Meditation for Beginners in Six World Religions

By Gabriel J. Gomes

MEDITATION FOR BEGINNERS IN SIX WORLD RELIGIONS is a step-by-step guide to meditation based on Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Kabbalah, Christian Mysticism, and Sufism. In Chapter I, I explain the nature of meditation and its various stages—physiological, psychological, and spiritual. Chapter II presents how to become free of negative conditioning, such as anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression; how to free positive qualities, such as love, compassion, generosity, trust; and how to expand moment to moment awareness. Chapter III discusses the process of formal meditation from the beginning all the way to enlightenment. In Chapter IV I set out Ground Rules for Formal Meditation.

After discussing the Meaning of Yoga in Chapter IV, in the next chapter I present Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and the meditation practices it prescribes. Next I consider the Meaning of Mantra and Transcendental Meditation, and then Bhakti Meditation and Jnana Yoga or Yoga of Knowledge. Next three chapters are devoted to Concentration and Insight Meditation to represent Theravada Buddhism; Zen Buddhism; and Tibetan Buddhism and their meditation practices. For Daoism, after discussing its nature, I present meditation exercises culled from various sources.

Next, I go on to present Kabbalah and selective Kabbalist meditation practices. From Eastern Christianity, I include how to practice the “Jesus Prayer.” For Western Christianity, I include meditative exercises culled from classical and contemporary sources. For Sufism, I include descriptions of meditative methods derived from various sources.

For those who would want to proceed to advanced practices, I include chapters for Choosing a Path; Finding a Qualified Teacher; and the ideal Teacher-Student Relationship as these will be crucial for them to arrive an experience of enlightenment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796063394

Gabriel J. Gomes

Born and raised in Bangladesh, Gabriel J. Gomes came to the United States to attend the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, from which he earned BA and MA, and later a PhD from Columbia University, New York. Gomes taught religion, including a course on meditation, and philosophy at Marymount College, New York. Later he taught at Pace University, Western Connecticut State University, and Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY. He has published books on comparative mysticism titled, SONG OF THE SKYLARK I: FOUNDATIONS OF EXPERIENTIAL RELIGION (1991); SONG OF THE SKYLARK II: MEDITATION – TEACHINGS AND PRACTICES (1991); and a textbook on world religion called, DISCOVERING WORLD RELIGIONS (2015). Gomes currently lives in Fishkill, NY

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Copyright © 2019 by Gabriel J. Gomes.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

I: The Nature, Aims, and Forms of Meditation

II: Informal Awareness Meditation

III: The Process of Formal Meditation

IV: Ground Rules for Formal Meditation

V: Meaning of the Term Yoga

VI: Concentrative Meditation The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

VII: Glimpses of Mantra, Bhakti, and Jnana Yoga

VIII: The Tantric Journey

IX: The Theravada Path Concentration and Insight Meditation

X: The Path of Zen

XI: The Vajrayana Path: Tibetan Tantras

XII: The Path of Power: Daoist Yoga

XIII: The Way of Kabbalah

XIV: Christian Meditation: The Eastern Church

XV: Christian Meditation The Western (Catholic) Church

XVI: The Way of the Sufi

XVII: Choosing a Path

XVIII: Choosing a Teacher

XIX: The Teacher-Student Relationship

Conclusion

Bibliography

                                For my mother,

                                Veronica Maharani Gomes

                                who taught me compassion

                The conditions of a solitary bird are five:

                    the first, that it flies to the highest point;

                    the second, that it does not suffer for company

                    not even of its own kind;

                    the third, that it aims its beak to the skies;

                    the fourth, that it does not have a definite color;

                    the fifth, that it sings very softly.

                    —Saint John of the Cross, Stanza on Light and Love

INTRODUCTION

This book was originally published in 1991, together with its companion volume, under the title, Song of the Skylark II: Meditation—Teachings and Practices. The companion volume was called, Song of the Skylark I: Foundations of Experiential Religion, which thematically explored mysticism, which I called experiential religion, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In the intervening years since 1991, much has been disseminated about meditation and its physiological, psychological, and spiritual benefits not only through books but also in the media. People come across articles on meditation in periodicals, magazines, and newspapers. Meditation has seeped into the Western mainstream, particularly yoga and mindfulness meditation, which have been harnessed to relieve stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression, hypertension, and a host of diseases stemming from life in today’s world.

