A Million Thoughts

by Om Swami

  Published in India by Jaico Publishing House

  Worldwide publishing rights: Black Lotus Press

  Copyright © Om Swami 2016

  ISBN: 978-81-8495-945-1

  Om Swami asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  www.omswami.com

  The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Contents

  Home Sweet Home

  Introduction

  MIND, THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS

  The Nature of the Mind

  The Journey of a Thought

  When Thoughts Become Desires

  When Desires Become Expectations

  When Thoughts Become Things

  THE PATH OF MEDITATION

  What Meditation is Not

  What is Meditation

  Four Stages of Mental Stillness

  Six Principles of Meditation

  ELEMENTS OF GOOD MEDITATION

  Attention

  Posture

  Concentration

  Mindfulness

  Alertness

  THE PRACTICE OF MEDITATION

  Before You Begin

  Concentrative Meditation

  Contemplative Meditation

  Mindful Meditation

  Observant Meditation

  Spirited Meditation

  VIRTUES OF A GOOD MEDITATOR

  The Mother of Meditation

  Compassion

  Truthfulness

  Gratitude

  Empathy

  Humility

  Faith

  HURDLES ON THE PATH

  Physical and Environmental Hurdles

  Emotional Hurdles

  Restlessness

  Dullness

  Stray Thoughts

  Random Images

  Other Hurdles

  SEVEN YOGIC PRACTICES

  Ekagrata – Concentration

  Trataka – Still Gazing

  Shravana – Listening

  Sankalpa – Resolve

  Mauna - Silence

  Ekanta – Solitude

  Tyaga – Letting Go

  MONITORING YOUR PROGRESS

  Self-Awareness Journal

  Meditation Journal

  MEDITATION IN A NUTSHELL

  The Two Paths

  Silence and Awareness

  Mental Exertion and Relaxation

  THE REALIZATION

  The Nine Stages of Bliss

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Home Sweet Home

  Have you ever unlocked the main door and entered your home after a vacation of two or four weeks? You are greeted by the smell of a closed home, a sweet smell of dust. You throw yourself on the couch and you let out a big sigh. You say, “Home, sweet home.”

  No matter how beautiful the vacation might be, after a while you start missing home. You want to get back to a familiar setting. Your home may not be the plushest, it may not have the luxury of room service and housekeeping, and yet you feel most comfortable in your own home. There’s a natural ease, a sense of belonging, a different sort of freedom. It beats the luxuries of the five-star hotels.

  The same goes for our soul as well. Our body is not its permanent home. Our individual consciousness is eternally trying to merge in the supreme consciousness. It wants to go home. It may not be an eloquent orator to tell you so clearly but that’s what it wants to do. Because we are beings of immense freedom and infinite potential, and here we are caught up in the petty tendencies and desires of our mind and body.

  The soul wants to go back to its source. This is the most fundamental law of nature, of creation and destruction: everything must return to its source. Our body may be temporary, our minds conditioned, our consciousness a wary traveller, but our soul knows where it belongs.

  That’s why every person at some point of time in their lives is forced to think about the meaning of their lives. Everyone, who’s experienced even a minute of fulfillment, embarks on a journey greater than their individual existence. That journey could be the path of Einstein or the passion of Christ; it could be the path of Buddha or the moksha of Vedas.

  We may have forgotten our true nature, but our soul – eternal and unblemished – wants to go home. Until you show it the way, the restlessness in life will not go away. No pleasure or relationship can offer you permanent fulfillment because we are all on a vacation, and we are missing home.

  Meditation is going home. It is going back to your source, where you belong, so that you are no longer what people tell you who you are, or what the world has made you to believe, or even what you think of yourself. Instead, it is to discover yourself, to get to your primal source from where bliss, happiness and joy flow constantly. It is to discover your original home, without the furniture of jealousy, covetousness, envy, hatred. A home with no walls of ego and anger. A place where your soul rests in peace, where consciousness flows unimpeded like the gentle Ganges murmuring on a sunny day.

  Let me take you home. It’s a long walk, the path is arduous but it’s worth every step. You’ll discover that happiness is not a pursuit, it’s a feeling. On your way home, you’ll find that freedom is not a quest, it’s a state. You’ll understand that even the best resort can’t be your home. For, as Shiva, the foremost yogi said, “Things are not what they seem, O Goddess, for this world is like a dream.”1

  When you get home, you’ll realize that your room of bliss has always been there. It’s your home, after all.

  Introduction

  Like a moth rushes into the fire without caring about the outcome, each one of us is attracted towards light. This attraction is innate. It propels us to constantly act towards a greater sense of fulfillment. Regardless of how you want it and whether you like it or not, the truth is you can’t run away from the two most fundamental elements of human life. The pursuit of happiness and the quest for freedom. From a sinner to a saint, a beggar to a billionaire – each one of us is working towards acquisition of happiness and freedom. And why not, for to be happy and free is immensely empowering.

