Meditation

Meditation is essentially the phenomena of mental development. It is basically the procedure by which we develop intelligence and thereby experience mental development. It is a procedure, as well as an experience.

Chanting or relaxing can become a true form of meditation provided it incorporates the development of intelligence. For example, while you are trying to relax by listening to soft soothing music, if you simply become aware of how you are feeling, you may develop an understanding of the relationship between the softness of sound and the softness of feeling. You may then use this knowledge to change your feelings by simply changing the characteristics of sound in you and around you. By simply making your voice softer, by removing noise and harshness from your immediate environment, or by removing yourself from a noisy environment, you may be able to improve your feeling state to better.

Similarly, while chanting a mantra or a word such as “om” or “love,” if instead of simply uttering it you focus on the meaning of it, you may be able to cultivate it in your mind and make it your nature. Likewise, simply praising or uttering your deity’s name may be relaxing and may even assist you in minimizing discursive thinking, but it won’t become a meditation until you focus on the qualities of your personal god. When you do that, you are automatically inspired by those qualities and you start developing them. For example, if you recollect and concentrate on the qualities of Jesus (such as loving-kindness, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness) while listening to or singing his name in prayer, you are more likely to become like him.

An ascetic concentration practice of a martial artist, a monk, or a yogi can become a meditation if it is used for sharpening the mind (developing penetrating focus), so that subtle realities about the ego can be pierced, exposed, and purified. A mere ritualistic training of concentration for becoming powerful does not qualify as true meditation unless it leads to purification of mind.Note that “purification” is a spiritual word for phrases like “evolution” and the “development of intelligence.”

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