While some of this new information will be included here, I primarily intend in this book to present meditation exercises from six world religions as a beginner’s guide to meditation. I will begin by explaining, first, the nature of meditation and its various stages—physiological, psychological, and spiritual—so that the reader can gain an understanding of the entire range of meditation from the beginning all the way to its final goal. In the individual chapters on each of the six world religions, I will concentrate on the teachings and a step-by-step presentation of meditation practices for beginners, and refrain from presenting their advanced practices. This will enable readers to determine the type of meditation best suited for their needs and to begin practicing it on their own without requiring a teacher to instruct them.

I have extensively revised the chapters on each of the six religions initially published in 1991, incorporating new information from publications since that time in books, periodicals, and other media sources. Because these chapters are only introductory guides, readers who wish to become serious practitioners of a particular form of meditation will need to choose a particular path or tradition and find a qualified teacher in that tradition to continue practicing meditation under his or her guidance. To aid the beginner in this endeavor, following the chapters on meditation, I have incorporated from volume 1, Song of the Skylark, guidelines for choosing a path, finding an appropriate teacher, and the ideal teacher-student relationship.

In the chapters on particular meditative paths, I have included, from Hinduism, somewhat lengthy treatment of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (popularly called Raja Yoga) and Tantra. Shorter expositions of mantra, bhakti, and jnana-yoga are also provided. For the sake of brevity, I have stayed with these classical and universally recognized paths and away from their offshoots. Similarly, I have included only Theravada Buddhist meditation, Zen, and Tibetan Yoga to represent Buddhism because these meditative paths are most widely known in the West. To represent the Daoist path, I limited myself to those texts that are available in English.

Although many treatments of Jewish meditation are now available, for the sake of brevity, I will present a general explanation of Kabbalah and selective Kabbalist meditation practices. As for Christianity, to represent the Eastern Orthodox Church, I included only the Jesus Prayer as that seems to be the main type of meditation practiced in this tradition. While Western Christian literature on spirituality and mysticism is enormous, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church, actual descriptions of specific meditative methods are few. As a result, I had to limit myself to including a few meditative exercises culled from classical and contemporary sources representing Catholic practices.

As Sufi initiates take a vow to keep their meditative practices secret (this is true also of many other traditions), I had to rely on partial descriptions by various authors to piece together the Sufi meditative methods and how to practice them.

Meditation for Beginners in Six World Religions fully endorses modern scientific research on meditation and the results that can be gained from practicing it, such as freeing oneself from anxiety, loneliness, depression, stress, distractions, relaxation; and calming and improving one’s mind; reducing risk for various diseases; augmenting memory, attention and cognitive abilities; enhancing performance, leadership and productivity. As most people would probably want to meditate to gain some of these benefits, this book is primarily designed for them. At the same time, it is hoped that some readers will be drawn to deeper practices leading to self-transformation necessary to gain the ultimate goal of meditation.

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE, AIMS, AND FORMS OF MEDITATION

The term meditation has become a household word in the West today. Over the past fifty years, an influx of teachers from the East has made it a familiar, if not a household, word. Since the late sixties, Western psychology has been paying a greater attention to various methods of meditation and measured their benefits in the physiological and psychological realms. Medical researchers using meditation methods for relaxation, healing, and building the immune system may have created the impression that these are the primary reasons to meditate. The numerous books on mindfulness and yoga currently available might convey the impression that meditation is about only such practices. Departing from such popular approaches, I shall present in this book a comprehensive view of meditation by first approaching the discussion in this chapter on the nature of meditation in terms of its aims.

Although there may be as many reasons to meditate as there are meditators, there appears to be a definite correlation between the intentions of meditators and the three levels of the meditative path: the physiological level, the psychological level, and the spiritual level. Most definitions of meditation include one or more of these levels.

