How to know that one is meditating rightly?
Questioner (Q): How does one know that she is meditating rightly? Secondly, I know that one should not be dependent on others and one's happiness should always come from within. Yet, my emotions erupt and I react due to the actions of the other person. So, how to stay detached from everything and stay unshaken in any situation?
Acharya Prashant (AP): (referring to the first question) Life is the only and ultimate proof. If your meditation is right then your life will be right. And if your life is right then rest assured that knowingly, unknowingly, effortfully, effortlessly, you are meditating right.
Meditation the event, mediation the process is a means. It is meant to give you a glimpse of what freedom is like. That glimpse has to then be nurtured. One has to fall in love with that glimpse. One has to say that one loves it so much that it is needed in all hours of life. If that which comes to you in meditation does not remain with you continuously and throughout, then meditation is not only not successful but also dangerously counter-productive.
We will have to understand that the peace experienced during a process of meditation is dualistic peace. Because you remain stressed and restless and filled up with unexpressed energy. So, when a process of meditation, a method of meditation gives you relief from all that which is bothering you then you feel great. That relief, that apparent peace, that dualistic peace is experienced only because one is firstly full of stress. That is why there are several methods of meditation that firstly require you to be full of stress. They take you to a peak of stress and from there they release you. So a calming effect, a soothing peace is experienced. What is the difference between non-dual peace and dualistic peace? Non-dual peace has no opposite, non-dual peace does not come after and because of stress and tension. Non-dual peace does not leave you, you cannot experience it come and go. Dualistic peace is dependent on the experience of its opposite. Therefore, it is better called as relief rather than peace. So the two are greatly different.
However, there is one commonality among them and that is a useful commonality. What is the commonality? In both, the experience of suffering disappears. Though the mechanism and dimension of the disappearance of suffering is vastly different in non-dual peace compared to dualistic peace. But they both share one thing. Suffering disappears. In non-dual peace, there is a permanent relief from suffering which means now you are at a point where you would never be affected by suffering. Now you are at a point where there is complete security against suffering, complete and lasting. Whereas in dualistic peace, the peace is fragile. It comes as a great and welcome festivity. And sooner than later, it deserts you as well. So then what are the methods of meditation meant to do?
Dualistic peace is easier to be brought about. You only need to be greatly stressed and after that, you will experience calmness. You don’t have to pay a great price. You don’t have to transform your life. You don’t have to drop the ego. You don’t need to be a great observer of the self. You don’t even need to have a burning desire for liberation. You just need to be stressed out and then you'll experience some welcome relief. A method has to be devised to temporarily bring down your level of anxiety. Just temporarily and greatly.
So, dualistic peace is a quick and economical introduction to freedom from suffering. Without paying the price, you are getting a glimpse. The glimpse is not quite the real thing. Still, it is a useful pointer. The peace that one experiences in a process of meditation, in a method of meditation is not real peace. But it is still very useful. Why is it useful? Because it can stoke your hunger. Because it can fuel your desire. Desire for? Liberation. You say, "Now that I have a bit of taste, I am feeling much more hungry to get the whole meal." That is the utility of methods of meditation. I am telling you both the utility and the limitations. The limitation is what they give you is not quite the real thing. What you get from meditation is fleeting and dualistic peace. So that’s the limitation.
One’s experiences during a process of meditation should not be taken extremely seriously.
Those experiences, I repeat, are useful as pointers but they should not be given the status of the real thing. So don't take them too seriously. People become crazy after their experiences in this or that method of meditation. They get deluded, they start feeling as if Truth itself descends to them in their moments of meditation. It is not so. But still, I am saying all methods of meditations have their utility, and what is the utility? That they serve as teasers. They come and tempt you. Now, somebody might be tempting you, somebody might be trying to attract you or seduce you but you too must have a certain reciprocal feeling. Otherwise, all invitations will go to waste. You see there is a tradition to send sweets along with the invitation to a wedding. So you have been invited to a grand feast. The invitation card is there and the invitation card has reached you with a few sweets, and there are just too many people in this world who say, "What is the need to go to the party? The sweets have already been received." The sweets are not there to satisfy your hunger. They are there to whet your appetite so that you can have more.
