Meditation
Introduction to Meditation
“The greatest effect of meditation is achieved when it is exercised daily and then preferably at the same time. It should be short (five minutes are enough) and be interrupted as soon as concentration cannot be kept anymore and thoughts start wandering.”
It exists quite disparate and thus vague notions of what meditation is. The word “meditation” has come to be used in an all too restricted sense, as if it denoted some particular kind of mystic concentration. There are many kinds of meditation (the power of “collecting one’s thoughts”), however. Meditation includes planning, consistent follow-up of chosen goals, many kinds of authorship, etc.
Meditation is reflective analysis of a certain content of thought: the facts, factors, elements of thought we need in order to investigate, clarify, acquire insight and understanding. It is a stage in a continuous process of concentration that goes on until the idea sought has been obtained. The choice of object indicates the person’s interests and level of development.
Meditation is quite simply methodical and systematic reflection. The mental work by which the individual acquires his own conception of various things can be included here. Without meditation we learn little or nothing. Through meditation we assimilate what life can teach us and we gather into our consciousness materials to work up later in the mental world.
The first step of meditation, concentration, is the “fixing of attention”, like when you follow the movement of the second-hand on the clock face. It is important that the entire process occurs without tension (without effects on nerves, respiration, circulation).
The entire process (concentration–meditation–contemplation–illumination) can most simply be described as an attempt to solve a given problem, in which “the equation is simplified” and eventually all inessential elements are discarded, until the “idea” (the intuition) provides the solution.
It is essential that the mental activity is self-initiated. In order to avoid occupying their attention with individual work, people resort to all manner of distractions, reading of the simplest kind, for instance. It is by thinking ourselves that we learn how to think. Most people let others think for them, and then they just have to follow suit. Many people find it valuable to keep a diary. If it contains thoughts and reflections on personal experiences they have had during the day, it can serve as a guide for their meditations.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life 1, Meditation, www.laurency.com
The Purposes of Meditation
“One purpose, among others, of mental meditation and causal (BED, Causal consciousness; Activation of consciousness, systematic) contemplation is to bringdown ideas into the brain so that they daily vitalize it and thereby automatically do their work.”
The prime function of meditation is to teach us the right use of our attention in physical as well as emotional and mental respects.
Those initiated in a knowledge order regarded meditation as a method of achieving contact with higher kinds of consciousness. The mystics tried to get into contact with god (actually a contact between 48:2 and 46:7). The mentalist tried to establish contact between the mental and the causal.
The prime purpose of meditation is to develop necessary qualities: by daily attention to those you wish to acquire, usually opposites of undesirable qualities still existing. Right meditation forms an emotional-mental complex with stored-up energy, which will automatically heighten the vibrations to the highest attainable spheres and will act as a regulator of feeling and thinking during a certain time, as a rule for 24 hours at the most. That is the reason why daily meditation is necessary if the individual will see any results.
It is not enough to desire good qualities. You must inculcate them, meditate on them every day and preferably at the same time every day. Daily repetition in the waking consciousness provides the subconscious with such reality ideas as eventually form complexes in the subconscious that enhance the quality of our lives. These are complexes which express in such qualities that the individual spontaneously takes the right attitude in all circumstances: thinks right, feels right, acts right.
In meditation you assimilate a certain view or clear away fictions. By thinking you also acquire new feelings.
By meditation the esoteric student assimilates the esoteric mental system and the feelings of the attractive tendency, which bring about a reappraisal of values and an ideal attitude to life.
By meditation man solves his problems, his latent problems, his future problems. Through meditation we supply the subconscious with the material we need to solve the problems. Through meditation we incorporate with our consciousness the experiences we have had. By thinking (being active in our mental envelope) we prepare the solution of problems, which otherwise would not be solved or the solutions of which would take years to reach down into the brain.
