Being one with the object of meditation
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Being one with the object of meditation
In certain forms of ritualistic worship performed in temples, the person performing the worship makes certain gestures called nyasa. There are varieties of nyasas called anganyasa, karanyasa, etc. Only religious priests or a person expert in performance of ritualistic worship will know what nyasa actually means. It is a Sanskrit word which means 'placing oneself', or 'the placement of anything', in a particular location, in a given manner.
This system of 'placing' is followed in ritualistic worship of a deity in a temple by touching different parts of one's body and concentrating in the mind at the same time the corresponding part of the object, the deity, or divinity concerned. We must remember that ritualistic worship also is a kind of meditation. Worship is not a mechanical action. The mind is actively operating there; otherwise, it would become lifeless and would not bring the desired result.
In this placement of the process of nyasa the parts of the shape, contour or bodily structure of the divinity adored are correspondingly placed in the respective parts of the body or the personality of the worshipper. When I touch my forehead, or a part of my head, I utter a prayer, a word, a mantra signifying that the forehead or the head of the divinity has entered my head and is my head. So, I am not seeing the head or the forehead of the divinity with my eyes as something looking at me; rather it looks through me, through my eyes, and is 'me'. A little bit of strong imagination and feeling is necessary here, in this practice.
Suppose, instead of the idol or the murti of the divinity worshipped, we consider a person in front. You have to make that person one with you. There is a great philosophy behind this technique. It is highly beneficial and also dangerous, if the mind is not pure while attempting the technique.
I am looking at you, and when I look at you I am seeing your eyes; they are outside me. But that is not the proper way of looking at you. You have to look through my eyes and I have to look through your eyes, so that instead of myself and yourself being face to face, we stand in collaboration parallelly – one 'enters' the other. The two eyes have become one eye; the two heads have become one head and they come to a state of coalescence. Who is seeing? This question will not arise at that time. Are you seeing the object or the object is seeing you? You may say it is either way. It may be that you are seeing through the eye of the object or the object is seeing through your eyes. If this practice of nyasa in the process of worship becomes successful, divinity will enter the worshipper.
The great god, the incarnation, whoever be your ideal you are worshipping, is seeing through your eyes and you are seeing through its eyes so that it 'is' you and you 'are' it. I hope you are able to appreciate what this means. Its hands are your hands and your hands are its hands. Your heart is its heart; its heart is your heart. Your feet are its, and vice versa. Every part of your body is correspondingly the part of the body of that divinity you are adoring in meditation.
Then what happens? You have absolute control over that object in the same way as you have complete control over the limbs of your own body. I can tell my hand to lift, and it lifts; I can tell my legs to walk and they walk. But if I tell the legs of somebody else to walk, they need not, because they are not identified with my consciousness. The legs of another person have not become one with my legs; therefore, I cannot tell them to walk. They will not move. But if my legs have become another's legs, and if I tell them to move, they will move.
The whole building will move if your consciousness has identified itself with it, part by part, little by little, bit by bit, in every little detail, and you become the whole building itself. This is the secret behind the nyasa technique of worship in the ritual of daily performance in temples, or even in one's own altar at home. Such a process has to be adopted in our meditation on the object, whatever be that object which we have chosen for the purpose.
There is an interesting aphorism of sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras which refers to this kind of process: The identification of yourself with the object of meditation is somewhat like the identity seen when a coloured object is brought near a clear crystal, so that the colour has entered the crystal; the crystal becomes red if a red flower is brought near it. The objective and subjective sides enter into each other and the one is indistinguishable from the other.
The crystal may be compared to the meditating consciousness. The object of meditation may be regarded as something similar to that which is brought near the crystal. In the process of the entry of the structure of the object into the structure of the crystal, and the very substantiality of the crystal itself, the two get identified into a single mass of being, so that one will see that the object itself has become the crystal or the crystal has become the object.
The object 'flows' into the subject; the subject 'flows' into the object. Or to cite another illustration, imagine that there are two tanks filled with water up to the brim and they are on equal level (not one high and one below). There is a passage between one tank and the other tank so that water flows slowly through that passage from one tank to the other tank, and from the other tank to this tank. One will not know the water of which tank is flowing to which tank. There is a mutual commingling of the waters of two tanks. The water in between, in that passage, may be considered as the water of this tank or that tank.
