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Sr i Chak r a
Bl ossom 3, Pet al 3 APRI L 1991











































Guruji on our Tradition
Here is an article by Guruji on our tradition:
We follow the tradition of manasa putrasof BRAHMA,
Sanatkumara, Sanaka, Sanadana, and Sanatsujata. They were
oblivious to any action including all religious rites called karmas.
For them there was left nothing to be done or left partially
done or undone, nothing scared of profane, or nothing pure or
impure.
Mathas, temples, spiritual movements and social
welfare organizations are only traps which slow down the real
jijnasu the seeker who is able to go it alone. Go where you will,
be with who you will, but do not become b bound anywhere or
to any one and that includes this peetham or this matham of
this Guru. Attachment to any physical form slows down. The
real feet of Guru you must not leave are ANALYSIS &
ENLIGHTENMENT. We never, ever try to coerce or tie
down in any way the people who come to seek near us. It is
because we really love you that we want to set you free.
When you are with me, I give you my undivided
attention. And when you leave, its as if you never existed for
me. Act in the living present. The past is gone, is gone is gone.
Do not thing even for a moment about the past. That way you
will overcome the feelings of guilt, shame, and unnecessary
worry about them. Do not worry about future. Do not cling to
your possessions including your own body.
The unwise consider that their practices alone are
correct, and that the practices of others are incorrect. The wise
person knows that habits, customs, lifestyles, food habits of all
peoples at all places and at all times, all traditions, all races, and
ethnic groups are MINE only. Thus such a person is a
vegetarian and a non vegetarian even though he chooses not to
eat meat. Such a person is a MUSLIM, CHRISTIAN, HINDU,
BUDDHIST, AND ALL ROLLED INTO ONE. Such a
person is cognizant of the identity of all with Brahman.
Therefore there is no attachment or repulsion towards any path.


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continued on page 2
THE JOURNAL OF THE
SRI RAJARAJESWARI PEETAM,
RUSH. N.Y

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Meditation
By Amritananda Saraswathi

What is meditation?
Meditation is to mentally bring into focus all your
sensory and moor organs in order to completely
visualize, feel and experience an object that is
pleasant. The object could be anything indeed.
But since the mind tends to focus on interesting
things, and interesting things happen to be
pleasant, consequently pleasant objects are
recommended for meditation. It helps greatly if
the object of meditation happens to be a living
form, such as flowers, lakes, gardens, clouds,
Gods, angels, humans, etc. Meditation is an
interaction with a living object. Silent
communication with a living object is the main
aim of meditation.

Stages in meditation
There are four stages in meditation,
differing in degree of concentration. The sage
Patanjali commenting of theses stages calls them
by the names: a) Withdrawal (Pratyahara) b)
Holding (Dharana) c) Unbroken, easy flow of
Awareness (Dhyana) d) Union (Samadhi). We
will consider each of the stages by one.

a) Withdrawal (Pratyahara)
The state of mind of a person about to start meditation
is usually flitting form one though to another in a
disorderly and incoherent manner, with the various
sensory inputs coming from the environment triggering
random impulses leading to different trains of thought.
The mind has to be withdrawn from these external
stimuli. The mind has also to be prepared to become
totally aware and working at its fullest potential so that
the creative visualization, that is meditation, can
indeed, happen.

The mind usually has a tendency t move away from the
object of its concentration. This is called centrifugal
tendency (vikshepta shakti). We use this faculty of the mind
initially to throw away the sensory stimuli coming from the
environment in the following way:
After we close our eyes we keep listening to the
sounds near and far, inside and outside. We also try to feel
different parts of the body successively from the feet to
crown of the head covering every part. This way we are
relaxing the entire body from its feelings, stresses and
strains.
Apart from relaxation, there are other very good
reasons for going over the different parts of our body. The
main reason is that the different parts of the body are
mapped into different parts of the brain. There fore,
touching different parts of the body is equivalent to
energizing or accessing different parts of the brain. Thus the
simple act of feeling the body results in making the brain
fully aware and totally relaxed. We should not hurry about
doing this. We could do about two or three passes, each one
taking a couple of minutes.
There is one more important step in withdrawal. This
consists of creating a mood of security peace and tranquility
and power. This mood can be easily created by a few
positive assertions and repeated mentally two or three times
softly in the mind.

Some of these assertions could be:
1. I am peaceful and happy, here and now;
2. I am being taken care of by (fill in what you please,
your guru, your favorite diety, or something else
you believe in);
3. I forgive myself and all others, all sins we have
committed;
4. God has given me my body to be used in service of
myself and others. I love my body, I love my
senses and I send my love to all of them;
5. I reserve an hour a day to be with myself and not
worry about the past nor plan for the future. That
hour is now. I will reserve time later on for
planning and worrying about the past;
6. I define for myself the following as objects of my
meditation. (Here you may choose for your object
of meditation Devi Rajarajeshwari, Ganapati,
Subramanya, Durga, Sri Krishna, Dattatreya,
Ardhaniswara, your Guru, Mahalakshmi,
Saraswati, etc, etc.) I will meditate on this with all
my power at my command with all my senses and
create this reality in my heart.