Meditation, if done correctly, should bring about three results. It should entail the dissipation of illusion by the correct apprehension of the idea. It should bring about a better understanding of our relations to other people. It should lead to action.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, Meditation, www.laurency.com
Meditation Is Production of Energy
”Meditation consists in a series of consciousness expressions, and all such ones have an energy effect. This fact is overlooked by the ignorant who have no idea of what way energies take and how they work.”
Most people see in meditation just an expression of consciousness, being unaware of the fact that it is at the same time production of energy. This energy is weak in lower molecular kinds. But in mental matter the effect of dynamis increases and influences also the lower envelopes with inevitable effects.
Prayer is an expression of emotional consciousness and, like all other kinds of consciousness expression, it is at the same time an expression of energy with an inevitable effect. Meditation deals with energies and aims at realization.
The esoterician understands the meaning of the expression, “energy follows thought” (the consciousness expression). That energy vitalizes centres and thereby the consciousness content, which also makes increasingly one-pointed concentration possible and thus the very process without any strain whatever.
The more intensively (with concentrated attention) meditation is done, the greater is the store of energy resulting from it.
Vibrations coming from without are assimilated by the individual’s envelopes and attract this attention. The attention is drawn now upwards, now downwards, so that the “quality” of emotions and thoughts is constantly changing and the level of consciousness is rising or falling. As a rule, an extra effort is required to keep attention fixed at the highest level, so that only those who have especially cultivated the faculty of concentration are able to do so. Add to this the fact that the brain records impressions differently when the man feels fit or tired. This, too, conduces to making the individual appear a complicated being to other people and more or less “incomprehensible”.
The higher the sphere reached through meditation, the fainter are the coarser vibrations and the stronger are the finer (“nobler, more rational”) ones, the less influenced they are by the strong mass vibrations which are always low, the easier it is to keep consciousness on a higher level the next few hours.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, Meditation, www.laurency.com
The Activation of Mental Consciousness
”In the actual process, concentration means the unceasing attention of the self; meditation, the direction of mental consciousness to the superconscious; and contemplation, that state in which the esoterician achieves a conscious contact with Augoeides.”
Without meditation consciousness develops so slowly that hardly any change is noticeable, and there will be no purposiveness in this connection. Meditation rouses mental activity and determines its automatic direction. Then man becomes what he thinks. By his mental activity man sets forces in motion that influence the circumstances of his life, though mankind is of course still very far from this insight. Without understanding how, man can benefit or harm himself, “walk ways prepared”, just by thinking.
Without meditation, which at the same time is mental gymnastics, there will be no plasticity of thought, but you will go on moving in the same mental tracks, until you have lost the ability to think anything new. A useful exercise when transiting to a new life period (at 28, 35, 42, etc. years) is to examine the results you have achieved, how your views (on reality or on life) have changed. That also gives an opportunity to subject the bases on which you have built your ideas to a new scrutiny.
Prayer is emotional meditation, in contradistinction to the meditation of mental consciousness. Both kinds of consciousness need to be activated: emotional attraction and mental analytic, relativizing, and synthesizing thought.
The lowest kind of mental consciousness, inference thinking (47:7), is the simplest kind of inference from ground to consequence. Generally, this mental activity must be forced on people from without through patient education and propaganda. The mental activity of philosophers and scientists belongs to principle thinking (47:6) and has already reached a high degree of activity, which seldom is at rest but is working incessantly with its content of conceptions in constantly new “categories”, temporary syntheses. Of course mental activity increases even more at the stage of humanity, where perspective (47:5) and system (47:4) thinking is added.
Anyone who wishes to acquire causal consciousness, however, must learn to dominate his mental activity, because its restlessness makes it impossible for the causal ideas to be apprehended. The intuition, which is the ability to discover the ideas, strikes like lightning when the individual calmly contemplates his system and becomes receptive. His mental activity, which till then has been active, instead becomes passive in a state of expectant tension.