The Physiological Level

Many people begin to practice meditation merely as a technique for relaxation. In our high-pressure technological society, meditation has become a means of obtaining various physiological benefits. Newspapers frequently report that management training centers are teaching meditative techniques for relaxation and stress reduction, as well as training in attention to increase individual performance, generate greater productivity, and develop leadership skills. Two methods most commonly employed for these purposes are yoga and mindfulness training. On January 20, 2019, the New York Times reported that many members of the military often use yoga as an element of their workout routine, and veterans turn to it for therapeutic reasons. The practice of yoga has become nearly universal. As for mindfulness, Time magazine reports that today, mindfulness is a $1.1 billion industry in the US alone, with 2,450 meditation centers and thousands of books, apps, and online courses (February 4, 2019). And on April 6, 2019, Times reported that the United States military, the New Zealand Air Force, and the British Royal Army, Royal Air Force, and Royal Navy; and the New Zealand Air Force have given mindfulness training for some officers and enlisted soldiers. And military forces of the Netherlands are considering it also. Thus, these methods are employed in a variety of contexts and purposes, which have been extensively studied and reported by various professional, academic, and media outlets. Many psychotherapists use it as a method for patients to manage anxiety without drugs. In 1984 the National Institute of Health issued a report that recommended meditation above prescription drugs in the first treatment of mild hypertension (Goleman 1:168). Many medical centers throughout the country are undertaking meditation research and teaching patients how to relax in order to reduce stress, tension, anxiety, depression, and to gain self-control. The evidence for the effectiveness of meditation in treating stress disorders has become compelling. An increasing number of physicians are recommending meditation as a way to combat attention deficit disorder or ADD (in fact some writers consider our ordinary state of mind wandering as a form of ADD), AIDS, and speedy recovery after heart surgery. In addition, by inducing relaxation, meditation has been found to lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, improve blood flow to the heart, increase circulation, and help prevent heart disease and stroke (Goleman 169).

Research has shown that meditation and relaxation can strengthen the immune system by improving the levels of natural killer cells and antibody titers, thereby warding off disease, making people less susceptible to viruses, and helping patients with their own healing (Goleman 1:170). Explaining the process of how the immune system is improved, Rob Wechsler states, The brain can send signals along nerves to enhance defenses against infection and pump out chemicals that make the body fight more aggressively against disease. And since the pathways can be turned on and off by thoughts and emotions … mental states can alter the course of an illness.(52) This occurs as the brain and the immune system make a closed circuit and work through feeding and feedback. In the process, meditation directly affects the structure and function of the brain by rewiring it and thickening the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for decision-making. Meditation can train the mind and reshape the brain as the neurons in the brain adapt themselves to direct activity in the frontal, concentration-oriented area of the brain, thereby appearing to increase attention span, sharpen focus and improve memory, counter the fight-or-flight response, and achieve a calmer, happier state.

In many cases of diabetes, relaxation has been shown to improve the body’s ability to regulate glucose. By reducing emotional upsets and constriction of air passages, meditation also seems to relieve asthma. It can lessen the severity of angina attacks and alleviate chronic, severe pain, migraine headaches, gastrointestinal problems, insomnia, emphysema and skin disorders like psoriasis (Goleman 1:168–171). In addition to curing psychosomatic illnesses, such as anxiety and depression, meditation can reduce prostate cancer, combat tumors in breast cancer, manage pain without medication, reduce various mental and physical malfunctioning, slow the aging process, and increase energy and efficiency in everyday living.

As a result of the demonstrated effectiveness of meditative practices, many people may come to think that meditation is primarily a powerful relaxation technique. As impressive as the stress-reduction results are, we must not likewise conclude that meditation is merely a method of attaining physiological benefits. Traditionally, such benefits have been perceived as consequences of meditation, not as goals. In the words of Roger Walsh, the goals of meditation are for one to become conscious of and familiar with our inner life; to develop deep insight into the nature of mental processes, consciousness, identity, and reality; to attain optimal states of psychological well-being and consciousness; and, ultimately, to reach the source of life and consciousness (1:18–19).