In this consciousness of the identification through the placement of nyasa mentioned, the object becomes united with the consciousness of the meditator in such a way that, at that time, in that experience, one will not know whether the object is within oneself or oneself is within the object. Who is in whom? Is the object meditating upon you, or are you meditating upon the object? If the great God is in front of you, is He contemplating you when He gazes at you, or are you contemplating on Him? Either way the answer is correct.
- JackDaydream
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
I like the analogy between the crystal and meditation consciousness. I have crystals in my room and love holding them and gazing at the myriad forms in them as a means of contemplation. Also, the not knowing whether the 'object is within oneself' shows the way in which there is a merging of boundaries as a phenomenological aspect of processes within meditation experiences.cognition wrote: ↑September 28th, 2022, 10:29 pm THE SYSTEM OF NYASA
In certain forms of ritualistic worship performed in temples, the person performing the worship makes certain gestures called nyasa. There are varieties of nyasas called anganyasa, karanyasa, etc. Only religious priests or a person expert in performance of ritualistic worship will know what nyasa actually means. It is a Sanskrit word which means 'placing oneself', or 'the placement of anything', in a particular location, in a given manner.
This system of 'placing' is followed in ritualistic worship of a deity in a temple by touching different parts of one's body and concentrating in the mind at the same time the corresponding part of the object, the deity, or divinity concerned. We must remember that ritualistic worship also is a kind of meditation. Worship is not a mechanical action. The mind is actively operating there; otherwise, it would become lifeless and would not bring the desired result.
In this placement of the process of nyasa the parts of the shape, contour or bodily structure of the divinity adored are correspondingly placed in the respective parts of the body or the personality of the worshipper. When I touch my forehead, or a part of my head, I utter a prayer, a word, a mantra signifying that the forehead or the head of the divinity has entered my head and is my head. So, I am not seeing the head or the forehead of the divinity with my eyes as something looking at me; rather it looks through me, through my eyes, and is 'me'. A little bit of strong imagination and feeling is necessary here, in this practice.
Suppose, instead of the idol or the murti of the divinity worshipped, we consider a person in front. You have to make that person one with you. There is a great philosophy behind this technique. It is highly beneficial and also dangerous, if the mind is not pure while attempting the technique.
I am looking at you, and when I look at you I am seeing your eyes; they are outside me. But that is not the proper way of looking at you. You have to look through my eyes and I have to look through your eyes, so that instead of myself and yourself being face to face, we stand in collaboration parallelly – one 'enters' the other. The two eyes have become one eye; the two heads have become one head and they come to a state of coalescence. Who is seeing? This question will not arise at that time. Are you seeing the object or the object is seeing you? You may say it is either way. It may be that you are seeing through the eye of the object or the object is seeing through your eyes. If this practice of nyasa in the process of worship becomes successful, divinity will enter the worshipper.
The great god, the incarnation, whoever be your ideal you are worshipping, is seeing through your eyes and you are seeing through its eyes so that it 'is' you and you 'are' it. I hope you are able to appreciate what this means. Its hands are your hands and your hands are its hands. Your heart is its heart; its heart is your heart. Your feet are its, and vice versa. Every part of your body is correspondingly the part of the body of that divinity you are adoring in meditation.
Then what happens? You have absolute control over that object in the same way as you have complete control over the limbs of your own body. I can tell my hand to lift, and it lifts; I can tell my legs to walk and they walk. But if I tell the legs of somebody else to walk, they need not, because they are not identified with my consciousness. The legs of another person have not become one with my legs; therefore, I cannot tell them to walk. They will not move. But if my legs have become another's legs, and if I tell them to move, they will move.
The whole building will move if your consciousness has identified itself with it, part by part, little by little, bit by bit, in every little detail, and you become the whole building itself. This is the secret behind the nyasa technique of worship in the ritual of daily performance in temples, or even in one's own altar at home. Such a process has to be adopted in our meditation on the object, whatever be that object which we have chosen for the purpose.
