Blessed spiritual friends, this evening I have a very nice topic for you and the

topic is meditation. Meditation for what? The question comes in our minds. There
are those people who feel and they have been proclaiming that meditation is a way
to self realization and for fusion of individual awareness with the highest
awareness. But in my humble opinion I feel that this aim for meditation is to high
and I think that this is an outcome of the psychological error in human minds.
Meditation is for self-realization but I think very few people can teach, and very
few people can learn and much less can practice. Until the mind is sound and
healthy the subliminal inhibitions, the errors of personality are completely
remedied, it is not at all advisable for one to take to the practices for the
expansion of Cosmic Consciousness. Otherwise it tends to what I should call self
hypnotism. When I discuss this evening about Yoga it is in relation to individual
welfare the human welfare. I do not know anything about the Divine Awareness nor do
I care for it and if at all I do, not at least in your midst. The spiritual
awareness may be the Sumum Bonum of life but it is too early for us to think
because we are not keeping healthy, our minds are ill, we art suffering from
chronic illness and only the physical diseases but also the mental. There are
people in our unfortunate world who are suffering from physical maladies but at tie
same time there are people in our so called fortunate world, our so called
prosperous and advanced world who are also suffering from chronic mental illness
about which they are as ignorant as the people of the poor countries are. We are
not aware, what are the psychological errors, what are the deep rooted tensions and
afflictions which are guiding our destiny and which are guiding what we call human
behaviour. The individual affliction, the tortures and the pains, subliminal pains
that are in our life, are guiding the destiny of the world. The restlessness
throughout the world is an outcome of the sickness in man's mind. In order to cure
this sickness there should be some way. In order to develop a healthy environment
in the society and community and family and also is the mind of the individual,
there should be some method. Religions have failed, the economic programs have also
failed to give peace to mankind and to solve the problems of the individual, the
community and the society because the problem starts with the individual and the
problems can be dissolved with the individual. Individual is the nucleus of most of
the problems that are before us. It is with this background that I have for you
meditation.

In case you agree that meditation is a science of mind and not a science of God. If
you agree that meditation is a system for the reorientation of human personality as
a whole and not a met physics. And if you agree that meditation is a system through
which we can root out the individual plan, the unseen afflictions; the tensions
that are around us, in muscular body, mental body and emotional body then let us go
ahead with the subject. You know very well that our behaviour, our thinking, our
action and our reactions are guided by the soul, by the consciousness. And this
consciousness is not pure, it works in association with atmosphere, environment,
conditions and so on, as a result top of that, tensions pile up in the different
spheres of our personality and we do not know and as a result of that we suffer
from insomnia, inhibitions, juvenile delinquencies, sexual anarchies, hatred,
restlessness, anxiety, worry and what not, even amidst the sexes on account of
coronary thrombosis. And then we look for tranquility and then we look for peace
but the peace does not come from outside and the tranquility can not be introduced,
it is unfoldment but we do not know the real unfoldment. Meditation is a system by
which we are able to get rid of the tensions and at the same time we are able to
analyse the deep root psychological error by different processes. I am so sorry to
tell you, after surveying the movement of meditation throughout the world, that
people do not know what meditation is for the human life. People think that the
concentration of mind on a particular point is meditation, it is not. People feel
that to develop the awareness inward it is meditation, it is not that. Classically
and scientifically meditation is classified into two parts, and meditation has got
everything to do with consciousness, the consciousness that is empirical and the
consciousness that is internal, the consciousness that perceives the world and the
consciousness that is Unable to perceive world. This consciousness in man is the
subject of meditation. And if the meditation is to be achieved, the first process
in meditation is relaxation and remember the word, meditation begins with
relaxation again is not the relaxation which we think that to lie down quietly,
close your eyes and feel that you are becoming lighter and happier and so on, not
this method of auto-suggestions, this is the hypnotic method. Find out the method
of Yoga and that is called relaxation. In Yoga a process of withdrawal is the
process of relaxation. What Patanjali calls Pratyahara or withdrawal of external
consciousness or an act of withdrawal of external consciousness or an act of
disassociation of your consciousness from the objects outside that is relaxation
but then this relaxation can not be complete unless you have the relaxation in the
system. Now let us discuss before you proceed with the topic relaxation. What to
you mean by tensions? They are physical and they are mental and at the same time
they are emotional. Faulty secretions in the endocrinal system they can cause
tensions, not necessarily the psychological problems of your society and family,
not necessarily the economic pressure, not necessarily the emotional-adjustment in
your family, there can be nervous disorders, there can be problems in your body on
account of faulty endocrinal systems and those faulty endocrinal secretions caused
by faulty living, faulty breathing and so on and therefore in the scheme of Yoga
first comes Asanas and Pranayama. In order to get rid of the muscular, the physical
tension, to eliminate the toxins from your body and at the same time to neutralize
the faulty secretions that take place, for instance hypo-thyroids or hyper-
thyroids, or over-secretion of the pituitary or deficiency in the pancreatic gland
all these mean a great influence on our behaviour, on our thinking. As such this
muscular tension which causes a lot of trouble and which bars the experience of
peace in our day to day life can be greatly solved by the practice of Asanas and
Pranayama and Hath Yoga. Here again people think that Asanas, and Pranayama the
yogic exercises are just exercises, they are not exercises and they should not be
practiced as exercises and they should be practiced with great care. The scientific
investigations that have been carried out in different parts of the world, in
Russia, in Poland, in India, in France and also in Germany have proved that during
the practice of Asanas the whole endocrinal system is greatly influenced and as a
result of that the toxins are eliminated, the energy blocks are made clear and so
the practice of Asanas and pranayama removes muscular tensions, then go later on to
mental tensions and these mental tensions are the greatest tensions which we have
to take into consideration. Over thinking, wrong thinking and vicious thinking
which we have got to do in our day to day life that causes these mental tensions
and therefore, for these mental tendons is the practice of relaxation in which we
withdraw our consciousness and when the withdrawal of consciousness takes place
when the negation of consciousness has taken place, then starts next what we call,
expansion of consciousness So the whole thing is divided into two, negation and
expansion.