The Psychological Level

To arrive at such a state of continuous mental relaxation that no external event can trigger panic, anxiety, tension, stress, or other conditioned reactions is the goal of the second level of meditation. Additionally, this level is concerned with letting go of control, striving, and making the effort to maintain and enhance yourself and your world, which enables you to live continuously in the open space of pure awareness and free being.

This state is not easily arrived at. Suppose that you have an important job interview, and you are at the station waiting for the train. The stationmaster announces that the train will be delayed an hour, you cannot get to a phone because they are all tied up, and you had forgotten to bring your cell phone along. Are you then relaxed? If you have just been fired, if your son has just wrecked your car, if your wife has just announced that she is leaving you, do you feel very happy and relaxed?

You may begin meditating in order to relax and may feel tranquil during meditation. But as you enter your round of daily activities, you soon discover that your negative habit patterns pull you out of your relaxed, alert state and plunge you back into a whirlpool of anger, fear, hatred, frustration, stress, tension, anxiety, depression, loneliness, or other conditioned reactions. And then there are habits and automatic thinking that keep your chattering mind trapped and imprisoned. As Geraldine Coster remarked, Few people realize how repetitive and hence automatic the vast majority of everyday thinking is (133). And she says that it extends to the entire human condition: The whole of human life at its present stage is confused and shadowed by a mass of so-called thought (134). Of habitual fixations that keep us trapped in unawareness most of our lives, she says, It is the nature of the human mechanism to set or harden into fixities of habit … not only of the body but of the mind and emotion (33). You realize that in order to remain in relaxed awareness, you need to develop a discipline to keep your awareness free of entrapment in negative conditioning and repetitive and automatic thinking as well as fix habits of body, mind, and emotions that create mental turmoil and emotional roller coasters. The development of a discipline that will bring about a state of being which will not only free the mind from all existing conditioning but also prevent new ones from replacing the old. Such is the task of the second level of meditation.

At this level, as you begin by facing yourself and seeing how you actually are, you discover that your mind is programmed by conditioning, hemming you in, restricting you in every direction, depriving you of a direct contact with anything. Ordinarily, not only do they go unnoticed, remaining beyond your control, but on the contrary, they control ordinary consciousness. One reason for it is that we identify with them as part of who we believe we are and that it is the only way we can navigate our world. But once you recognize that you have been conditioned to be that way since childhood—that it is not what you really are and not the best or happiest way for you to be—you can then make the fundamental life-changing decision of what you want to be. Eventually you realize that since your consciousness is made up of conditioning, unless it is completely deconstructed and transcended you cannot become fully free.

The process of deconstructing consciousness and becoming free consists in dissolving negative conditioning, old fixations, and habits; removing limits and distortions caused by mental constructs; clearing emotional blockages; freeing awareness from entrapment in thoughts, objects, and mental contents; and removing the limits on your positive qualities imposed by conditioning. Eventually you realize that to be fully free, you will need to transform your consciousness, identity, and reality.

Perceiving the centrality of the deconstruction process, Robert Ornstein defines meditation as a set of techniques designed to produce an alteration in consciousness by shifting attention away from the active, object-oriented, linear mode toward the receptive mode, and often, from an external focus of attention to an internal one (1:158). This deconstruction is characteristic not only of the second level of meditation, but also all its phases. Without deconstruction, neither the continuous state of relaxation, nor freedom from negative conditioning and enhancement of positive states, nor attainment of higher states, nor realization of the ultimate goal of meditation is possible. So long as the mind remains fixated on and operates from the present construction, it will remain bound to it, which will prevent the emergence of transpersonal states. Thus, deconstruction constitutes the very heart of the second level and is the key to meditation as a whole.