  Everything we do and most things we think are ultimately geared towards feeling happier and freer. Every act of ours is aimed at avoidance of suffering. And yet, the harder we work towards our fulfillment, the more shackled we feel. The Vedic view and my personal observation is that our suffering results from a lack of harmony in our being. When what we want from life or others is not aligned with our actions, speech and thoughts – we feel exceedingly restless and dissatisfied. To this effect, I’m reminded of a beautiful tantric legend I heard from an adept during one of my travels. It was a good story that has remained with me and I am paraphrasing it here in my own words.

  Legend has it that there was a time when Shiva – the first meditator – roamed the earth with his consort, Devi. Just as a beautiful moon softly dispels the darkness of the night, the fair- coloured Shiva walked through the streets leaving footprints of his divinity behind. The great yogi took in the decadence and the poverty that gripped the village.

  They stopped by the home of a poor farmer. His body was aching from the day’s hard work. The crop had practically no yield in the last two seasons and he was mad at his wife for not serving him any
meal. She was arguing that there was nothing to cook in the kitchen and they were fighting like they hated each other. The man went ahead and hit his wife.

  The Devi shook in pain and disbelief. She was about to manifest and slay the man, but Shiva stopped her.

  “Things are not what they seem, Uma,” he said. “Nature must run its own course.”

  Just then the woman in a fit of rage took the sickle that she used everyday to cut the grass and hacked her husband’s hand. Unable to bear the pain, he howled and fell down unconscious.

  “This man had usurped his brother’s land,” Shiva explained, “his own karma is coming back to him. And the lady, she had also earned today by selling hay. But, out of attachment, she gave it to her good-for-nothing son who’s currently sleeping with a prostitute.”

  Devi knew that nothing was hidden from Shiva. She said nothing and simply followed him.

  A few blocks down, they saw a bookkeeper tossing and turning in his bed. Suffering from severe insomnia, he was unable to fall asleep. Angered and helpless, he got up and downed half a bottle of alcohol so he could sleep. There was a depressing energy in his home. There was his wife, there were kids, they had resources, and yet the basic fabric of happiness – a sense of belonging – was missing altogether.

  “Surely, this man doesn’t deserve sleepless nights,” Devi said, “he donates to the temple every month and he calls out to you every morning.”

  “Things are not what they seem,” Shiva said benevolently.” He falsifies the financial records for his clients so they evade taxes. In turn, they pay him more.”

  At Devi’s insistence, they visited numerous homes, even the palace of the king. Some were lonely, others were sad, some were quarrelling and some others plotting. Very few slept in peace, even fewer were awake in peace. Everyone was suffering in some way. Distraught at the sad human condition, Devi asked, “Why is man so unhappy, Lord? Is it because they always want more than

  they have?”

  “Evolution is the dharma of Nature,” Shiva said, getting into his meditative posture. “The desire to grow is ingrained in all living entities – from an ant to elephant, from a tiny seed to the giant banyan.”

  “What good is this desire if they spend majority of their lives unhappily?”

  “The desire in itself is not the problem. Man suffers because he’s too scattered.”

  Devi sat quietly as she didn’t quite understand what Shiva meant by the word ‘scattered’.

  “His consciousness is directed elsewhere and prana, life force, is directed elsewhere. His thoughts are going in a direction opposite to his actions. His mind wants one thing while his heart is striving for something completely different. His energy is invested in endeavors conflicting with his emotions.

  The reason man is unhappy is because his thoughts, speech and actions are not in harmony,” Shiva continued, “Anything that is not in harmony in the play of nature is either eliminated completely or forced to align. Suffering is alignment.”

  “Forgive me for pressing on, Nath,” Devi said, “but I feel it’s pivotal for human welfare. Are you saying that the one, whose thoughts, speech and actions are in harmony, does not suffer?”

  “To such a person, suffering will have no more impact than a cloth of silk rubbing against an elephant.”

  “Then how to harmonize?”

  “Meditation, compassion and dispassion lead to liberation, O Devi!” Shiva looked at her lovingly out of his soft, still and compassionate eyes. “Nothing is impossible for the one who treads the path of meditation.”

  Meditation as passed down from the first meditator, Shiva, to an unbroken lineage of siddhas over countless years is what I share with you here. In the yogic tradition, Shiva is not a myth but the first guru.

  The path of meditation I talk about is not just a feel-good five-minute exercise. It is a systematic approach to wipe off the tendencies that you’ve been carrying along with you over countless lifetimes. We get angry when we don’t want to, we go astray even with all the right intentions. We cheat, we lie, we deceive, we put on a mask of falsity. We step out wearing a smile trying to impress others, aware but ignorant that they too are sailing in the same boat as us. Nevertheless, we say things we would rather not, we do things we’d better not. Why? Our tendencies fuel, if not create, our habits, desires and temperament. Someone with the tendency to dominate has the urge to gain more power. A person leaning towards the tendency of seeking attention feels the desire to have more fame. Someone with the natural tendency of possessiveness feels more jealous. A man born with the tendency to lack feels more envious than others.