There is an interesting aphorism of sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras which refers to this kind of process: The identification of yourself with the object of meditation is somewhat like the identity seen when a coloured object is brought near a clear crystal, so that the colour has entered the crystal; the crystal becomes red if a red flower is brought near it. The objective and subjective sides enter into each other and the one is indistinguishable from the other.
The crystal may be compared to the meditating consciousness. The object of meditation may be regarded as something similar to that which is brought near the crystal. In the process of the entry of the structure of the object into the structure of the crystal, and the very substantiality of the crystal itself, the two get identified into a single mass of being, so that one will see that the object itself has become the crystal or the crystal has become the object.
The object 'flows' into the subject; the subject 'flows' into the object. Or to cite another illustration, imagine that there are two tanks filled with water up to the brim and they are on equal level (not one high and one below). There is a passage between one tank and the other tank so that water flows slowly through that passage from one tank to the other tank, and from the other tank to this tank. One will not know the water of which tank is flowing to which tank. There is a mutual commingling of the waters of two tanks. The water in between, in that passage, may be considered as the water of this tank or that tank.
In this consciousness of the identification through the placement of nyasa mentioned, the object becomes united with the consciousness of the meditator in such a way that, at that time, in that experience, one will not know whether the object is within oneself or oneself is within the object. Who is in whom? Is the object meditating upon you, or are you meditating upon the object? If the great God is in front of you, is He contemplating you when He gazes at you, or are you contemplating on Him? Either way the answer is correct.
- Meta Island
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
This is well put. Not unlike, or perhaps the same as being lost in thought.
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
Thanks JackDaydream
There is more analogy of the crystal:
The bondage of consciousness is the object of our study. What is this bondage? According to Yoga psychology, bondage is the illusory assumption, or imagination rather, on the part of spirit or consciousness, that it has the characteristics of the object, of prakriti or matter or something which is just the opposite of itself. All movements in nature belong to prakriti, and not to purusha. We may call it evolution, we may call it externality, we may call it name and form. These are but different nomenclatures that we may adopt in the defining of a thing that is sensed or even thought by the mind. These constitute the whole world panorama, or, in modern philosophical language, we may say matter-stuff. This matter-stuff is the area of operation of prakriti. And this matter-stuff is different from consciousness. Somehow, in an unintelligible manner, prakriti and purusha come together. There is a juxtaposition of matter and consciousness. This juxtaposition is the source of perception, and everything follows from it. How does this union of the object with the subject that is consciousness take place? This is explained by an example in the Samkhya philosophy, the example of the crystal and the flower. A pure crystal has no colour of its own, but when a coloured object such as a red flower is brought near this pure crystal, it gets reflected in the crystal, and it can be so reflected that the whole crystal may appear red. When that happens, we may not even know that there is a crystal at all. The crystalhood of the crystal has ceased for the time being, and it appears like a red object. This is on account of the absorption of the colour of the flower by the crystal which is, in itself, in its pristine purity, colourless. Now, is there a real connection between the crystal and the flower? There is absolutely no connection. The colour has not affected the crystal in any manner. The crystal has not become impure, even a little bit, by the appearance of the colour within itself. It can regain its appearance of purity the moment the flower is taken away from the crystal. The crystal never was contaminated or affected or infected in any manner. But, when the reflection takes place, it appears as if the subject has ceased to exist for the time being; there is only the redness, the flower. Such is the situation of world-perception, says Samkhya. In the above instance, the bondage of the crystal is nothing but the false imagination that it is the flower. It never became the flower. It never really acquired even the colour of the flower. Because of the reflection, it imagines that it has become the flower. What is freedom for the crystal? The crystal regains its freedom when it is again separated from the flower. Then it assumes its pristine purity of colourless transparency and establishes its consciousness in its own self, not allowing it to project itself externally in the form of the imagination that it is something other than itself, in this case, the object flower. So, what is Yoga? It is the isolation of consciousness from matter, the subject from the object.