Essential to this deconstruction is a reversal of the orientation of consciousness—the process by which ordinary consciousness is constructed, reinforced, and maintained. And essential to the reversal are disidentification with and nonattachment to external objects and mental contents. And central to disidentification and nonattachment is not reacting to anything you experience—to any mental contents, or any sensation or thought that arises in the mind, or to any external condition or the world. When you do not react, you do not reinforce your conditioning. These steps are essential to transcending the personal and realizing the transpersonal states. Indeed, they are so central that meditation can be said to consist of their sustained and continuous practice until complete transcendence of all constructs and conditioning has been attained.

Essential to the reversal is shifting the orientation of consciousness from the outside world inward, toward itself by first cutting off external sensory stimuli, which feed into the stream of consciousness and contribute to mind wandering. Secondly, consciousness maintains itself and its separation from the world by triggering an incessant chatter or flow of thoughts and keeping a running commentary on everything, creating an illusion of continuity, identity, and permanence. So without stopping thought, conditioned reactions, and the stream of consciousness, ordinary consciousness will continue to be reinforced, and the crucial shift necessary for deconstruction and transcendence will be prevented.

This inward shift and deconstruction proceeds from the surface structure to the deep, inward structure; from the gross, perceptual to the symbolic, conceptual or generalized structure. At each step of the shift, your attention breaks through yet another restriction, yielding a more expanded and encompassing awareness. A corresponding bridging of the distance between consciousness and reality takes place. When all structures and forms become deconstructed and transcended, the separation between consciousness and reality disappears. Stopping or transcending thought is, therefore, essential to this inward turn.

In meditation, the mind is like a swinging door, swinging from doing, striving, and grasping to letting go and just being. This process is like closing the door on the active and opening it to the receptive mode of the Janus-faced mind, with the shifts or pivoting taking place at critical junctures. Each one of these shifts consists of deconstructing a layer of conditioning until all layers are deconstructed and transcended. Then the mind pivots around and directly faces itself, thereby becoming pure, limitless Awareness without contents or objects. This shift of the mind toward its essential nature is the essence of the inward turn, which is, at the same time turning directly toward Reality as Such.

The key to achieving this deconstruction is holding the focus of your attention directly on the object of meditation without reacting to anything that arises—that is, prior to the triggering of thoughts, mental reactions, or any information-processing activities. When you are able to sustain the focus of attention for prolonged periods without letting your attention wander or without becoming lost in thought, the siege of the object-world upon your consciousness will begin to lift and the orientation of your consciousness will start to shift. Like a car without fuel, a mind without reacting to whatever arises will stop running; its thoughts will subside, and its awareness will correspondingly increase, as it becomes free of conditioning and constructs. When nothing intervenes between your attention and the object of meditation, nothing will reinforce or maintain the existing construction of consciousness. As it becomes free, void, silent, and still, it makes a pivotal shift whereby awareness disengages from every content, object, construct, conditioned state, and realizes its nature as pure unconditioned state of Awareness. Thus, like the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly, this metamorphosis brings about a transcendence of consciousness, and what emerges is pure, All-Embracing Awareness, identical with Reality as Such. You cannot actively strive for or realize this transformation through any conditioning or construct—in fact, by any means whatsoever.

In daily activities, deconstruction can be achieved through the continuous practice of disidentification and nonattachment toward the external world, sensory objects, thoughts, and mental contents, especially toward objects of identification, attachment, and desire. This will enable you to break free of fixations resulting from habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Your hitherto scattered attention will become unified and present-centered, and awareness will begin to expand and overcome its distance from things.

It follows that meditation cannot be equated with thinking, which can only trap awareness and reinforce the present construction. It cannot liberate the mind from itself. There is, however, a difference on this point between Eastern and Western approaches to meditation. In the West, meditation is regarded as a discursive, sustained thought or a reflective inquiry into a subject. As a result, meditation is considered as a stage preliminary to the more advanced stage of contemplation. In the East, on the other hand, essential to meditation is cutting through discursive thought and arriving at the state of awareness beyond thought. So in the East, meditation is an advanced practice.

These differences arise from differences of goals. The East regards the ultimate aim of meditation as realization of the Unconditioned State. This state can be reached only by going beyond all thought, conditioning, and ordinary consciousness. Working within the dualistic framework, however, the West does not consider discursive thought a hindrance to reaching the final goal of meditation.

