AN OUTLINE OF TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION
These days
meditation has become quite popular. It
is practised daily by thousands of people throughout
But what, then, is meditation? Is it a religion, a cult, a method of
contemplation, a way of life, a protest against society, or what? Basically it is none of these things, though
it can certainly be turned into something approximating to any one of them, if
you so desire it. The truth is that
meditation is simply a way of enjoying your own company, a means of acquiring a
better opinion of yourself. It need not
have anything whatsoever to do with mystical contact with the Godhead or World
Soul or whatever you would like to equate divinity with, in spite of claims to
the contrary by practising Transcendentalists.
If you wish to associate a pleasant feeling with the Godhead, that is
your affair. But it isn't absolutely
necessary. The essential thing is that
you should eventually come to experience a state of mind which will free you
from the tyranny of petty worries, complaints, miseries, rivalries, etc., if
only from 5-10 minutes a day. After all,
a feeling approximating to bliss is worth acquiring for even that short period
of time. And if you appreciate it enough
to attempt extending it from 10-20 minutes a day, well and good! It won't cost you anything extra.
There are, however, different methods of
meditation, some dependent on breathing routines, others, less physical, which
require a greater degree of willpower in concentrating psychic attention within
the head. The method that most appeals
to me at present is the Taoist form of breathing from stomach to
crown-centre, for which the most important requirements are a fairly stable
pair of lungs and the willpower to continue breathing within the confines of a
pre-established routine for at least twenty minutes. You cannot get high without making some sort
of effort, and even good moods have to be earned one way or another - usually
at the price of bad ones! So unless you
are prepared to put some physical effort into your breathing routine and
put-up, initially, with a degree of vertigo partly resulting from this, you
won't acquire a particularly satisfying level of tranquillity.
How, then, does one set about meditating
in this manner? Let me explain! To begin with, it helps if you have something
soft to sit on, either a bed or a cushion or a settee. Once you are comfortably seated, you can
cross your legs, put your hands on your kneecaps, or just let them hang loosely
in front of you. But make sure that your
back is straight! A bent back won't
assist your breathing.
After you've done these simple things you
are ready to proceed with the breathing exercises, breathing in-and-out through
the nose as, presumably, you would normally do, but with greater vigour. The object of the initial exercises is to
stoke-up the fire of your metabolism, so to speak, for the more refined
exercises to come. So it is important to
inhale as deeply as possible without, however, doing yourself a serious injury
in the process! The lower stages of this
particular type of meditation are always somewhat mechanical and uninspiring,
but they are well-worth persevering with, if you hope to reap the full benefit
of the higher stages later on.
Thus, aided by the self-imposed deception
that your lungs are in your stomach, you concentrate attention on the stomach
as you inhale, so that it is drawn-in with the breath. When you exhale, however, you let your concentration
flag with the breath, so that the stomach regains its normal posture. Thus there is a centripetal/centrifugal
alternation between concentration on the stomach, as required by the
inhalation, and the natural dissipation of that concentration engendered by the
exhalation. This process of steady, full
breathing should be continued for at least five minutes, so it is a good idea
to keep your eye on the time while you are struggling - though hopefully not
flagging - with your deep breathing. The
temptation to give-up after 3-4 minutes of this exercise may well present
itself. But if you remember that
everything worthwhile has to be earned, one way or another, then you should
find the courage or willpower to proceed to the next stage of the routine, which
will demand a shift of concentration from the stomach to the lungs.
Since one invariably inhales into the
lungs anyway, there is no need to impose a deception upon oneself here; though
one should still alternate concentration on the lungs, as one inhales, with a dissipation of that concentration as one
exhales, so that the centripetal/centrifugal balance of forces is
maintained. This second stage of the
routine is usually the hardest, because the effort of deep, steady breathing is
combined, to a greater extent than in the previous exercise, with a feeling of
vertigo, which is, of course, engendered by both the effort itself and the
continuous increase of oxygen in the bloodstream resulting from it. You may feel a bit sick at this stage, but
unless you had eaten a heavy meal just before you began these exercises - a
thing, incidentally, you oughtn't to have done! - you
should survive the feeling on a settled stomach.
After five minutes of this exercise, you
move to the third stage of the routine and focus your attention upon the
throat, much as though the throat was the receptacle into which the oxygen must
now pass before you exhale. Here, too,
some vertigo, tempered by what I like to call psychic flickering, may
persist. But take courage! You have come through the hardest stages of
this meditation technique and are already beginning to feel a growing
tranquillity pervade your mind as, with calmer inhalations and exhalations, you
note the five minutes slipping by.
Now when this time has elapsed, it
remains for you to shift attention to the crown of your head, technically
termed the crown-centre, and to breathe up through your nostrils with the
impression that the oxygen inhaled is not entering your lungs but caressing the
centre of your brain (which, needless to say, it most certainly isn't
doing!). So here, too, it is necessary
to maintain a deception, as you imagine that cool streams of air are caressing
the centre of your brain as you inhale, and then completely forget about
yourself as you exhale. This fourth and
last breathing exercise will be smoother, easier, more refreshing than the
previous ones, and, as the five minutes quickly pass, the blissful tranquillity
which you have been faithfully anticipating will begin to flood your mind,
making you momentarily conscious, it may be, of a purity of being not
altogether incompatible with the elevated mentality of Nietzsche's mountain
recluse - Zarathustra!
