by any situation. With no disturbance, there is no need to correct the disturbance, no reaction. Meditation ripens the old reactive momenta and enables you to stop creating new ones. By experiencing your old reactions without attachment, you let them go. Eventually all of your old reactions are exhausted and no new ones appear to be experienced. Your mind has achieved a state of peace, and the body is no longer needed as a vehicle for the expression of reactive momenta. At the end of a practitioner’s life, her reactions are finished, and, upon leaving her earthly body, her mind merges into infinite consciousness.
There are three types of reactions in potentiality: inborn, acquired, and imposed. The inborn reactions are those we have acquired in previous lives. A child prodigy is one who probably developed a great degree of proficiency in her past life.
Acquired reactions are those you create of your own will, through action independent of your inborn reactive momenta. A young woman grows up in a family of chefs and has culinary talent from an early age. However, she may acquire momentum to earn her degree in physics and spend her life studying quark symmetries.
Imposed reactions are the impressions created upon your mind by the world in which you live. You acquire these as you are influenced by world conditions, family, responsibility, and education. The young woman in the previous example will always be a good cook because of the momentum imposed by her chef parents.
Peer groups can impose reactive momenta, as can teachers and elders. Thus education and environment are very important to the growing child. The combination of inborn momenta — heredity, through genetic material, is an expression of these — and those that are acquired and imposed all propel a child into her future as an adult. Acquired and imposed reactions have a tremendous effect on how the inborn reactions are expressed. It is crucial that every child have the food, clothing, shelter, education, and medical attention she needs; this is one reason we strive to serve those less fortunate than ourselves. Fate has not decreed the suffering of the poor, the homeless, or hungry. These reactive momenta are forced upon people by their environment and by the lack of opportunities to acquire the momentum for physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the imposition of reactive momenta; they are easily affected by constant contact with external forces. For example, a child may come into the world with the momentum for a tremendous amount of physical activity. Her environment, however, will have an impact upon how that activity manifests. She could be a great athlete, or she might be a violent criminal.
As adults we have acquired a certain amount of defensive psychological armor against others’ impositions on us. But without the strength and clarity of mind afforded by daily meditation we are still vulnerable to imposition by stronger minds than our own. During Hitler’s reign, a few concentrated minds imposed the most ghastly samskaras on millions of people.
On a smaller scale, you may find yourself mesmerized every day, often unknowingly influenced by values subliminally imposed upon you through advertising, political double-talk, music, and media hype. Meditation helps you gain the clarity to see through the hype and to acquire the tools to defuse its impact in your life and the lives of your children. It inspires you to create uplifting environments and to seek the most expansive expressions in art, music, and literature for yourself and for all of humanity.
Reactive momenta differentiates one person from another. We are all essentially the same consciousness; the course our lives take is a combination of our free will here and now (momenta we acquire in this life) and what we have chosen in the past. Our desires and prayers can often create reactions that we, with our limited view, cannot perceive in advance, as we earnestly pray for our dreams to come true. A friend of mine once wanted a television. She had a strong mind, having practiced meditation and yoga for several years. Soon after this desire came into her mind, a neighbor knocked on her door.
“My parents are moving today,” the neighbor said, “and they have a television they don’t need any more. I thought maybe you’d like to have it.”
“Sure!” said my friend, amazed at how quickly her desire had manifested. They brought the television into the living room and set it down. My friend stared at it, horrified. It was a huge, ugly, old-fashioned television, and it was pink. And when she turned it on, nothing happened — it didn’t work! She kept that pink television for a long time, to remind herself to always be aware of how she used her mind.
Our reactive momenta take us from one lifetime to the next, determining the wavelength of our earthly body (and thus its characteristics, through the genes) as well as the family, environment, and social structure into which we are born. Like water poured into different cups, consciousness takes the shape of you or me. When the cups are emptied, the water merges, and all is One.
It is not necessary to believe in reincarnation in order to meditate and to lead a spiritual life. An abundance of evidence points to its validity; however, defining the philosophical structure on which it is based is another book and cannot be my intention here. Do your own research, setting aside acquired prejudices in a sincere effort to know the truth. There is no need to commit yourself to a firm belief. Your meditation will eventually reveal to you the truth of all existence.
Your spiritual life does not depend on belief but on practice. Whether you believe in one life or ten billion, your practice of meditation will still have wonderful results — some you will experience almost immediately, and some will gradually unfold over time.
Recommended Reading:
The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
Einstein’s Space and Van Gogh’s Sky: Physical Reality and Beyond by Lawrence LeShan and Henry Margeneau
Reincarnation: a New Horizon in Science, Religion, and Society by Sylvia Cranston and Carey Williams Up from Eden by Ken Wilbur
Chapter Two The Circle of Love
We all come from God, and unto God do we return, like a stream flowing back to the ocean, like a ray of light returning to the sun.
— Quaker hymn
There is a consciousness in the grass and trees, a consciousness that animates the tiny amoeba, that manifests in the amazing animal kingdom and in the wondrous richness of human life. This consciousness permeates all creation, from the deepest recesses of our earth to the farthest unknown galaxy. It controls the movement of the stars and it blossoms in the tiniest flower. It creates, it maintains, and it destroys, and yet it is beyond even these. We can call it Brahma, the Supreme. In the ancient science of Tantra, the creation of the universe is a cycle, called Brahmachakra— the “circle of the Supreme.”
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