continued from page 1

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The process of holding on comes to a conclusion when we
have satisfactorily gone over every detail of the object of
our meditation. In this stage, even after our initial
preparatory stage of withdrawal, there could still be some
stimuli coming from outside, filtering into our
consciousness and disturbing our train of thought. Examples
could be a doorbell ringing with a salesman calling, or
having to get up to answer a telephone call, or a discomfort
in the body, and so on. Depending upon the strength of the
interference, we may even forget where we were in the
meditation. The best ting to do under such circumstances is
to start from some approximately near-by-region where we
left off.
As we are coming close towards the end of Dharana, we
will have discovered there is some particular region or spot
(a rosary bead) where we would like to establish a mood or
a rasa and continue to spend time with it. This is the real
part of Dharana. Remember the mind has the tendency to
move away from the place where we are trying to focus it.
(The centrifugal tendency, vikshepa shakti). After a little
while the mind starts another thought unrelated to this
object. A time passes like this where we do not even
remember that we are doing something else. Then with a
little effort, we bring the mind back to our particular object
of meditation.

The stage of Dharana is thus characterized by initially
having have evolving story and then finding a pleasure sport
and holding on to it with effort. The mind keeps straying,
but the effort keeps bringing it back. Thus effort is
characteristic of Dharana.

c) Unbroken, easy flow of Awareness (Dhyana)
The stage of Dharana leads naturally to the stage of Dhyana,
spontaneous concentration. The particular object of our
meditation chose by us in Dharana is giving us such a real
experience of the rasa that is has condensed around the
object. The mind is totally absorbed in the reality of the
experience, that it has lost itself and its centrifugal force.
We are now living in the reality of the object of our
meditation experiencing with all our senses. This unbroken
awareness condensed around the object of our meditation,
this easy flow of awareness and lack of effort normally
needed to concentrate characterizes the state of Dhyana.


b) Holding (Dharana)
Having decoupled the mind from the external stimuli, having
relaxed the body and energized the sensory functions of the
mind and having created a sense of security, peace and power
within ourselves, we are now ready to embark on the process
of holding onto our pleasurable object of meditation, be it
Goddess or God or Guru or Siva Linga, or Sri Chakra, or
whatever.
The process of holding onto the object of meditation can be
understood by comparing it to a rosary of beads. When we do
japam we spend some time with each rudraksha bead of the
rosary using the mantra to feel and know it then move onto the
next bead, spending some time with it and so on in a cycle.
Similarly, in Dharana, we keep shifting our attention to
different parts of the body or the object and try to cover the
whole of the object. We spend time at each point trying to feel
the sound, the touch, the form, the taste and the fragrance
associated with that part. When all these things are
successively known, then that part becomes a living presence
in our mind. When this happens, we move on to a neighboring
region repeating the process. In this way we slowly, gradually
and methodically go over the object of our meditation.
In the process of holding on, or Dharana, the thoughts are
definitely there, but they are not incoherent like in normal
thinking. There is a story, a continuous link, evolving from one
frame to another, one thought to another. It is similar to a
cartoon book where there are different frames but there is a
story line, an experience linking one frame to another, leading
the reader towards a complete evolution of the story. There is
concentration owing to the happiness that we find in each
frame. It is not a concentration which we do not like.

The concentration is there because of the rasa or the mood or
the bhava in each frame. For example, when looking at the
eyes of the Goddess with concentration, we may detect flashes
of mirth, a hidden laughter, or a questioning or compassion or
grace or erotic flippancy or anger, or anything. All these
experiences are aspects of bliss. So bliss does not merely
consist of pleasure alone. It can be any deeply stirring or
fleeting emotion coming from the nine rasas: Sringara
(erotic), Vira (heroic), Karuna (compassion), Raudra (anger
bursting into flames), Abhayanaka (arousing fear), Bhibatsa
(terribly dismembered), Juguptsa (turning away, unable to look
at the gory sight), Hasya (jocular, uncontrollable laughter),
Santa (peace), and Adbhuta (sense of wonder).


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However, the object of meditation is still different from us. It is still an object. We know everything about it. We know its thoughts
as ours, yet it is as if there is a mirror in front of us and we are seeing ourselves reflected in the mirrors as a the object. The three-fold
division of the seer knows the seen as his own self. Yet he sees that as different from himself, as an image of himself. If we continue
in Dhyana for 20 minutes we enter the final stage of meditation called Samadhi.

d) Union (Samadhi)
In Samadhi the distinction between the observer and the observed vanishes totally. There is no separate object of mediation. There is
myself, the subject who is the object.

If we are mediating upon Devi, I simply become Devi in Samadhi. As Devi receives worship by devotees, so do I. As Devi blesses
people, so do I bless people. As Devi exists in all beings, so do I exist in all beings. All bodies are mind, all eyes, all hands, all feet,
all skin, all sense, all experience are my experiences. There is none other than me and the Goddess of eros and I worship myself
through the union of the linga and yoni. Infinite intercourse with siva is my nature, unending orgasmic bliss is my rasa of Sringara.

Such is the experience of samadhi. It is not void. It is not null. It is full. It transcends all life. It transcends all space and time. It is
solidified knowledge, action and desire. There is no movement in it, there is no birth, growth or death, yet it is sum total of all
possible experiences, of all life forms in all the worlds at all times.

This completes our appreciation of the different aspects of meditation. We will endeavor later on to generate a
series of guided meditations. It is obvious that a ritual could also be a meditation. It is obvious also open-eyed
meditation is as valid a concept as a closed eye meditation
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