Nevertheless, meditation does not consist in thinking or trying not to think. Even in Christian meditation, at the advanced stage of infused contemplation, thinking falls away. The contemplative simply rests in a state of loving awareness of God’s presence.

You can see now why meditation is said to be a path without a goal, for the path is the goal. Because the conditioned mind is tethered to obtaining results and pursuing goals, we seldom do anything except for the sake of some extrinsic reward that endows our action with value. Since a goal implies duality, a separation from what we desire, and striving only maintains it, all goal-oriented activities reinforce ordinary consciousness. As the ultimate aim of meditation is to deconstruct this consciousness and to arrive at the ultimate, or Unconditioned State of Being and Consciousness outside of which nothing exists, it cannot have a goal external to itself. That is why the core of meditation does not consist in attaining any goal, but in erasing the separation from Reality created by our goal-seeking activities. Meditation peels off all artificiality, removing all additives and preservatives deposited in us through years of conditioning, socialization, and training so that we can arrive at our natural, spontaneous, pure Self or nature.

The Spiritual Level

On the spiritual level, the ultimate state realized in meditation is a state beyond ordinary consciousness. As consciousness is formed by and functions through conditioning, construct, content, object and thought, and reaction to stimuli, it is subject to disturbances originating from them. Only what is conditioned and reacts accordingly can be disturbed. Where there is no conditioning or content, nothing can act as a stimulus for disturbance. Since only a state beyond conditioning can free the mind of conditioning, as the Buddha had noted long ago, traditionally, meditation has sought to bring the mind to the state beyond conditioning—to the source of life and consciousness, as Walsh put it.

To experience this true nature or the Self is the aim of the third or spiritual level of meditation. An intensification of the final phase of the psychological level naturally leads you to this third level. As attention stays focused on the object of meditation for prolonged periods, awareness becomes unified. It penetrates and becomes one with the object, and as it reverses its orientation and faces its ultimate nature, it becomes free of thought and the object-world. Thus, finally, it comes to experience its true nature in enlightenment.

While the second level of awakening, integration, unification, and expansion through the personal stage is concerned primarily with psychological growth, the third, spiritual, level involves growth through the transpersonal stages. While the initial steps of the second level have affinities with various psychologies and psychotherapies, at the third level these affinities are left behind. The cleaning out of negative conditioning, habits, and psychic debris, and karmic residues continue, however. The third level is the spirit’s return journey to itself, which requires a transcendence of every barrier, limitation, and condition until only pure Unconditioned Spirit remains as the identity of all that is.

Recognizing this ultimate aim, many experts define meditation as the path toward a realization of the Spirit, the Self, God, the Unconditioned, or Reality as Such. The classical yogas, Buddhism, Daoism, Kabbalah, Christian mysticism, Sufism, and many of their offshoots embrace this definition. As Swami Muktananda has stated, We do not meditate to relax a little and experience some peace. We meditate to unfold our inner being … Through meditation, our inner awareness expands and our understanding of inner and outer things becomes steadily deeper … Ultimately, meditation makes us aware of our own true nature. It is this awareness which removes all suffering and delusion, and this awareness comes only when we see face to face our own inner Self (20–24).

Buddhism calls the realization of this ultimate goal Nirvana or Buddha-nature. The aim of Daoist meditation is returning to the Source—the Dao—and realizing oneness with it. And in the traditions of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism, the ultimate aim of meditation or contemplation is union with God. Sheikh Javad Nurbakhsh may be said to speak on behalf of all three Western theistic traditions in what he states about this final stage of the journey:

Meditation is one of the basic conditions for the attainment of voluntary death which is the aim of the Spiritual Path. As a result of meditation, the Sufi gradually becomes estranged from the world of I and you. He loses even the sense of meditation with its lingering quality of duality, God causing him to die to himself and bringing him to life in Himself. (1:80–81)

