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Questions and Answers on Meditation with Swami Kriyananda

Are there other ways besides meditation to break a lifelong habit of restlessness?

There are many ways. They are less direct, however, because their focus is not so much on peace itself as on creating those conditions which will allow one to feel peaceful. Peace is not merely a passive state, experienced when the turmoil around us has ceased.

People imagine they'll find peace in a peaceful setting-in that cottage by the sea to which they hope to retire; in that quiet life on a yacht. What they discover, if peace means to them a mere end to anxiety, is a life of steadily deepening ennui. True peace is never passive: It is dynamic. It emanates from a high level of awareness. It can be found only within, in the Self. Outward awareness, if over-stimulated, drains you of your peace; it can never give you peace.

It is good to prepare the ground for higher awareness, however, by simplifying one's life outwardly, and by reducing the quantity of your personal desires. It is important to hold an attitude of peacefulness. Without it, meditation will prove difficult for you.

At work, concentrate on doing one thing at a time. Finish one project before proceeding to the next one. Try not to "gobble" life. Move in an aura of calmness, and you'll find it easy to attain superconscious peace in meditation.

Is there anything you can suggest for helping me to become more aware of my thoughts as I meditate?

Answer: The important thing is not to become caught up in them. Don't be like the weak swimmer who gets swept away by a strong river current. Stand mentally on the bank, and watch the current flow past you. Be calmly observant of the flow, mentally detached from it.

You tell us to relax deeply. Yet at the same time you emphasize being dynamically aware. To be dynamically aware implies, to my mind, the use of will power. And to use will power implies effort. How can we resolve the conflict between "trying hard" and not, simultaneously, becoming tensed?

It is important to distinguish between tense effort (an attitude engendered by outward striving) and absorption in ever deeper relaxation. Will power is necessary, but the will must be exerted in the beginning toward deepening the enjoyment of relaxation.

Is there any way of increasing my awareness of an emotion, as a means of releasing it altogether?

You must take care not to affirm its reality, through your awareness of it. What you can do is diminish your sense of its reality by observing it with calm detachment. Don't affirm its reality for you, personally.

Then bring clarity to that observation by imagining the emotion in its extreme form. Visualize its harmful effect on yourself and on others. Visualize how it distorts your ability to understand anything clearly. See how it blurs your perception of broader realities. And notice how it contracts your attention into an attitude of intense self-involvement.

Observe how, by self-involvement, you become imprisoned in littleness. At the same time, remember to remain an observer, detached from ego-involvement, lest self-justification only reveal its reverse side: self-loathing and self-blame.

Once you see that emotion clearly with all its ramifications, you will find it easier to release it. In the release, offer it up to inner soul-freedom, at the point between the eyebrows.

Since the seat of concentration is at the point between the eyebrows, would it be helpful to knit the eyebrows gently while meditating?

Answer: Sometimes, perhaps, not as a continuous practice. Don't meditate with your body. Try to release your mind from body-consciousness.

Would it be good for me to keep my consciousness centered at the point between the eyebrows even when I'm not meditating, and during daily activity?

It would be indeed. Yogananda stated that spiritual progress can be greatly accelerated by keeping one's mind focused all the time at the Christ center.

Why is my mind so resistant? I find sometimes that my very resolution to do better is enough to inspire an in-house rebellion!

Habit can be a potent adversary, as I've pointed out before. The good thing is that habit can also become a powerful ally. Develop the right habits and they'll pull you safely through many a fierce storm.

It takes time, usually, to uproot bad habits-even as much time as five to eight years, in the case of deeply rooted ones. The way to uproot them is not so much by fighting them as by working all the harder at developing opposite good habits.

Restlessness, for example, is overcome by developing a taste for calmness. A tendency to talk excessively can be overcome by developing a liking for silence. Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, "You can't get rid of darkness by beating at it with a stick. Instead, turn on the light! The darkness will then vanish as though it had never been."

Is meditation "listening" to anything, specifically? Or is it simply a mental attitude of receptivity, for which listening is only a metaphor?

I use the word literally as well as metaphorically. Metaphorically, it describes, as you suggest, an attitude of openness and receptivity. Literally, however, there are actual sounds heard in deep meditation that emanate from the superconscious, and that help to raise the consciousness to ever higher levels.

There are also subtle lights seen in meditation, refined feelings experienced, and deep intuitions of wisdom, love, and joy. I go into these points at length in another book of mine, Superconsciousness-A Guide to Meditation.

You've mentioned the need for "tuning" oneself. How does meditation bring about attunement?

