumely''. And the flower will forgive, and there will be love and ecstasy. That is meditation.
Our life is the same at both poles. By bringing out the whole of myself to meet the world my life is enhanced. By taking that realest experience within, it is still further enhanced. And just as the outer experience gives a vividness to be carried into the meditation, so does the meditation give new power to future experience. After the meditation I may meet the flower again, and it will be to me more a flower than it was before - in color, form, scent and everything. How I am made strong by this shuttle action of full living!
It is a shuttle action that will produce full cloth, for soon my meditation-mood will be present while I am advancing without and the object-experience will be clear and strong when I am retreating within.
The whole of life is of this kind and follows this process, but ordinarily it is carried on without much attention. The world seems designed for this purpose. We make things - and in so doing concentrate upon them; and then they react upon us. As we go through life, it is as though we were children making toys for ourselves, playing with them awhile, and then turning to something else. The toy is a limitation to the child, inasmuch as it engrosses the attention in the small field of the object and out of the wider and more diffuse field of indefinite attention. Even the body and the senses conduce to the same end, shutting out most of the world and admitting only a little of it, but that little is clear and strong, somewhat as in a camera a distant picture is formed upon the plate or film because the small hole in front admits only a limited quantity of light rays. I have often thought that if ordinary men could suddenly be endowed with super-physical senses, as they sometimes wish, they would not benefit thereby, but would be overwhelmed by the variety and volume of new experience. There would not be enrichment of mind, but only worse confusion than already is, as if in the round of daily action we were to see all the operations of the interior of the body. The consciousness of the average man is sufficiently diffused and indefinite; let him practice concentration so as to make it clearer and stronger, and then meditation so as to expand that clearer, stronger, consciousness over a larger field. Let him become master of himself in the small region where he is ruler, and then the time will be ripe for him to have a more expanded life.
Returning to meditation, notice that it is preceded always by concentration, that concentration produces a very wide-awake consciousness, consciousness at its best, and that in meditation this wide-awakeness is preserved and applied to full reflection upon a chosen subject. Meditation is thus the opposite of going to sleep. It is the very completion of thought upon that subject. Sleep, mind-wandering, day-dreaming, drift, dullness and disorder are all absent in meditation. 11.1
As, in a sense, all healing is self-healing, or from within, and the doctor can only prescribe the conditions in which that can be least obstructed, or, in a garden the gardener can only provide the soil, water, sunshine and protection needed by the plant for its growth from within, so it seems there is some higher life within us waiting to bring us to superior conscious living. Sometimes people think of such a life as above us, rather than within. This is not so intimate, but may do us no harm and produce no obstructive thought if we remember that it is only a simile - a mental idol. On these lines one may consider the following diagram:
The first jar represents the ordinary man; the three levels of the jar, the physical, emotional and mental sections of his personal constitution. Physically he is restless and distracted by everything that touches his senses; emotionally he has little self-control, and the most trifling event can destroy his balance for a considerable time; mentally, his life is almost without direction at all. The water pouring down from above represents the life within, which is dissipated through the innumerable holes in the vessel.
The second figure shows the man of meditation. By concentration he closes up the holes, and the water, pouring into him in ever-increasing volume, fills up the vessel constantly higher and higher; and the life within does creative work up to the level which it has reached. Do not, therefore, think of meditation as something to soothe you when in trouble, or as a means of escape from the world, but think of it as the way to rise to a higher platform of consciousness, so that, facing the world with that new consciousness, you will attain greater reality, and so proceed in a ``virtuous circle'' to the realization of an altogether fuller and richer life and consciousness. In common life, remember, one person's consciousness is a poor, dull thing, merely a flickering candle, while that of another is a strong and steady glow, taking its power from some universal electric fount; secondly, that the difference between these two is one of education through experience; thirdly, that we have reached a point where education can be quickly fulfilled by self-education through voluntary experience; and fourthly that we know not the heights of attainment except that from the words of Buddhas and Christs we know that there is something there. Perhaps even now some of us see as in a glass darkly what we shall afterwards - when we will have it so - see openly and face to face.
