process of meditation unfold all of your potentialities naturally within you. Meditation helps you to live your life in balance, and a balanced mind gains deeper realization in meditation.
When the realization of oneness develops within, a feeling of attraction for the goal intensifies. As you begin to understand yourself and the universe, as your perfect nature unfolds, you realize that a magnetic attraction to infinite consciousness or truth is the force that has guided you from the beginning of your life. This same force is the essential energy of the universe, which keeps everything moving in perfect balance. This realization will awaken in you a special kind of love.
Until now, you have been pulled along the path of progress purely by the force of evolution. At a certain point, though, you are bound to discover that the force that is pulling you is infinite consciousness, your innermost being. This discovery is one of great joy, and you begin to use more of your own conscious energy to move toward your goal. It is as if you have been lost in a forest, finding your way home only by vague feelings, memories, and landmarks along the way. You wander slowly, carefully, sometimes taking wrong turns, stumbling, confused. But when in the distance the light of home can be seen, you cry out joyfully and run straight for that light, all doubts gone, confusion and loneliness replaced by joyful anticipation and relief. No longer is every fallen log an obstacle, every dark corner a menace, every divergent path a temptation. You return home with speed and confidence. The awakening of devotion —intense love for the higher self— in the heart of the spiritual seeker is such an experience. With it a new relationship develops between you and your spiritual goal that changes the very quality of your meditative practice.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow described these two stages of motivation as “deficiency” motivation and “growth” or “being” motivation, and the two different kinds of love they produce as “deficiency-love” and “being-love.” Deficiency-motivated living is based on needs that must be met from without and by others — the need for security, respect, and acceptance. It is an attitude of defending and preserving oneself, of fending off attack rather than reaching out for fulfillment. Deficiency love (called kama in yoga terminology) is based on the need of the limited ego; it can be grasping, fearful, insecure. It is an emptiness that must be filled.
Growth— or being-motivation is something different; however, it is not contradictory. One passes into the other as childhood passes into maturity. The growth-motivated individual has seen the light of home and no longer feels that previous emptiness. Secure and self-directed, with growth-motivation you are able to fully give of yourself because you are no longer motivated by fear. This change does not, however, mean you are exempt from conflict or unhappiness. As a growth-motivated person, you are better able to deal with conflict through meditation and self-searching. Thus, from this perspective, you are better able to see problems clearly and be open to accepting help, when necessary, from outside sources. Being-love, or prema is fearless. You love the essence, the being, rather than its changing physical attributes or its capacity to fill the ego’s needs. It is open and selfless, and ultimately, beyond the limitations of the emotions or the physical body.
The infinite consciousness within you seeks expression. When you begin to live your life in a way that allows your higher nature to unfold, door after door will open to you. Others begin to seek you out because of your harmonizing energies. You live, work, and play from a center of focused attention that not only allows you to experience limitless energy and tranquility but draws into your world only the best for you.
Throw a rock into a pool of still, clear water. What happens? The water reacts. It changes shape, emanating rings of waves that are strongest at the point of contact. The reflection of the moon above is broken up into a thousand moving pieces, made unrecognizable.
Do you love your son? That is perfectly correct. But on the son’s death you will have great pain. Isn’t that also correct? The son is a finite entity. He cannot live until eternity. He will depart and leave you. But if you treat your son as the expression of God in the form of your son, then there will never be any fear of losing him because God can never be lost. It is present around you in all directions. In that state of mind you will be able to give proper treatment to whatever finite being you come in contact with.
— P. R. Sarkar
The mind is always in a state of motion, experiencing the reactions of previous thoughts and actions, like rocks thrown incessantly into the peaceful stillness of a pool. Meditation helps you to put down the rock, let the waters settle, and peer in to see the beautiful reflection of your perfect nature. When you experience this oneness with infinite consciousness, you begin to free yourself from the shackles of so-called fate.
Throughout the ages, people have sought to explain the seemingly random occurrences in their lives. Some religions teach that God (often perceived as a stern, manlike figure in the sky) rewards the virtuous and punishes those who sin. These philosophies must undergo tremendous contortions of logic to withstand the questions of rational people. Hindu “fatalists” assert that every action has its consequences and the sufferings of this life have their prologue in previous incarnations. But because of the limitations of religious dogma, these ideas spawned the caste system in India, whereby millions of people have suffered, kept ignorant and poor by the dictum that it was their fate, decreed by the gods. Better luck next life! Newton’s famous assertion that for every action there is an opposite reaction is a basic physical law that applies on the level of mind as well. The mind’s balance is constantly disturbed by thoughts, actions, impressions. It seeks to regain its original state and strives with force to correct imbalances.
Every thought or action reaps its reaction. Nothing is lost. The universe, according to the theory of relativity, is curved in on itself. If you could throw an object into space with enough force, it would traverse the universe and come round again to hit you in the back of the head. In the same way, every vibration emanating from you — whether thought, word, or action — will return, with force, to affect your life for good or ill. These potential reactions, called samskaras, are the results of thoughts and actions. They remain stored in the mind until mature and are then experienced as “the forces of blind fate.” They have their own energy, their own momentum. According to Tantric teachings, this momentum — more accurately called “reactive momenta” — can only mature when the mind is dissociated from its incessant concern with the physical body, as in unconsciousness or death. In the state after death, when the mind is dissociated from the body, momenta from the previous life mature, and when the soul incarnates again in a suitable physical body, those reactions are experienced and new ones are created. Thus the wheel of birth and death turns ceaselessly.
In meditation you momentarily dissociate yourself from concern with the physical body, not in simulation of death, but by identifying with the eternal source of all life. This is another opportunity for reactive momenta to mature. But within your practice lies the key that will stop the relentless turning of the wheel. Each time you meditate, some of the reactive momenta mature. Returning to your everyday life, you experience these reactions, reaping what you have sown in this and previous lives. This is why sometimes, especially in the beginning, the new practitioner faces a period of difficulties and obstacles. She undergoes more reactions than the ordinary person. But this phase passes, leaving the meditator freer than before; fewer and fewer potential reactions are created as her meditation gains strength and concentration.
The more you meditate, the more you attain equilibrium in every sphere of your life. You begin to perceive the same infinite consciousness