In order to realize this voluntary death, you have to transcend the personal and successively pass through the transpersonal stages. One of the most cogent characterizations of the transpersonal stages is that of Ken Wilber. According to him, the first of these stages is the psychic, which operates beyond the ordinary causal mode, in terms of what Jung called synchronicity. It is more intuitive, holistic, integral, inclusive, and panoramic than previous stages. Beyond the psychic is what Wilber calls the subtle level, which is characterized by the experience of union with the object of meditation, universe, or deity. The apex of the subtle stage is union with the personal God or God-as-object. The Transcendent Other is now experienced as the immanent presence at the highest point or deepest level of one’s psyche or spirit—the archetypal self. Beyond the subtle is the causal, which is marked by the experience of identity with the Godhead or Reality as Such (6:27–31). To be permanently established in this state and to live, think, and act from it is the final goal of meditation.

There is a difference between dualist and nondualist traditions on the final goal of the meditative path. Believing Ultimate Reality to be dualistic, traditions that conceive God to be a personal Being separate from the created world regard the final stage of the path as a state of permanent union between God and the individual. These dualistic traditions often describe this union in terms of the relationship between lover and beloved. On the other hand, experiencing God or Ultimate Reality to be transpersonal, nondualist traditions, such as Vedanta Hinduism, Buddhism, and Daoism (as well as many individuals within the dualist traditions), proclaim the final goal of meditation to be identity with Ultimate Reality. In this view, meditation is essentially a process of waking up from a dream—that you are separate from all things and God—and experiencing yourself as not-other than God or the Unconditioned. To arrive at this identity as your permanent state is the end of the path and goal of human existence. Which of these views represents the final goal of meditation, the final stage of the path, the ultimate state of things?

If we follow the dualist tradition, union with God is the ultimate goal of the path. The claim of identity is a sacrilege. On the other hand, Lawrence LeShan and others hold that both dualism and nondualism represent alternate versions of reality. All versions are relative to one another and have equal status. Each is ultimate within its own construction of finality. It is not possible to stand outside of them and decide which is the ultimate (LeShan 2:1–84). So all you can do is to decide pragmatically which is ultimate for you.

According to a third view (advocated by Ken Wilber, Bernadette Roberts, and others), union with God is on the relative plane, whereas identity with God represents the absolute beyond the relativity of planes and states. Union with God cannot be the ultimate end of the path; it must rest with identity. As Ken Wilber explains, while communion with God takes place on the subtle plane, which is the stage of saintly religion, identity with the Godhead is experienced at the causal level, which is the stage of sagely religion. In this state, consciousness reaches Ultimate Reality as it completely transcends all relative planes and states and totally awakens in its original state of Consciousness as Such. In this state, saintly communion with Spirit is transcended by sagely identity with Spirit, as saintly revelation of God as Absolute Other is transcended by sagely revelation of God as radical and transcendental Consciousness as Such. This is the Ultimate Ground and goal of all things and of the meditative path, where reigns, asymptotic to infinity, the absolute identity of Consciousness as Such with all its manifestations (6:33).

Which of these points of view signifies the ultimate truth? If we follow the first, the answer is clear. On the basis of the second, we cannot answer this question. Now, if nonduality is a model of reality alongside duality, then LeShan’s view is inescapable. However, the claim of nonduality is that it is not a model of reality but transcends all models, concepts, constructs, and frameworks, and it is a direct experience of reality in its Unconditioned State. This experience must represent the ultimate truth and the final goal of the meditative path.

