Meditation — Going Beyond Thinking

In meditation, try to go beyond thinking. As long as thoughts enter the mind, you are functioning on the conscious level. When dreaming, you are in subconsciousness; then you are more aware in the astral body. When your consciousness withdraws still more deeply, into superconsciousness, then you are centered in bliss, in the spine. In that bliss-state you are aware in the causal body, the soul. — Paramhansa Yogananda

Meditation Solutions

Paramhansa Yogananda

Ananda’s approach to finding solutions is spiritual. Most people want to use psychology to solve problems on a personality level. The yogis come from the perception that personality is an illusion. Body, mind, and emotions are only a part of the dream. Too much psychology strengthens the ego.

A person identified with the spirit can overcome and transcend the ego. We don’t want to get enmeshed and identified with the body, personality, and ego. Only from attunement with and surrender to God’s will, and by an active self-offering to God, can we draw inspiration and then bring it into the practical level of existence.

Use meditation to elevate your level of consciousness and pave the way to an awakening. In this state you will have more:

1. Intuition and superconsciousness
2. A change of perspective on problems

Change of Perception

A critical part of this process is to guide you toward a shift and transformation of perception.

This shift in perception is a move away from ‘There is something outside of myself that will make me happy,’ to the perception of ‘happiness is within me; I need to change to experience happiness within myself.’

It is a shift from ‘I have to change something external to the Self’ to ‘I have to change myself,’ and recognizing that the mind is more central to who we are than the body.

How to Do It

• Meditate – Use meditation techniques to raise your consciousness before you deal with your problems. Then from the depth of your meditation draw inspiration and apply it to a specific area of difficulty in your life. When you can go beyond thinking and rise to the superconscious state, you have a broader view of reality and draw fresh solutions.
• After practicing the meditation techniques
  The period after you let go of the techniques and sit in the silence is the time when you are communing with God (when you have no desires, you do not want anything) — this time is very important and you will want to hold onto these moments as long as you can because, in this state of uplifted consciousness, you can draw and find solutions. You draw and find solutions, not through thinking, but by receiving them from higher consciousness.
• Uplift your mind
  Once your mind is uplifted, remain at that level and look for new connections that you may not have seen before.
• Attune to divine qualities
  One way to help you reach a higher state of consciousness is by attunement to one of God’s qualities. Choose one of the eight attributes of God and focus on it. The eight attributes are peace, calmness, love, joy, light sound, power, and wisdom.

The Obstacles

• Not meditating – Most people don’t meditate. They remain in the conscious realm. They worry about the problems and rotate them around in their minds over and over again. They become more and more nervous and restless. Instead of dwelling on problems, set them aside with the trust that a solution will come from directing our energy inward and upward.
• Focus on the body – In the meditation process, we do not want to go into the ‘medical world’ of depression and anxiety. In meditation, we are not dealing with problems. Instead, we are trying to raise our consciousness to superconsciousness, where all solutions reside. We are trying to deal with any issue from a spiritual perspective. We do not want to deal with a variety of symptoms but get to the root of things by attuning to the will of God.
• Focus on symptoms – Most people want to get rid of symptoms. When we tune into our higher consciousness, we change from the inside, and therefore external issues dissolve. Our goal is to change internally not externally, by raising our level of consciousness to a higher state of awareness.

You Are Everything, Beyond Everything

Yogananda offered a practice to help us go beyond thinking:

Forget the body, forget your house, forget the earth; forget the sun, moon, and stars; forget the sky, forget the bones, forget the flesh, thoughts and feelings, and forget all perceptions; only feel One Goal of perception – the goal of vastness that you feel within you.

Only one thing exists: “I am Infinite, I am Infinite, I am Infinite.”

 Silently affirm:

I am timeless, I am spaceless, I am beyond body, mind, thought, speech, and utterance; beyond all matter and mind. I am spaceless, I am Infinite, I am Infinite blessedness.
Meditate on these words and try to feel that you are everything, beyond everything.

– from the Praecepta Lessons, Volume 4, #94

Going Beyond Thinking

Guided Meditation — by Paramhansa Yogananda