Why Has Meditation Become So Popular In Recent Times?
The research. Due to advances in technology, particularly in the field of brain monitoring devices such as fMRI scanners, the long reported benefits of meditation are now becoming measurable. Now a formerly skeptical audience are curious to experience the benefits of meditation first hand.
It promotes good health. A growing number of doctors and scientists recognise the beneficial physiological effects of meditation, especially in the areas of stress relief and relaxation.
Meditation has received widespread coverage in the media. Sports people and health care professionals openly advocate meditation, and magazine editors and advertisers now portray meditation as a normal part of everyday life.
Meditation is becoming accepted as a part of popular culture. Meditation was first introduced to the Western world in ancient Greek times, nearly 3,000 years ago, but this knowledge was to a large extent lost over time. It was re-introduced to the Western world at the beginning of the 20th century, and European intellectuals were exploring oriental mystical philosophy, which has its roots in meditation, long before that. But it took the revolution in thinking of the 60’s generation, and events like the Beatles taking up meditation, to create widespread public awareness of the practice. Now that same generation have entered middle age, and some of the values that they embraced during their youth have gained broad-based acceptance.
Nowadays we have access to vast reservoirs of knowledge from many cultures. We can choose from the best that a wide variety of traditions have to offer. People have sometimes asked me why I chose a spiritual practice originating in a culture other than my own. Just because something originates in another country does not mean it is unsuitable for us. Computer science was first developed in America, but no one suggests that computers are not useful elsewhere. Meditation originated in India and has been practised for thousands of years in Asia, but people from all backgrounds can experience its benefits.
Meditation is a way for people to explore their own spirituality. At a time when many people are disillusioned with institutionalised religion, meditation offers us a method to enter our own inner world, and experience spirituality directly.
So What Exactly Is Meditation?
Meditation has been described as a kind of concentrated thinking, but this does not mean just any kind of concentrated thinking. Concentrating on a pet rock or an ice cream is not meditation. Meditation is the process of concentrating the mind on the source of consciousness within us. Gradually this leads us to discover that our own consciousness is infinite. This is why the goal of meditation is sometimes described as ‘Self Realisation.’
What Is Self Realization?
The goal of meditation is to realize who we really are at the core of our being. The philosophy of yoga says there are two different levels to our inner self: our mental or emotional self and our spiritual self. The mental self is sometimes called the individual mind. It is limited because it is strongly associated with our limited physical body and is the cause of the feeling “I am this individual person” – our ego. But our real sense of self-awareness comes from our connection to a wider, subtler form of consciousness. Yogic philosophy says there is a reflection of an infinite, all knowing form of consciousness within our minds. This Infinite Consciousness is unchanging and eternal, and is at the core of our true spiritual ‘Self’.
When we identify with the small ego-centred self this is called relative reality, because that small self is prone to change and death. But when we realize that there is a subtler, permanent reality behind the relative one and we see that our true nature is pure unlimited Consciousness, this is known as Self Realisation.
What Is The Difference Between Meditation And Yoga?
To many the word yoga means a series of physical exercises ¬stretching and tying our bodies into impossible knots. But these physical postures are only one aspect of yoga, known as ‘asanas’. The physical postures of yoga are practiced for their health benefits, and because they help to prepare the body for meditation. Yoga is both a philosophy of life and a system of spiritual practice. The word ‘yoga’ actually means union between the individual self and Infinite Consciousness. Meditation is the most important practice in the yoga system and is the means by which this merger or union is achieved. So yoga is a system or science that enables an individual to develop themselves physically, mentally and spiritually, and meditation is the practice that makes the mental and spiritual development possible.
What Is The Difference Between Prayer And Meditation?
Evidence of the existence of religion dates back more than 40,000 years. Early religions were animistic, believing that the forces of nature were beings or Gods, and later pantheistic, worshiping many deities, and assigning divinity to the invisible but powerful forces of nature that held sway over people’s lives. These gods were feared and were appeased through prayer or sacrifice. As society evolved, people gradually realised that there must be a single guiding power behind all these forces of nature, and theistic religions emerged – the belief in only one God. But the relationship was still based on fear, flattery, appeasement and attempts to persuade God to grant favours to individuals. Some religious prayer still reflects this today.
Philosophically, praying to God requesting something or asking God to do something, even for someone else, seems illogical. According to all the theistic scriptures of the world, God is an all-knowing (omniscient) and infinitely benevolent being (‘God is love’), who already knows if somebody’s mother is sick, or someone is unhappy, and surely cares enough to do whatever is necessary to help them. Any concerns, or ideas we have originate with God anyway, so telling God how to run the universe seems inappropriate, to say the least. In yoga philosophy it is said that since Infinite Consciousness has given us everything, we should not ask that Entity for anything.
Prayer can take various forms. What I’ve described above is known as intercessory prayer – asking for God’s intervention in our affairs. More sophisticated forms of prayer include prayers of gratitude, worshipful prayer, contemplative prayer and meditative prayer. These can help to bring the worshipper closer to God through cultivating devotion, the feeling of attraction towards the Infinite Consciousness. But as long as it is based on a dualistic conception of God, meaning that human beings and God are kept inherently separate, prayer cannot be considered meditation. Spiritual meditation places no limit on our realization. It is a non-dualistic practice, and its goal is to merge our inner ‘I’ feeling with the Infinite Consciousness.
I think it very likely that all of the great spiritual teachers practised some kind of spiritual meditation and initiated their closest disciples into this practice. This was their treasured ‘inner teaching’. Often however, with the passing of time, this esoteric part of their teachings was lost or watered down, their later followers were left with only their outer teachings about morality and philosophy. But the key to realising what these enlightened individuals realized has always been, and will always remain, spiritual meditation.
Is Meditation A Science?
Science (from Latin scientia – knowledge) is most commonly defined as the investigation or study of nature through observation and reasoning, aimed at finding out the truth. The term science also refers to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research. Since the yogic approach to spirituality uses both observation and reasoning to approach the inner truth, and the tradition of yoga constitutes one of the most ancient organized bodies of knowledge in the world, I think it reasonable to consider it a science.
But by its nature it is a somewhat subjective science. Meditation has been described as ‘Intuitional Science.’ Extensive laboratory tests have demonstrated the physiological effects of meditation, but this only shows us its external effects. Even a recording of a person¹s brainwave patterns is just a measurement of physical electrical waves. It does not tell us exactly what they are thinking or feeling. The only real laboratory for testing meditation is the mind itself, and the results need to be experienced personally. Another name for this science is “Tantra” – the science of spiritual meditation, which enables the practitioner to merge his or her unit mind into Infinite Consciousness.