Meditation

Qualities

Aspiration

If a person wants to start meditating he should have a deep wish to do so, or - as it probably is in most cases - a deep wish to obtain the "effects" meditation is said to have. If there is no such wish it is most unlikely that he will ever be able to muster the perseverance, which is another quality meditation presupposes.

These "effects" of meditation could be termed "spiritual development," and so we may say that the person in question should have a desire for spiritual unfoldment. This is called "aspiration",17 and the person is called an "aspirant". This expression is used relatively often in this book but should not be taken too literally in the technical esoteric connotation of the word. Usually, the meaning is simply a "seeker". Another word which is also used fairly often is "disciple". This means "pupil", but again it should not be taken too literally in this book, as it is normally used to denote an aspirant on a somewhat higher level of evolution.

Esoterically, the aspirant is a person who has passed the phase which is termed the "culmination" of the personality and has experienced for himself that the satisfaction of desire does not make him happy - which he has believed during the long evolutionary journey up to this point. But he is unable to simply stop desiring, and therefore he starts to desire something else but material welfare and the pleasures of the senses which altogether constitute what we call "materialism".

He has painfully ascertained that the physical world, in which he has been focused so far, does not provide what he is looking for, and therefore he begins to desire some "other reality" which can give him the satisfaction the physical world denies him. In other words, he desires spiritual development in the hope that it will make him happy in another way.

At the same time, he understands that he must make sacrifices in order to reach the "Promised Land" he has heard or read about, for this is an intelligent and strong-willed person, who has been able to reach the top of his profession and consequently seen for himself that "nothing comes of nothing", that if you want to reach your goal you have to invest and make an effort.

Very often it is this kind of person who now invests his powerful aspiration in order to reach some of the goals he neither knows nor understands, and his aspiration works like an "umbrella" which inspects all other desires to see if they serve the purpose. And if they don't, they are rejected with the comment that it would be a waste of time and energy to satisfy them.

This aspiration is really the ultimate desire, for the path of spiritual evolution will with unerring certainty lead to the complete elimination of the desire function as such, because it promotes separatism and selfishness, the most serious hindrances to spiritual development, which is about loving service to humanity and the world. And as it is the path of spiritual unfoldment the aspirant desires, what he is really feeling is the desire to end all desires.

Naturally, he is not aware of that in the beginning, but a time will come when he discovers that this is the way it has to be. It is a very painful recognition, because deep down he realizes that gratifying desire has given him the greatest pleasures in life. He now faces a situation similar to that of sitting on a branch of a tree and cutting it off between himself and the trunk. He knows that at some time or other he has cut through the branch, and then he is going to fall down! The personality falls down and perishes so that only the soul is left.

When the emotional life is focused in aspiration the state of consciousness develops through 3 stages:

1. Fiery longing for "liberation".
2. Intensive search for the inner reality behind outer phenomena.
3. Firm conviction of the existence of the soul, and obedience to its voice.

Alice A. Bailey says about the role of aspiration:

"If is well to point out here that this quality of'going forth' towards the ideal or of straining towards the objective must be so profound in the aspirant to yoga that no difficulties can turn him back. Only when this quality has been developed and proved and when it is found that no problem, no darkness and no time element can hinder, is a man permitted to become the disciple of some Master. Fiery effort, steady persistent longing and enduring faithfulness to the ideal visioned are the'sine qua non'18 of discipleship. These characteristics must be found in all three bodies, leading to the constant disciplining of the physical vehicle, the steady orientation of the emotional nature and the mental attitude which enables a man to 'count all things but loss'19 if he can only arrive at his goal".20

Perseverance

The next quality meditation requires is perseverance - the rest of this life and probably also in many succeeding lives. Without this quality meditation will have no effect, and naturally this is bad news for those who begin on project meditation with the motto: "what's in it for me?" But this is just one of many examples of how the many techniques of the esoteric teaching are "self-protective". This means that in the long run they keep people away who do not yet have a motivation which can be brought to correspond with the deeper purposes of the teaching.

The esoteric teaching is characterized by always demanding a gigantic effort from the students without giving them the faintest idea of what they may expect in the other end - seen from an experiential point of view. They always work blindly in "anticipation of a grant", and the only thing which keeps them going in the beginning is aspiration. But if this is not strong enough, because the frustration which is experienced at the culmination of the personality is not sufficiently deep, nothing will come of the meditation effort. In most cases, this is probably entirely in accordance with the evolutionary perspective of the teaching, for it means that the people concerned have not yet passed the phase of personality culmination, and therefore occult meditation may not represent the next step ahead for them.

We have to establish a steady meditation rhythm which is imprinted on the subconscious and becomes a habit, for the habit saves us a lot of conscious disciplining. The effect of the habit is that if we don't meditate we feel that something is missing, and in this way meditation becomes more than just a spiritual discipline - it becomes a daily sacrament21 where we tune into the rhythm of the world, as Michal Eastcott says.

Therefore, we should be patient and not think that we are busy, for busyness disturbs the process. It shows that our motive is desire for results and not affinity to the soul and the service work it tries to manifest. We should understand the occult saying, "make haste slowly", for a thorough development of each stage speeds up the process in the long run. It is like painting an apartment. We finish up faster if we make a solid first coating. I think every painter will agree to that.

Concentration

Another quality which is required is concentration, that is, the ability to collect the thoughts in a focal point. Thereby, the effective ness of the thought process is increased, in the same way as we may increase the effect of the sunbeams by focusing them through a burning-glass. The importance of concentration in meditation is emphasized by Alice A. Bailey:

"Meditation is but the extension of concentration and grows out of the facility a man achieves infixing the mind'at will on any particular object. It falls under the same rules and conditions as concentration and the only distinction between the two is in the time element. Having achieved the capacity to focus the mind steadily upon an objecf, the next step is developing the power to hold the mind stuff or chitta unwaveringly occupied with that object or thought for a prolonged period".22

During concentration, all other activities of the mind are automatically kept quiet. So, we do not use specific methods like mantras to still the mind, that is, strings of words which, in order to put all other thoughts to flight, are repeated automatically. These methods may be dangerous, for they lead the mind into a passive susceptibility amounting almost to trance. We will deal with this susceptibility later under the heading of "Elements of Danger".

But we may illustrate the use of mantras with an image. Imagine a man sitting in an empty room with a number of doors. Each time a door opens he rushes up to close it. Otherwise, he doesn't do anything, and therefore nothing comes of the process.

So, meditation is a clear and concise thought process which at some time leads to clear results and not vague and nebulous conceptions, as some may believe. This is demonstrated by those individuals who have reached the goal, obtained brain conscious soul contact and now make the results of their meditations available for other people. They don't meditate any longer but communicate through contemplation23 with the higher self, and through it with the Ashram. This phenomenon Alice A. Bailey has commented on in the following manner:

"An initiate never meditates. The advanced disciple never meditates; he does not need to. He has an instinctual contact, and the instinctual memory works. If you are using recollection, you are drawing the mind back into the personality life, and the initiate is not interested in the personality life in any way. He does not need to be... Meditation is entirely...