Having discussed various goals and levels of meditation, I need to emphasize here that it is highly commendable to begin meditating with whatever goals and benefits you have in mind—physiological, psychological, or spiritual. You may, for instance, decide to meditate to become more relaxed, to reduce stress, anxiety, tension, depression, loneliness—whatever. But you will soon discover that if you desire to make a significant advance toward these goals, you will need to focus on the psychological level—your present negative conditioning and habituation that plunge you into these states. You must free yourself from the present habit patterns of your mind that hold you a prisoner. And the key to breaking out of your habit patterns is to develop a nonreactive state of awareness, which is called equanimous mind. You will be able to do so if you practice the type of meditation that aims at it. It is undoubtedly true that living in the world today, it is too difficult to aim at a total transformation of consciousness necessary to attain the ultimate goal of meditation. But it will not require superhuman effort, such as the Buddha did for six years to arrive at the ultimate goal of Nirvana or total liberation, to break free of the prison of negative habit patterns. So if you decide to take up meditation (and my reason for writing this book is for you to do so), I would urge you to aim at this freedom from the reactive mind. It will vastly change your life; reduce or eliminate stress, tension, anxiety, depression, loneliness, or whatever afflicts you now; increase energy and efficiency in everyday living; and enable you to become a fully aware human being.

Kinds of Meditation

In the broadest sense, meditation may be said to be of two kinds: spontaneous and intentional. The former is experienced when the mind suddenly stops its usual internal chatter and preoccupations with things past or future and opens to Unconditioned Reality, here and now. At such moments, the distance between you and the universe is lost, and you experience yourself to be one with the Unconditioned. Such was the experience of Ramana Maharshi, the great Indian sage of early twentieth century. As he describes his own experience, at seventeen and in perfect health, he was suddenly seized by a violent fear of death and just felt [he was] going to die. The shock of the fear of death drove his mind inward. He kept thinking, Now death comes … What is it that is dying? He then lay down, imitated a corpse, and kept thinking, This body is dead. But with the death of the body, am I dead? Is the body I? Then he felt the full force of the I surging within him and came to realize, I am the deathless Spirit. He says of his realization: From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination … Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on (Osborne, 9–10). This was most extraordinary. Few people have come to such a spontaneous realization.

Intentional meditation itself can be broadly divided into formal and informal meditation. The former requires a specific time, place, and method, while the latter does not require a special setting but can be practiced anywhere and at any time, its context being the daily activities of life.

Formal meditation itself can be divided in several ways. One is in terms of methods, such as various types of meditation based on breathing or mantra repetition. Other common types are meditation based on sound, either chanted aloud or silently listened to; visualization; movement; focusing attention on and observing various sense objects or parts of the body; observation of mental contents, sensations; and various permutations or combinations of several of these types of meditation.

Another way is to divide it into concentrative and awareness or insight meditation. The first type consists in directing and holding attention exclusively on a single object for the entire period of meditation. As attention is held focused for prolonged periods, it stops its usual flitting about from one thing to another and becomes unified around the object.

The second type consists in direct awareness of what is, just as it is by focusing attention directly and immediately on the object chosen for meditation before the triggering of any cognitive processing activity and before reacting to it. This type of meditation can be practiced either in a formal setting or carried out informally in the midst of daily activities and experiences. In the latter case, positive and negative conditioned reactions and the ongoing flux of moment-to-moment experiences can serve as the focus of attention and observation. In formal meditation, as in insight meditation, one method is to simply and directly be aware of your bodily sensations and mental processes, cutting through their programmed configurations and attempting to arrive at a direct experience of what is. In informal meditation, on the other hand, attention is focused directly on conditioned states so as to break free of them and arrive at a moment-to-moment awakening to what it is.

Although this distinction is important, these two types of meditation are not mutually exclusive. Most fully developed paths of meditation employ both concentrative and insight meditation to arrive at enlightenment. Thus, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which is usually categorized as concentrative meditation, acknowledges and employs insight at advanced stages. This is also true of meditative methods in other traditions. On the other hand, paths that are considered primarily awareness meditation, such as jnana-yoga, vipassana, and Zen, employ concentrative exercises at an early stage of the practice. Both types are necessary to attain enlightenment. As Master Achaan Chah has pointed out: Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation is one end of the log; calm and concentration is the other end. Like a light and its switch, the two go together: To concentrate the mind is like turning on the switch, and wisdom is the resulting light. Without the switch, there is no light. Concentration must be firmly established for wisdom to arise (15, 90).

The generalized descriptions of informal awareness meditation and formal meditation in the next two chapters precede a discussion of various meditative paths in Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In these chapters, I will present mainly what a beginner would most likely be interested