The build-up of oxygen in the blood
produced by the breathing exercises is beginning to fully assert itself, not
now in terms of vertigo, but in a steady stream of blissful coolness and
calmness. So all that remains for you to
do, once the final five minutes have been dutifully dispatched, is to experience
it where you sit, without particularly concentrating on any part of your body,
and without consciously interfering with your normal breathing routine. Completely enveloped by the tranquillity
within you, freed from petty thoughts, unannoyed by
any neighbour or family noises which may be penetrating the thin walls of your
room, though very alert to the slightest sound, your soul is detached from the
narrow confines of the ego and becomes both a passive receptacle and an active
generator of the purest feelings.
For 5-10 minutes you sit perfectly still,
wallowing in the purity of your being, experiencing yourself with a sublimated
feeling of pride, a secret exultation that your soul is capable of experiencing
such a satisfying condition, with nothing vulgar to pollute it or pull it from
its Zarathustrian heights. The discomforts of the breathing exercises
are soon forgotten with the consummation they have brought about - a
consummation which, if you bothered to reflect on it, would seem to be
well-worth the previous discomforts!
And so, detached from the usual claims of
the ego in the face of private and public opposition, you experience a form of
transcendental meditation, or meditation enabling you to transcend the narrow
confines of the conscious self. This
product of the twenty minutes breathing routine will normally only last,
however, from 5-10 minutes, after which time the mind will return to a
less-exultant condition, as the build-up of oxygen in the blood gradually
recedes to a level compatible with the continuation of normal breathing. And with the decline in the oxygen content to
its normal level, your meditation officially comes to an end, so you might as
well return to your usual preoccupations, as continue to sit on the bed or
settee or whatever with legs crossed.
Altogether, then, this experience has
demanded thirty minutes of your time: twenty for breathing exercises and ten
for transcendental meditation. However,
you may feel thirty minutes is too long and that the breathing exercises demand
too much effort and are essentially too boring to be worth 5-10 minutes'
blissful tranquillity. If so, then I
suggest you cut the breathing routine to three minutes with each of the four
exercises, so that after a twelve-minute accumulation of oxygen you will
experience tranquillity from 3-6 minutes.
But be warned! These 3-6 minutes
won't grant you such a pleasurable state-of-mind as would have been acquired
from a twenty-minute breathing routine!
If you do not wish to put much effort into the giving, you cannot expect
to reap big dividends from the taking.
It's as simple as that!
I have endeavoured to describe a method of
meditation which is based on a simple but very effective breathing routine
derived from the Chinese Tao te
Ching. It
can be practised twice a day, morning and evening, or once a day, preferably in
the evening. It can be practised every
day of the week, or just one or two days a week, depending how you feel about
it. There are some people who practise
it regularly for years on-end, but there is no
disgrace in practising it for merely a few months, if that is all you can
manage. You may feel that regular
practice of this meditation technique will simply result in your becoming stuck
in another rut, with one more boring habit as your master. If so, then continue it only for as long as
it means anything to you, and abandon it as soon as you begin to weary of the
stereotypical experience it seems to evoke.
After all, there is a place for other things in life besides meditation
and, although a place for meditation can easily be found, there is no reason
why it should come to dominate your activities to the exclusion of other
agreeable preoccupations. Naturally,
like virtually any other subject on earth, meditation has its hard-core of
fanatical extremists. But if you are not
cut-out to be such a person yourself, there is little point in trying to follow
suit. Just practise it when and where
you want to experience your soul with a new pride, and it will speak for itself
with all the justification that everything worthwhile invariably has on its
side.
But is meditation of this nature for
everyone? Theoretically one could argue
that it is for everyone, insofar as almost everyone has a pair of lungs, a
throat, a stable heart, etc. But, in
practice, one is obliged to admit that only a comparatively small minority of
people are really qualified to indulge in it.
To begin with, one must have the right temperament, the right character,
to enable one to take it seriously in the first place. It is therefore unlikely that a majority of
the working or middle classes would be qualified to meditate in this manner,
especially those who are always in a rush!
And it is unlikely that people who are too fat, and consequently unable
to get themselves into an upright sitting posture, would be particularly
qualified to do so, either. Likewise,
one might argue that people with poor lungs, whether from general ill-health or
tobacco addiction, would be no-less poorly qualified to indulge in the
increased flow of oxygen to the bloodstream, just as the elderly would not be a
particularly good proposition in that respect.
Obviously, one cannot preach a crusade for universal, dynamic meditation
among the masses, any more than one can preach a like-crusade for anything
else. And neither can one be surprised
by the vast numbers of people who, not being qualified to meditate in this
manner, are coerced by what little self-respect they still possess into
deriding it.
