Page 39 - Wisdom Unfurled

connecting link between the animate and the inanimate is most clearly felt. This is the reason why meditation on the heart is very useful. Further, heart is the field for the action of mind. Mind is always as it is. It is the heart which, as the field of action of the mind, is to be set right. Hence the most appropriate point for meditation can be only that wherefrom the current flows on, either upwards or downwards. It can only be the heart and nothing else. Trikuti (centre of the eye-brows) can also be taken for the purpose but that is not an easy job for common people as it requires more labour from the abhyasi. It may also give birth to many complications in due course if the meditation is not properly practised by the abhyasi. Meditation on the navel point has no spiritual value except that it causes a tickling sensation which finally makes the mind and passions all the more powerful.
At a certain stage of the development of faith in an abhyasi, we generally lay stress upon meditation apparently on human form. Critics may perhaps consider it suicidal to spiritual advancement. The case is not so, provided the man meditated upon is one of special calibre, who has come down from the Immaterial Absolute for spiritual training, or has attained the spiritual standard of evolution required for the purpose by supreme self-exertion.
Preliminaries to Meditation
When the thought of going back to the original was stirred up in man, it became essential for him to bring activity, which had sprung up in him, into a latent state as far as it was possible. He began to seek out means for it. At last it came to his understanding that just as the latent motion was grosser in comparison to the Absolute with which it was connected, even so he must take up something grosser for the purpose, to enable him to attain the desired ideal of Reality. This led him to the conclusion that he must create in him a form of contraction or withdrawal similar to that at the time of pralaya. Now Self is all pervading in man just as it is in the whole universe, — taking the universe in a collective sense. The state of pralaya comes in when contraction begins to take place. Similar contraction in man leads to his individual pralaya. That means that he begins to proceed from his state of grossness to the real state. The contraction always starts from below and proceeds gradually upwards because of its upward tendency. Therefore, in order to go upwards he must start contracting from below. The form of contraction could be only to bring his legs and allied parts to one pose and to keep them steady. In whatever way it might be done, the form will finally be that of the asan. It is essential because it paves our way to the Ultimate. This posture must always be the same. The reason is that in this way he gets himself associated with the great power, the very thing he takes up in the beginning for the attainment of his particular objective. Thus the form which is associated with