But the method will not work on someone who says, "Fine! Sweets have been received. Why go to the party now?" What the fellow does not realize is that the party is far grander. There is much more available there, offered there. If one has become too accustomed to having just a little bit in life. If one has always received only a little, only the limited then a few sweets are enough to satisfy him. Such a mind can not enter non-dual peace because, first of all, such a mind does not even want non-dual peace. Look at the tragedy. The sweets were sent to lure you, they were sent to tempt you and instead, you used the sweets as a sweet ploy to avoid the party, and that is why sometimes I speak quite harshly against methods of meditation. Because a very large number of people are using the methods of meditation to avoid real meditativeness. They are using dualistic peace to stay away from real peace. Such a blunder is very commonly happening.
Now you are asking how you can judge whether your meditation is right. I will give you a very honest, though a very brutal pointer. What to do, Honesty is brutal to most people. That which you are in your moment of meditation, if you remain that throughout the day, then your meditation is right. Whereas if after the hour of mediation, your state changes, then your meditation is false. As long as mediation is an activity distinct from your daily life, from your ordinary life, your mediation is false. If your meditation takes you away to a glorious land and then brings you back to your usual, ordinary circumstances then your meditation is false. So when is meditation true?
Meditation is true when you can feel no difference between meditation and life.
That’s the test. You should be able to see no difference between mediation and life. But quite the contrary happens. I have seen people crazily running after mediation, and why do they want meditation? Because there is a great difference between the hour of meditation and the rest of their life. So to escape the ordinariness and the suffering and the boredom of their day-to-day lives, they then run towards meditation. Don’t get me wrong but it's a bit like a drug addiction. People are even prepared to pay big sums to be led into specific methods of meditation. If one develops a habit towards a particular method then he'll be prepared to pay with money and this and that and say, "Please may I get to do that? How soon can we get to do that?" You must have come across such people. What does this hunger for a particular method show? This hunger for a particular method shows that hunger for total meditativeness is not there. One is satisfied with the sweets. The sweets have come with the invitation but one is so happy with the sweets that one has rejected the invitation. The sweets have been accepted, the invitation has been rejected, how intelligent is that? And again and again one is asking just for sweets. The party is being avoided.
Meditativeness does not give you a high. Real meditativeness never gives you any special experience worth documenting. You will never be able to say, "I am feeling blissful due to meditation." Please remember that experiences are all dualistic.
To experience something you must first be in its opposite state.
It’s when the body is really hot that you most enjoy the blast of the air conditioner. Don’t you? Water is felt the most when it’s either very hot compared to your body temperature or very cold compared to your body temperature. Water at exactly the body temperature is hardly experienced. And not experienced at all if you are not thirsty at all. It is the opposite state that experiences a state. Do you get this? Hot experiences cold. Restlessness experiences rest. In real non-dualistic meditativeness, there is no swinging between extremes. Hence, there is no noteworthy experience.
Now that makes real meditativeness immensely invaluable and also absolutely non-marketable. Of immense value, but not marketable at all. Why? Because it cannot be experienced. If it cannot be experienced what are you selling? It is invaluable because it is your natural state. It is invaluable because it gives life what life has been thirsty for. It is invaluable because it is the highest that you can be. But at the same time, it cannot be marketed because it is not a thing. It cannot be marketed because it is nothing specific. It cannot be marketed because its results cannot be shown. It cannot be marketed because it does not give you a high. It does not give you that orgasmic bliss. Are you getting it?
So are you doing meditation, right? That's your question. I turn the question back upon you. Is your meditation something specific? Is your meditation something felt? Is your meditation something that you can put your finger on? Then your meditation is false. Meditativeness is throughout, continuous, uninterruptible. Life goes on and goes around in its usual circles, and at the center there is you. The meditator, the pure meditativeness. Meditation without the meditator. And things are just happening.
You are moving. You have not forced yourself to create extraordinary situations for the sake of meditation. You are not saying that you need music for meditation. You are not saying that you need a particular pose or asana , or place for meditation. You are not saying that you need to halt your regular activity for the sake of meditation. The usual affairs of life are going on and inside the cave sits the eternally meditating yogi. Outside the cave, there are the jungles and the cities and the rush of life. In the middle of the jungle is the cave and within the cave is the meditativeness that no movement can touch, or disturb, or experience.
Methods of meditation are useful just as introductions, as invitations. Do not get wedded to a wedding invitation. Are you getting it?