Put frankly, meditation is essentially
something which appeals to that relatively small percentage of the population
of any given country who are always interested in the promulgation of
techniques for improving the quality of life, so that the individual interested
in them may adopt as positive an attitude to life as seems compatible with the
formulation of any genuinely moral or noble orientation. Meditation, clearly, isn't for those whose
egocentric relationship to the world leads them to instinctively shy away from
attitudes or practices which imply gratitude to life, or a
complacency not really commensurate with rebellious strictures. It depends to some extent where one lives,
whom one's friends are, what one's experiences in life have been, the condition
of one's health, etc., as to whether or not one will take a positive attitude to
meditation. One can be perfectly
justified in deriding it, just as one can be perfectly justified in praising
it. Those who do not meditate aren't
necessarily fools on that account. It is
simply not for them, and any attitude which ignores this is undoubtedly
mistaken. You may, as a devotee of
meditation, despise cigarette smokers as much as you like, but your feelings
towards them will not entitle you to consider them wrong to smoke instead of to
meditate. Superior to many of them you
may well be, but their inferiority is perfectly legitimate, since the
foundation, often enough, upon which your own superiority has been
erected. The only alternative
perspective to this is one of presupposing that what is right for oneself
should be right for everyone else as well, irrespective of how sadly mistaken
one could be!
But let us leave these wider philosophical
issues and return, finally, to transcendental meditation, which, so we have
argued, is not for everyone. I intimated
earlier that meditation isn't a religion or, at any rate, need not become
one. The fact is that it can be driven
in either an ideological or a religious direction, depending upon the nature of
the people who practise it and their motives for doing so. By itself, meditation doesn't amount to a
religion. But in the hands of
mystically-minded individuals, it can certainly be used as a very important
ingredient in one - as, for example, with a number of modern fringe cults who
practise their own kind of meditation as a means to identification with the
Godhead.
The kind of meditation that I have
outlined here does not aspire to any mystical identification with God
conceived, say, in terms of Creator of the Universe, but is simply an
occupation which, carried out in all sincerity, can provide one with a highly
satisfying state-of-mind for 5-10 minutes whenever one chooses to practise
it. You can call this a process of
self-realization if you like, though there is always an element of doubt, these
days, as to exactly what is meant by this all-too-pervasive expression, and a
limit, moreover, as to how far it can be taken, since, as the
eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher John Hume pointed out, sense
impressions do not constitute the self any more than the thoughts one thinks -
full knowledge of the self, as thing-in-itself, ultimately being beyond one's
cognitive grasp. All one can do, it
seems, is to acquire a rough approximation of the self, and in this respect the
Orient has more to teach and better techniques at its disposal for the acquirement
of this elusive self-approximation than both the Occident and the rest of the
world put together!
But
internal sense impressions certainly can be
experienced through transcendental meditation, and, as already intimated, the
purity of these sensible impressions is well-worth the initial struggle to
attain them. For in a world increasingly
beset by chaos, noise, anarchy, restlessness, tension, doubt, etc., meditation
can be of considerable value in enabling one to take temporary refuge from the plethora
of diurnal events which constantly bombard one's sensibilities and threaten to
destroy all genuine peace of mind.
Yet the course of action I have described
here has very little to do with the pitiful ataxia of the ancient Greeks in
their Hellenistic decadence or, alternatively, with its Buddhist equivalent of
indifference to pleasure and pain. It is
not a kind of spiritual suicide carried-on with the sole intent of shutting out
the various contradictory emotional impressions which inevitably befall anyone
who goes about the world in a natural, open, adventurous manner. Certain so-called sages of the East have long
been renowned, it is true, for their imperturbability - an imperturbability,
however, which too often smacks of defeatism in the face of life's manifold
demands on the human spirit and which, in many Westerner's minds, is still
wrongly associated with any form of meditation.
But that is a specifically Buddhist form
of meditation which has very little to do with the thirty minutes combination
of breathing routine and the transcendental tranquillity resulting from
it. On the contrary, we are concerned
here with a positive experience, not a defeatist one which smacks of
world-weariness. We are concerned here
not only in taking a little refuge from the commonplace demands and experiences
of everyday life but, more importantly, in equipping ourselves with another
weapon for dealing with them. For, in
the battle of life, meditation may not be the most powerful weapon at our
disposal, but it is by no means the least powerful, and many people's lives are
richer and saner for a daily fidelity to thirty minutes spent in the
above-mentioned fashion than would otherwise be the case. It can help, for one thing, to ease
depression, and, as well as providing one with a temporary sanctuary from noisy
neighbours, it can put one in a more positive frame-of-mind for appreciating
the fine arts, especially music - the most idealistic art-form of them all.
However, like most things, meditation has
to be indulged in moderation, otherwise the advantages to be acquired from it
will quickly be replaced by disadvantages, and one may subsequently find
oneself meditating to the exclusion of talking or reading or walking or any
other such important activities. The
rule, as ever, is to approximate to Aristotle's 'golden mean', which, in
popular parlance, means that 'variety is the spice of life', with no undue
emphasis on any one subject to the total exclusion of everything else. Easier said than done, of course, but
generally followed nonetheless!