  Our proclivities, impressions of consciousness, or call them tendencies, are at the root of our desires. They propel us to take action. The results of our actions determine the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of our desires which further drive our emotions. And our emotional state makes us feel the way we do about ourselves, others and the world around us.

  One day we feel powerful and the next we feel crippled. One moment we feel over the moon and the next moment we are grief-stricken. It happens even if there’s absolutely no change in our circumstances. With the same life, same partner, same job and what have you, on some days you feel happy and fulfilled while on another day, under the same set of circumstances, you feel utterly useless, maybe even suicidal. The see-saw of emotions sucks life out of the best of us, leaving us at the mercy of our thoughts and reactions. Confined to the four walls of the mind, the immense potential that each one of us has withers away with time. Very few are able to harness the power of the mind, unleash its secrets and lead a life of fulfillment and achievement. We the creatures of vast oceans resign to our fate in the well.

  Meditation is about hopping out of the puddle of our negativity and jumping into the lake of bliss. True meditation is not just about stilling the mind. Even a good edge-of-the-seat thriller can still your mind for a couple of hours. Instead, meditation is straightening out the knots in the consciousness, it is about calming the tides of emotions and afflictions in the ocean of life. When you mend the fluctuations of your consciousness, you become a river that’s merging in the sea. Individual consciousness then flows seamlessly into the supreme consciousness, a tiny drop is on its way to become the vast ocean. I look upon meditation as the medium to rise above our limited existence and reach out to the infinity of our potential,to shape an ordinary existence into an extraordinary one.

  By consciousness, I don’t mean some mystical or mythical concept. In very tangible words, consciousness is the flow of life. You experience its existence daily in the change in your thoughts, in your moods when on the outside nothing seem to have changed at all. This culmination of consciousness, or your tendencies, are not just from this lifetime alone.

  If you don’t believe in rebirth then this book will be of little use to you. As I said earlier, meditation to me is the most powerful tool to harness and channelize the restive and other tendencies of the mind we’ve been carrying with us over lifetimes.

  Sometimes we act like wolves, at times like a lion, meek as a cow sometimes, soft as a deer, restless as a monkey or lazy as a lizard. We’ve been all that at some stage.

  Yogic scriptures state that we simultaneously live in three types of space. They call it bhuta-akasha, physical space, citta- akasha, mental space, cidda-akasha, the space of consciousness.

  The state of our mind, our mental space, determines how we perceive the physical space around us. If you are happy even average food tastes sumptuous and if you are grumpy even the best food feels tasteless. We are willing to make a lot of compromises when we are happy. But what causes our happiness? What makes us feel light and full of life, and what makes us feel nothing is right even when there’s no change in our circumstances? The answer is our state of consciousness.

  Fluctuations in consciousness bring about an immediate change in our emotions and thoughts. Unless we exp
erience freedom at all three levels, our happiness will always be temporary and incomplete. Such transient state of happiness will repeatedly throw us back into the throes of suffering.

  Meditation is your way to silence the fluctuations in consciousness. To really feel, and put to use, your immense potential, you have to go beyond the incessant chattering of the mind. You have to clean the slate before you can inscribe your sacred existence on it. Meditation is the path – a systematic, methodical, scientific and artful path – to reach that bliss and potential. You have milestones to guide you along the way and a set of practices to help you produce the right conditions for effective and definitive results.

  Each one of us is a master of infinite possibilities at a universal scale. Meditation is to experience your own magnificence, it is to live your potential. It is a state where joy and peace flows from every action you perform, every word you utter, every thought you contemplate. There are no shortcuts. The only way to taste the fruits of meditation is to do it right, to do it properly.

  The ultimate bliss and beauty you experience upon reaching the final stage of meditation has been given various names including the awakening of the kundalini, samadhi, nirvikalapa- samadhi, even nirvana, and so on. I’m not interested in these labels, I never was. My sole focus is to shed light on the path of meditation as I walked it; complete with its trials and tribulations, rewards and outcomes. Must you go to the Himalayas to realize your potential? I would hold off answering this in a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for now. Walk with me and you’ll know the answer by the time you finish absorbing my words written herein.

  There is the ordinary path and the extraordinary path. I will lay out both for you. Based on your own preferences, goal and ambition, you pick the one you like. Regardless of the nature, regime and system of your meditation, I can tell you one thing – meditation is the most scientific endeavor you can undertake to take yourself to a level unimaginable for the ordinary mind, to elevate your consciousness to the universal level, to experience how you are not the body but way beyond. The keyword here is ‘experience’.