Q: If someone is meditating and his mind is not free from thoughts then what one should do to free his mind from thoughts?
AP: Is your mind free of thoughts in your usual life? Why are you talking only of the moments when you are engaged in a special process? That is why, I repeat, I sometimes condemn “methods” of meditation, because they prevent you from looking at your usual life. You get so focused on the method, that you forget what you are doing otherwise and elsewhere. You are quoting a problem regarding your experiences in the meditation time. But why are you forgetting your problems outside of meditation time? It's the same mind. Is it not?
When you are not living rightly, how do you expect your meditation to be perfect? You cannot be a tendency-driven, influence-driven, thought-driven individual 23 hours of the day, and then ask me, "Why do thoughts interfere when I am trying to meditate?" Because 23 hours of the day you are just practicing thoughts and tendencies. So how can they suddenly disappear in the one hour of the meditation exercise? The exercise is bound to fail.
You see, yesterday I was saying spirituality is about reducing your burden, reducing your load, and letting the mind be lighter. We said the surreal traveler, the innocent traveler travels light. Dropping the baggage is important. I asked my gym trainer, “How does one lose weight?” He said, "It’s 75% diet and 25% exercise." By exercising a lot you cannot outdo the effects of what you have been eating throughout the day. You can't out-exercise a bad diet and I am saying you can’t out-meditate a bad life. How much time does one spend in the gym? 1 hr at the most. 23 hours you are just gorging food in this endless cave and then one hour you go and say, "I'll out exercise all the rubbish I’ve taken in." It is not going to happen. Similarly, if you have been living badly and you think that you'll be able to meditate and compensate for the wrong choices, the wrong company, the wrong food, the wrong intake, the wrong influences then you are not going to succeed. Remember it’s 75% diet. You have to ask yourself, "What am I allowing in?" That’s what diet is, right? "What am I allowing in my life?"
The gym trainer talks of the diet that you take in through the mouth. The teacher of meditation must talk of the diet that you take in through the senses. What is it that you are looking at? What is it that you are thinking about? What is it that you are listening to? Whose company are you keeping? That’s 75% of it. And that is what you have to mostly keep in mind. "Why am I living? Whose face am I seeing day and night? How liberated are the ones I live with?"
If the ones you live with are themselves prisoners, how are you going to move towards liberation?
Is that going to happen? If you live with foodies it is going to be tremendously difficult to diet. It‘s not impossible, but it’s going to be very very difficult. The entire house is full of food of all the titillating varieties and you’re saying that you are on a diet. Now try that. Try that. So you tell me how you’re living your life. Instead, you are asking me, "What is the absolutely correct yoga posture for meditation?" That question is not useful, not relevant. It becomes relevant only after the fundamentals have been taken care of. You get this?
Q: Acharya Ji, meditation also talks about raising the level of consciousness. How is that related to peace?
AP: What is consciousness? That which goes around your head is consciousness. Simple! That which you keep experiencing, that which you keep thinking of, that which comes and goes. Rises and falls. That which is remembered and forgotten. All that is consciousness. In other words, the ocean of the mind with all its waves and depths is consciousness. So you remembered somebody, this is an act in consciousness. You forgot somebody that too is an act in consciousness. You think, you analyze, you visualize, you imagine— all that is consciousness. Now tell me, what is meant by a lowly consciousness and high consciousness? What is meant by pure and impure consciousness? Tell me, please. Okay, consciousness always has two. Which two?
Q: Observer and the observed object.
AP: And who is the observer? The one that you take yourself to be. So consciousness always has two. Our consciousness is always dualistic. In all your thoughts, you are present. Are you not?
Q: Yes.
AP: You are the thinker. Consciousness always has two and out of these two, you are always the subject. The second one is the object. Right? Now of these two which one is central? The subject. Why? Because the object changes according to the subject. So suppose in the consciousness of five of you, this curtain is present. Apparently, the same object is present in the consciousness of five people but not all five will be perceiving it in the same way. Why? Because the subjects are different. So consciousness is two— the subject and the object. You are the subject and the object too depends on the...
Q: Subject.