In the metaphysics of the Vedanta, the same phenomenon is explained in a slightly different manner. The Vedanta accepts this analysis of the Samkhya as perfectly right, but affirms that the individual is only an assumed form of consciousness, and not the real essence thereof. While it is true that there is a necessity to differentiate the externality that has crept into the subjectivity of consciousness, the object can never become the subject. This is the opening sentence in Sankara's great commentary on the Brahma Sutras. The subject can never become the object; the object can never become the subject. Sankara starts saying this at the very commencement of this commentary on the Brahma Sutras. Yet, there is an insistence in the Vedanta philosophy that the subject is the same as the object ultimately, and in their union lies the freedom of the soul. This assertion is made from a different angle of vision altogether, from a different perspective of the very same circumstance or situation. While the subject can never become the object, and therefore, they have to be separated—in this, the Yoga is right, and Vedanta also accepts this—there is something else, in addition, for Vedanta to say. And that additional assertion is this, namely, that the subject is basically the same as the object. It is not essentially different. This similarity between the subject and the object, or the essentiality of both in their core, is the reason why there is such an attraction between the two. The infinite is present in the subjects, and it is the very same infinite that appears in all the objects of the world. So, the infinite calls the infinite, as it were, when one pulls the other.
Thus, whatever be the philosophical or metaphysical background of Yoga or Vedanta, both the systems of philosophy agree that the mind has to be controlled, for a reason which is obvious to every person. The mind is the externalised activity of consciousness, the empirical movement of the individual, the spatio-temporal involvement of individuality. This is a great sorrow for everyone, for everything, for consciousness proper which is the stuff of all things. Now, how to withdraw the mind from the objects, or rather, how to educate the mind so that it may understand its true relationship with things outside? There is a famous saying in the Yoga-Vasishtha, which is an instruction given by the great sage Vasishtha to his student Rama: “Dvau krumuu chitta nasasya, yoga jnanam cha Raghav…”. The sage says: “There are two ways of controlling the mind. Either sever its connection with all things, or establish a connection of it with everything.” These are the two ways by which one can control the mind. It is easy to understand something about the benefits that would follow from the withdrawal of the mind from all things. But, it is not so easy to know the advantage of connecting the mind to everything. The result, however is the same in either case.
There is an anecdote about Acharya Sankara which is relevant here. It is said that Acharya Sankara was in his kutir, and the door was bolted from within. One of his disciples came and knocked. “Who is that?” asked the Master. “I” was the answer. “Oh I! Either reduce it to zero or expand it to infinity!” retorted the Master from within. This ‘I' in every individual should either be reduced to zero or expanded to infinity. Either way it is good. In the one method, the modifications of the mind are restrained by a negative withdrawal of its operations from everything that appears as external. The other method involves the philosophical visualisation of the mind's basic identity with all things. The earlier method, namely, the restraint of the mind-stuff, is the main instruction according to Patanjali.
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
Correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand this, “reducing the ‘I’ to zero” means the loss of a mind-body identity, or in other words it means moving the mind/spirit out of the physical body – an out of body experience. Also correct me if I am wrong in understanding “establish a connection of it (the mind) with everything” means keeping the mind-body connection.”Cognition” wrote: There is an anecdote about Acharya Sankara which is relevant here. It is said that Acharya Sankara was in his kutir, and the door was bolted from within. One of his disciples came and knocked. “Who is that?” asked the Master. “I” was the answer. “Oh I! Either reduce it to zero or expand it to infinity!” retorted the Master from within. This ‘I' in every individual should either be reduced to zero or expanded to infinity. Either way it is good. In the one method, the modifications of the mind are restrained by a negative withdrawal of its operations from everything that appears as external. The other method involves the philosophical visualisation of the mind's basic identity with all things. The earlier method, namely, the restraint of the mind-stuff, is the main instruction according to Patanjali.
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
I apologize if my take on this is incorrect
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Re: Being one with the object of meditation
I will take your interpretation over mine. I thought that perhaps there was a correlation between "the modifications of the mind are restrained by a negative withdrawal of its operations from everything that appears as external." with the "dreaming body" as described by Carlos Castaneda from the teachings of Don Juan Matus.cognition wrote: ↑October 1st, 2022, 6:59 pm @Meta Island Thank you for your comments. As I understand it "reducing to zero" means reducing the time-space-causal connection to nil, while" establishing connection with everything" is the destruction of "time-space-causality" by expanding ones dimension to infinity, in the sense that there is nothing outside oneself....there being nothing outside one realizes his identity with the absolute.
I apologize if my take on this is incorrect
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