In the process of negation, you have different techniques are those techniques
which with draw or which calm down the tensions created by internal functional
deficiencies and all that is done during the practice of relaxation. So in these
practices of relaxation we have some of the most important techniques and those
techniques should be practiced in a way about which we shall have the classes from
tomorrow on and I will just introduce how the meditation has to be practiced. When
we practice meditation or when we start the practice of relaxation first of all we
must have a method and we must have a technique. Every technique is not useful for
everybody but at the same time there are practices which can be taken up without
any difficulty, without any risk. Easiest one is what we know as Ajapa Japa.
spontaneous awareness and in this spontaneous awareness you concentrate on the
breath and when you concentrate on the breath you try to formulate an ascending
process then the consciousness is diminished, the area of experience is eliminated,
the consciousness functions in a limited area and thereafter you start with a
symbol. You have an image, you have a centre and you try to develop a clear-cut
psychic, internal, non-sensuous and mental awareness of that symbol and that symbol
must become clear to you. You should be able to see it consciously because it is
necessary in order to effect a complete relaxation to be able to see your
unconscious it is not enough, if you are able to visualize your subconscious mind.
Yoga believes and in meditation it is a science that you should be able to see your
conscious mind, you should be able to see your subconscious mind, and you should be
able to unconscious mind, which is very difficult and the moment the experience the
moment the perception of unconscious personality takes place, complete relaxation
comes to man and therefore you will find there are moment in an individuals life
that during deep sleep he becomes aware of unconscious and after that he feels that
he was completely relaxed. So in the technique of Yoga it is believed that when the
consciousness is detached from consciousness, from subconscious and also from
unconscious and when your individual awareness functions independent of these three
dimensions of consciousness relaxation takes place and meditation begins.
Meditation can never begin before relaxation and the greatest thing and the most
difficult thing is relaxation. You may think that meditation is difficult, no it is
not. Meditation is accomplished spontaneously. Meditation comes to you and it does
not take time but in order to develop meditation it is necessary that the whole
process of relaxation has got to be gone through. In Yoga they call it Pratyahara
and Dharana. Pratyahara means withdrawal of consciousness and Dharana means
conception of consciousness in a particular way. You see your consciousness, you
see your awareness but it is internal perception-It may be a round stone, it may be
a triangle. It may be a triangle, it may be a flower, it may be anything but you
should be able to see and that which you see inside is not imagination, that which
you see inside is a form of your consciousness. If you see a flower inside you see
your own consciousness in the pattern of a flower. If you see a triangle, you do
not see a triangle as in imagination it is your consciousness which you perceive in
the from of a triangle and the triangle which you see inside is made up of your
consciousness through which you are understanding me it is the same consciousness
through which I am able to speak to you something on Yoga. And it is the same
consciousness through which you know right. It is the same consciousness through
your intelligence or intellect functions. It is the same consciousness which
manifests in the day life in the from of memory principle and it is the same
consciousness through which you understand hatred and through which you understand
love