In clarifying the mind it also clarifies our conscious directions. We live so to speak in a world of mirrors. Each of us sees reflected back to him from the world the energies and attitudes that are first projected by himself. When we are angry, we see ample support everywhere for our anger. When we are peaceful, we see positive reinforcement in everything for our peacefulness.
Much of the disharmony we experience is due simply to the fact that our desires are in conflict with one another. Singlemindedness is a rare virtue. People may want success, but fear the effort necessary to succeed. They may want popularity, but fear to put themselves out to be liked; or they may want popularity, yet have an equally strong liking for solitude. They may want love, but fear to give love lest they be hurt in return. They may desire to travel, but fear the uncertainties involved in leaving home.

"The thwarting crosscurrents," as Paramhansa Yogananda called them, of egoic desire are so complex that it is hardly surprising how few people achieve more than fleeting glimpses of inner peace.

Daily meditation gradually smooths out the tangle. It brings the separate strands of desire into alignment with one another and enables them finally to focus on a single objective at a time-as a thread, after it has been brought to a point, is easily inserted through the eye of a needle.

What do you consider the best way for receiving inner guidance?

Hold your demand up to the superconscious at the point between the eyebrows, or pray to God at that point. Then "listen" for a responsive feeling in your heart (in the area of the spine, that is to say, opposite the heart). As your intuition develops, you will sense a positive answer there, or, alternately, a negative warning-a feeling of "better not."

If no answer comes, hold up a tentative answer to the Christ center, and ask again, "Is this all right?" A succession of tentative answers may finally produce the response you seek.
Oftentimes, answers will come only after you begin acting according to your best understanding. If no answer comes in meditation, therefore, do what seems sensible to you, but keep inwardly tuned to see if you don't at some point feel the guidance you've been seeking. You will feel it, in time, if you keep on trying.

A final caution: Don't consider any guidance to be final. Many times, inner guidance is for this moment only. Keep inwardly tuned to see what further guidance comes, as you proceed.

But is it actually good to imagine things? Isn't there a danger, in doing so, of deluding oneself? I wonder whether a risk in meditating isn't that we may invite false images to arise in the mind from the subconscious, and to masquerade as reality. Hallucinations, I suspect, come more readily when the mind is calm. Isn't that, indeed, an advantage of the very state you've cautioned us against: restlessness?

You have a point! One of the obstacles on the path of meditation is listed by Patanjali, who for thousands of years has been the recognized authority on yoga, as "false visions."
The problem, however, lies not with the imagination itself. The imaginative faculty can be a priceless aid toward spiritual attainment, as it is toward every kind of creativity. The problem, rather, lies with an undisciplined imagination.

The conscious mind is constantly influenced by the subconscious. It is even more influenced when the mind is restless. For although its attention may not be sharply focused enough to clothe its fears and longings in hallucinatory forms, there is no doubt that it conjures up constant reminders of ideas for which there is no reasonable basis. Those reminders rise to a conscious level from the subconscious. People imagine they detect malice in an innocuous statement, or the certainty of failure in a temporary setback. If the conscious mind is passively open to suggestions, it is easily influenced, and not always constructively so. If it drifts idly during meditation, as it may easily do when the will is not actively engaged, images may appear to the consciousness that are purely subjective, and not superconscious at all. This process is a sort of conscious dreaming. By developing the imagination actively, however, the conscious mind is kept more dynamically aware. Thus, control is gained over the suggestive power of the subconscious mind.

You've discussed how long to meditate on a daily basis. How long will it take me to reach the goals of meditation-to attain superconscious awareness, for instance, or to find God?

The time varies with the individual, of course. If a nail is partly embedded in a board, can you say how long it will take to extract it? It depends on the length of the embedded portion, on how tightly set it is, and on the amount of force you apply to pull the nail.
How long, then, does it take to achieve the goals of meditation? It depends on the number and fixity of the bad habits that are buried in the subconscious, which work against your present meditative efforts. It depends on how fervently you apply yourself.

Finally, it depends on the grace of God. But grace is not whimsical. It is poured into that bowl which has been made clean. "Blessed are the pure in heart," Jesus said, "for they shall know God."

There is another important point to consider: Time, in the last analysis, is a delusion. If the spiritual path requires time, it is partly because of our belief, born of past conditioning, that time is a reality to be reckoned with. Yet the truth we seek lies beyond time, in eternity. If we could only banish the delusion of time from our minds, our spiritual journey might be ended even now! The path is a process of realizing-of remembering -that which we are already. Our soul's perfection can never be lost. We have hypnotized ourselves, merely, with the thought of limitation. We have told ourselves, falsely, that our limitations define us as we are.

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