AP: So fundamentally, the quality of consciousness is the quality of the subject. We are trying to discover what is pure or high consciousness. So the quality of the consciousness is the quality of the ‘I’, the subject that you are. Right? Now this ‘I’ could either be the images about 'I' that one carries. It could be a manufactured 'I', a cultured 'I', a cultivated 'I', a social 'I', a biological 'I', a historical 'I', an influenced 'I', or it could be somebody else. Who that ‘I’ is, decides the quality of consciousness.
If your 'I' has been manufactured over time, if your 'I' is the result of a thousand influences and therefore a thousand contaminations, then your 'I' will be called an impure 'I'. A lot of things have become mixed in the 'I'. So, the 'I' is now fit to be called impure. So many things have become identified with 'I', one with 'I', conflated with the 'I'. That the real ‘I’ is nowhere to be seen. That’s an impure consciousness.
The thinker does not know who is thinking and therefore thoughts themselves are hazy and confused.
That’s impure consciousness. The looker does not know who is looking. And therefore whatever 'he' looks at is 'blurred'. He does not get to know what the world really is. He just keeps projecting the world. And remember the tendency to project increases as the contamination increases. The more contaminated your mind, your consciousness is, the more you will be prone to project. You understand projection, not seeing what is, rather visualizing it, imagining it, projecting it.
Q: Same as illusive.
AP: What does meditation have to do with the elevation of consciousness? An impure consciousness results in a lot of restlessness. Impurity of consciousness, identification of ‘I’ with a thousand things, and restlessness— these go hand in hand. Why does the ‘I’ become restless when the ‘I’ is impure? It’s easy to understand. If the ‘I’ is composed of influences from the world then the 'I' remains insecure. Because ‘I’ is the fundamental unit. ‘I’ is who you are. And you want to exist. Existence is your nature. You don’t just want to disappear. But you the ‘I’ is coming from the world and the world is always rising, falling, appearing, and disappearing. So now you sense danger. What is the danger? That you too will disappear along with the world.
Please understand. If the ‘I’ is not independent then the ‘I’ is threatened. If the ‘I’ is independent then nothing in the world can harm it, defeat it or vanish it. But if, let’s say, your ‘I’ depends on this wall (pointing to the wall beside him). ‘I’ depends on the wall— that’s impure consciousness. Right? ‘I’ is now dependent on something. And you see that the wall is now being harmed. What happens to the 'I'? Then ‘I’ feel as if it is being harmed. Every blow to the wall is a blow to the ‘I’. The ‘I’ becomes restless.
So, impure consciousness and restlessness go together. Conversely, peace and pure consciousness go together. The more peaceful you are, the more centered you are in yourself and the less dependent you are. Peace and freedom are therefore synonymous.
Dependence on something is restlessness.
Because that thing is a worldly thing and nothing in the world has permanence. So dependence leads to restlessness, therefore peace and independence go together. Dependence is restlessness, so independence is rest—which is peace. Is that clear? Now, if a process of meditation is giving you a glimpse of peace—Restfulness, then it is also giving you independence— freedom. Because we said peace and independence go together, the moment you are peaceful you are also independent and to be independent is to be in an elevated state of consciousness.
Q: Do meditation and samadhi go hand-to-hand?
AP: Samadhi just means peace. Samadhi is peace.
The second part of the question is, how to stay detached from everything and stay unshaken in any situation caused by any individual?
You need to probe the relationship between you and the world. You and all individuals, you and any particular individual. That relationship needs to be investigated. If you are dependent on someone you will not be able to remain unshaken. You cannot ask for both. You cannot ask for comforts that come with dependency and peace that comes with independence. You have to decide what it is that you really love. That love is the central thing. This morning itself I read;
yoga kuyog, gyan agyaanu, jahan nahin ram prem pradhunu.
Without Love yoga is kuyog , and gyan is agyaan. You have to decide what is that you really love. Without Love for freedom, all your meditation exercises will just remain antiques and acrobatics. You are jumping around shouting this and that. It is love that turns an activity of meditation into meditativeness. Love! Yoga Kuyog, gyan agyaanu, jahan nahin ram prem pradhnu. If you don’t have love for the real thing then keep trying your “Yoga” it’s not going to work. It is only going to sink you further. And if you don’t have love for real things then keep filling yourself with knowledge, keep reading as many books as possible, keep listening to sermons, you aren’t reaching anywhere. Is your being full of love? That’s the question to ask. Are you prepared to leave, sacrifice, everything for love? That’s what you must answer.