If you have not reached the highest mental activity (47:4), then you can when meditating impress all the factors you command in the problem you are trying to solve. This done you can relax and proceed to other tasks. Some fine day you will get the solution for nothing.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, Meditation, www.laurency.com
Subjects of Meditation
”The best meditation is to read something daily in a book of esoteric knowledge and reflect on every sentence. As a rule you make a new discovery every time if you put the sentence into the context where it belongs.”
What subjects of meditation an individual chooses depends partly on his knowledge of reality and of the meaning of life, partly on his level of development.
Useful subjects of meditation are to learn how to distinguish between the different kinds of consciousness, learn how to be independent of, indifferent to, what is physical, emotional, and mental; divinely indifferent to whatever happens to oneself. Complexes lose their power to affect or alarm, fear (that serious vice) disappears. You become frank, glad, and free, and thereby receptive to the vibrations of unity that redeem everything.
Always useful exercises include: to tell main issues from side issues, essentials from non-essentials, what you know from what you do not know, necessary things from unnecessary, harmless things from harmful ones, imperishable things from perishable.
A suitable subject of meditation is to make clear to yourself that you are not your envelopes, not your organism, not your feelings, not your thoughts; but that the self observes these phenomena.
You can take any unsolved esoteric problem whatsoever and analyse the facts that have any connection with it, until some day you get the solution from the superconscious for nothing.
It is a good exercise for the self (the attention) to study the contents of its envelopes, the thoughts in the mental envelope, the feelings in the emotional envelope. In so doing the monad liberates itself from identification with these phenomena, learns how to view them as tools, learns how to see that what they think and wish is expressive of the general ignorance and lack of discernment.
Those who have recently begun studying esoterics are usually eager to learn all new esoteric facts, as if this would mean progress. The teachers, however, consider that it is more important to meditate daily on the knowledge already acquired, so that the things learnt are automatized and find spontaneous expression. Otherwise they easily become latent and fail to have any effect in daily life. This has also been the great shortcoming of the occult sects. Their members have been liberated from some of their fictions and are content with that. They do not suspect that knowledge entails responsibility for its use.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, Meditation, www.laurency.com
Risks of Meditation
”Energy follows thought.” Meditation (“prayer”) draws down mental, causal or essential (46) energy from the worlds reached by our thought. It is important that these energies do not remain in the emotional or mental envelope but are used expediently.”
Meditation is self-initiated consciousness activity, and its action belongs under the law of activation. It should be observed that meditation has effects and that erroneous meditation can have serious effects, anyhow can do harm in some manner. Meditation that confers power will remain esoteric, until the individual has reached so far that he cannot abuse power. And that is a wise law, for otherwise mankind would annihilate itself.
There are great risks with meditation. By meditation you strengthen your vibrational capacity. Those who are at the stage of hatred, however, strengthen their vibrations of hatred, and this increases their bad sowing.
Meditation must be practised with judgement and understanding. Five minutes will suffice for beginners, and half an hour for those who have been trained for many years. It must be clearly recognized that meditation involves handling molecules and energies, not just consciousness.
Meditation vitalizes those etheric centres which are already active. They can easily be overstimulated, and then symptoms of disease may appear in the organs corresponding to these centres. The risk is particularly great if any of these organs is not entirely healthy. Moreover, the entire nervous system is subjected to an immense strain. But also quite healthy people grow nervous, lose their balance, find it impossible to control themselves, and sometimes suffer from insomnia. Many people by injudicious zeal destroy their brain cells, with disease being the result.
Meditation strengthens existing tendencies and qualities, in which non-desirable ones are vitalized too. Since non-desirable qualities generally appear in the relations to other people, the enhanced friction in life increases irritation in a continuous interaction.
Abusing meditation you can strengthen the fictions and illusions of your ignorance, make them hard to eradicate, if not ineradicable for incarnations to come.
Meditation that centres on one’s own fancies has a tendency to strengthen fictionalism and illusionism. It enhances self-delusion and egotism. Meditation is for those who have ceased to be the centres of their circles, who forget themselves for others, for their missions in life.
Henry T. Laurency, Knowledge of Life One, Meditation, www.laurency.com