to progress in meditation without developing the impulse to care for others; the universal love that grows as a result of the mind’s expansion compels us to serve. Service is an extension of meditation. The thought, “I am an expression of infinite consciousness, serving the infinite in you” helps to uplift the mind and prepare it for meditation. When you serve, your thought is that “infinite consciousness has manifested before me in this form in order to give me a chance to serve.” In this way the limited ego is kept in perspective, the mind is immersed in the thought of oneness, progress in meditation is assured, and your service ensures the progress of your fellow beings.
The fourth and final aspect of your perfect nature is actually the goal — infinite consciousness (parama purusa). It is your very essence. It is perfection. Although every living being, every atom, cell, and subatomic particle, every rock, every plant, everything in the universe is in essence that consciousness, we humans have the unique capacity to know our divinity, to realize our perfection in the spiritual realm. This faculty also gives us a responsibility to the world in which we live: to develop ourselves to fulfill our great potential.
This sense of oneness with the infinite is more than mood-making. Fritjof Capra writes, in The Tao of Physics, “The basic oneness of the universe is not only the central characteristic of the mystical experience, but is also one of the most important revelations of modern physics.” Many physicists and others who study the origins of the universe are coming to the conclusion that oneness is the natural state from which everything arises.
Meditation is not a magic cure-all that can be taken in doses to work overnight. Your approach is definitely an important factor in your selfrealization. Although there is no failure in meditation, your attitude can make the difference between ease and difficulty. Cultivating the right frame of mind is very helpful if you are serious about continuing your practice, because it supplies the internal inspiration and enthusiasm that will fuel your meditation and color your thoughts and actions throughout each day.
The essence of Tantra Yoga is the joyous affirmation that “there is nothing that is not divine.” Instead of proclaiming, like many traditional philosophies, “God is not this, God is not that,” the Tantric affirms, “All is God; I am God.” By recognizing that all forms in the universe are manifestations of the same consciousness, your attitude becomes positive and dynamic. You see the universe as the arena for spiritual endeavor. Perceived and utilized properly, it reveals, not veils, God. Rather than concentrating on admonitions of “don’t be this way, don’t do that,” you concentrate on the positive, using all your physical, mental, and spiritual potential as part of your path. Meditation is not a process of elimination, but of inclusion, expanding your awareness of that consciousness infinitely.
In the progress toward truth, let us notice that each step is from particles to waves, or from material to mental; the final picture consists wholly of waves, and its ingredients are wholly mental constructs. It seems more and more likely that reality is better described as mental than material.
— Physicist James Jeans
DISCRIMINATION AND NONATTACHMENT
You might think that to such a person, discrimination and nonattachment would be negative concepts. But understood properly these two functions of the higher mind are integral to the positive approach of Tantra Yoga.
Discrimination is knowing what is lasting and what is not, being able to perceive the eternal consciousness within the passing show of the material world, and knowing that attachment to finite objects ultimately can only bring pain and suffering. In this age, it is increasingly easy for us to remain aloof from suffering and death. Because we are not faced with it every day, we become oblivious to our connection with it. We fail to realize that one day we too must die — we too must suffer the pain of loss. The impersonal way in which we are exposed to pain and death, via movies and television, only serves to further separate us from its reality and to desensitize us to the suffering of others.
When faced with the shock of loss, we long for some kind of eternal base for our lives — for the knowledge that will enable us to understand these events and thus cope with our fear and loneliness. Many people turn to religion, but turn away again after their crisis has passed and their mental stability has been restored. This is because often religion can offer only a temporary solace that is no real base in itself. Religions that require faith that is not firmly rooted in personal experience or knowledge, that do not give specific practices by which that knowledge is acquired, often fail to offer the continuing growth and the real answers that the rational individual seeks.
Meditation is a practical connecting link to the eternal base. Rather than acting as a crutch in times of distress, it is a tool with which you can find real answers from within. The realization achieved through meditation is not faith or belief, but knowledge, and as scientists, psychologists, and philosophers have shown us, fear and all of its accompanying anxiety can only be banished by knowledge. The realization attained through meditation enlightens religious beliefs, enabling you to understand the deeper meaning of your chosen religious teachings and apply them to your life.
When that connecting link is established through meditation and you gain some personal experience of your goal, you will begin to gain a sense of discrimination— the ability to place finite events and objects in their proper perspective with the infinite from which they have all evolved.
As it reveals the subtler aspects of your mind, meditation brings you to this fine sense of discrimination, which in turn leads to nonattachment. According to some philosophies, nonattachment means avoidance of the things of the world. Thus some spiritual seekers have mortified themselves to renounce the pleasure and pain of the body; have tried to create aversions in their minds to the natural instincts of eating, sleeping, and sexuality; and have escaped from society to live in jungles or caves far from the “temptations” of worldly life.
Volumes of psychiatric research have shown us that repression is never successful. Such methods of dealing with attachment merely create more obstacles for the practitioner, because they require the mind to be absorbed in negative thoughts rather than in truth. If you adopt such measures you will ultimately turn away from your goal; repression forces your mind to be more deeply entrenched in those things from which you are trying to escape. Although solitude may remove you from the immediate agitations of the world, it does not remove those agitations from the mind, which is their source.
Meditation can reveal truth and calm the agitations of the mind, and it can be practiced anywhere. True detachment is never a negative approach; rather it is a positive attitude of love for the goal, seeing universal consciousness in all forms, and attaching the mind to that infinite essence rather than the finite form in which it appears.
Negative interpretations of discrimination and nonattachment developed through the ages as a result of priest-classes controlling spiritual practice and knowledge. It was expedient for them to retain their power and prestige by preventing ordinary family people from practicing meditation, especially women, who historically have been most “attached” because of their guardianship of home and children. Even today many people avoid meditation because they associate it with solitary asceticism and detachment.
Discrimination also means understanding that pleasure is not the goal of our existence. You can, rather, identify with the broader context within which both pleasure and pain exist as polar expressions. Your attitude is one of dynamic simplicity. You strive without ambition, neither avoiding pain nor seeking
