Meditation
Meditation is a science of consciousness. It transcends time, tradition, and location. We teach the common principles of meditation.
West
If the soul is vigilant, and withdraws from all distraction and abandons its own will, then the spirit of God invades it, and it can conceive, because it is free to do so.
- Abba Cronius, Christian Desert Father (circa 350 C.E.)
Contemporary
The stillness and silence of the mind has a single objective: to liberate the Essence from the mind so when fused with the Inner Self it (the Essence) can experience That which we call the Truth.
- Samael Aun Weor, The Technique of Meditation (1965)
East
Union is the dissolution of mental waves.
Then, the seer rests in her own nature.
- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 1:1 (circa 400 C.E.)
Ashtanga Yoga
Real yoga is, at best, is only 1/8th concerned with physical posture (asana). Real yoga is about meditation.
The Yoga Sutra’s of Patanjali serves as the authentic foundation of yoga. In his aphorisms, Patanjali lays out the following steps:
Yama: Ethics of What Should Not Be Done
Niyama: Ethics of What Should Be Done
This beautiful outline of the stages of meditation is practiced and taught by our instructors using simple techniques that can be learned by anyone.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is thousands of years old, and was revived in modern culture by Swami Vivekananda, seen to the right.
Technique of Meditation
In India, this Self-observation and study of our psyche is properly called Pratyahara.
Bird-like thoughts should pass through the space of our own mind in a successive parade, but without leaving any trace.
The infinite procession of thoughts projected by the “I” are exhausted in the end, and then the mind remains still and in silence.
A great Self-realized Master said, “Only when the projector, in other words, the ‘I,’ is completely absent, then befalls the silence which is not a product of the mind. This silence is inexhaustible, it is not of time, it is immeasurable. Only then arrives THAT which is.”
This whole technique is summarized in two principles:
Profound reflection
Tremendous serenity
This technique of meditation, with its non-thinking, puts to work the most central part of the mind, the one that produces the ecstasy.
Remember that the central part of the mind is that which is called Buddhata, the Essence, the Consciousness.
When the Buddhata awakens, we remain illuminated. We need to awaken the Buddhata, the Consciousness.
The Gnostic student can practice meditation seated in the Western or Oriental style.
It is advisable to practice with eyes closed to avoid the distractions of the exterior world.
It is also convenient to relax the body carefully, avoiding any muscle remaining in tension.
The Buddhata, the Essence, is the psychic material, the inner Buddhist principle, the spiritual material or prime matter with which we will give shape to the soul.
The Buddhata is the best that we have within and awakens with profound inner meditation.
The Buddhata is really the only element that the poor intellectual animal possesses to arrive at the experience of that which we call the Truth.
Excepted from The Technique of Meditation, Samael Aun Weor