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Spiritual or Transcendental Meditation

In this work-a-day world, man's consciousness is always engrossed with things that are earthly, persons which are worldly, situations which are mundane, feelings which are temporal, thoughtswhich pertain to this cosmos and visions of things that are terrestrial. Never does he, in his life-time, transcend these, for he does not have knowledge of that which is super-mundane, spiritual or transcendental. Only in deep sleep is his consciousness at rest, to an extent. The depth of the feeling of this rest or relaxation depends on how much his consciousness was withdrawn from the world or in other words, how much he was lost in sleep. Even if his doors of knowledge or organs of perception be shut out to the outside world, he will not 'enjoy' his sleep if he has dreams of persons and things that are worldly; he will say that he had a disturbed sleep, keeping this principle in mind, a person practicing meditation can withdraw his mind from his body and the world and yet he is not asleep. To understand this we have to understand the following:

When a person, in the state of wakefulness, has reminiscences that are pleasant, thoughts that are holy and memories of person with whom he has cordial relations and of situation that are beneficial to him, then he feels happy. The depth of his happiness depends on how beneficial the situations are, how intimate these relationships are, so on and so forth. Again, the more deeply he is absorbed in these thoughts and memories, the more intense is his happiness and, at that moment, he feels detached from all the rest or he feels lost in that experience.

Spiritual or Transcendental Yoga is based on the above two principles. One's consciousness is detached from this world and is focused on or absorbed in the thoughts or memories of the Transcendental. But how?

To illustrate this, let us suppose a person utters the word `Sun' or you yourself think of the sun. What happens at that moment is that your mind, your awareness or consciousness goes outwards, straight on to an orb-like shining object that radiates light and heat which is called 'the sun'. Similarly, with a little practice of meditation, a person can take his mind to the Soul World and he sees there, with the eye of mind, the conscient shining star that God is; and he meditates on His attributes. He stabilises in these thoughts and this absorption leads him to restfulness or relaxation to the highest pitch of bliss.

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