Jiva to Atma

This past week has been one of the lowest ever. Of course, I was the maker of all my problems, and I went into a sort of depression. I am not used to being this way. I usually snap out of low points after a good night’s sleep, and the new day always looked brighter and happier, and the recent dip of spirits always seemed like an exaggerated drama moment in my life, but this time, no respite came with a new day. It was a continuation of the same abysmal state of mind, and nothing could make me happy. Not the smiles of the boys, or the blog interactions online, or books, or music, or anything. I knew then, that I was going through a particularly fierce shaking of my spirit.

I knew and sensed God’s hand in it, but I did not feel close to Him. I certainly felt no love for Him. I felt nothing but pitch black sadness. I felt like I had lost out on life in a big way. Like I was denied some things that could make me happy. I knew that to change this state of mind, was within my reach and I could do it if I pulled myself together a bit, but there was no strength to do that. None whatsoever. And so, I continued being that way. Sometimes, that is the only way to break free. To undergo it, in all its intensity, and finally to be so saturated with it, that your natural spirit rises once more and gives you the light of peace. Maybe this is really what hell is like, in essence.

So today, I felt the acute need to meditate. All I wanted to do was go into a void and empty out all my thoughts and just be unshackled from my unfriendly mind. It was also the first day that R sat down to meditate with me. I closed my eyes, and started off with a prayer to the Lord, the first time I have ever done so. I told Him, as if He didn’t already know, about how tough this past week has been. I admitted to everything I had put myself through and I beseeched Him to give me some peace once I closed my eyes. I asked Him to hold my hand and lead the way in and help me get closer to Him once more. Being in this empty, No-God state is the scariest feeling for me ever. Tears were coursing down my cheeks by the time I was done with this prayer and I wiped it off and started with the breathing.

Sairam Sairam Sairam….I chanted over and over silently, and with each chant, I went in deeper. There were thoughts, and I dealt with them. There was resurfacing a few times, and I dealt with that. But mostly, it was a feeling of traversing deeper and deeper (signified by an uncomfortable heaviness in my forehead), and after a point, it just stopped. I suddenly felt suspended in this one quiet, still, place where I could just be. At that point, there was no breath consciousness, no thought, no chanting, no prayer, no seeing….nothing. It was just. And it lasted only a few seconds before some thought broke into the periphery of that cocoon of emptiness, but I dealt with it, and went back to that same place.

Somewhere in that state, colours appeared. I was not trying to see them, but they were there, and since I was there too, I was able to observe them in a very relaxed manner. There was no hysteria at seeing colours, just a calm happiness at seeing something so pretty. Predominant in them was the colour violet….more like a violet pink mixed. It would be black and suddenly these colours would appear in swirls and dissipate the blackness and flood my vision with their vibrancy. Then again the black, then these pretty dancing colours again. What was significant to me at this time was that I did not have to make an effort to stay in this place, I was just there and watching, and immersed in them. After a few minutes of this, black took over once more and all colour disappeared. I tried to stay in that trance longer, but since I had to ‘try’, I failed. I opened my eyes. 25 minutes had passed. A little disorientation, and there was absolutely no desire to come back to real life. The heaviness in my head grew even more, and I just lay down for a bit. And then I got up and here I am typing this, while the feeling is still relatively fresh in me.

One thing I realised today, is how we are our own Gurus. I have often heard this saying…that your Teacher lies Within. It felt so true today, when I observed my Self leading the way and giving me worded instructions every now and then….

Just be, Thara, just be…

Relax your shoulders, let it slide…

That’s a thought right there, send it away…

Don’t try to hard…

And so on. Clear, precise, worded instructions to keep me on the track. It makes me feel a little more confident about myself, almost as if I am not alone. I pray that this little harnessed confidence will also lead me to break out of the cycle that I have buried myself in, and help me to be vital and enthusiastic once more!

Today was amazing. I was still in that mystical aftermath of reading the posts from Wonders of Meditation, and I couldn’t wait to drop off Winkie to school and put Thambi down for a nap so I could settle down to meditate.

After reading her posts, I established one thing to myself. That I needed to find a place in the house where I would do it consistently. All these days, I had been doing it at different spots depending on my mood. So I decided that it should be right before our prayer altar. Its in the passageway of the den, and if I close all the bedroom doors, the passageway gets very dark and cosy. I laid out a comforter on the ground, put a pillow against the banister, lit up the diya and some agarbattis. The ambiance was in place. Next I put on some chapstick because my lips felt dry, drank some water and cooled my throat and also used the bathroom before sitting down. So no physical needs to distract me.

I started. It proceeded smoothly. Only I deepened and resurfaced many many times in succession. Thoughts came and went, and I got slightly better at handling them. The trance like state took over and I sank into it. Those were the moments of bliss when there was not even a single thought and I was just completely still. This went on for a while, when all of a sudden I opened my eyes. I dazedly looked around and noticed that 15 min had passed. But I didn’t want t to end so I closed my eyes again. Went back in. There was a vision of black vapour that danced prettily in front of my eyes. I remember smiling without using my mouth, but smiling watching them. After a while it felt like I was seeing a huge blue sapphire stone. Very huge. the light was playing on it and I could see the variations. It was set on a silver ring on a man’s hand. That vision swiftly disappeared and again, the stillness. I passively stayed in it and it was actually enjoyable. At times it felt like a lot of work to remain there thus, and at times, I was completely absorbed into it.

Suddenly I opened my eyes and another 15 min had passed. I tried to go back in, but it was over. I lay down on the pillow for sometime to get my bearings and stretched out a little bit. I felt very refreshed and calm. I hope it stays with me throughout the day.

Today started with a very rough morning. Both the boys were difficult to handle and after the end of all the talking, and convincing, and carrying and cajoling, my head was buzzing with tremendous activity and I just needed to wind down. I came home after dropping Winkie, and put Thambi down for a nap. The house was quiet and still, but cold. So I put on a sweater, drew the comforter around me, propped myself up on pillows, drew an eye-shade over my eyes and got right into it.

Deep breaths, and trying to focus and slowly deepening began. The same dizzying feeling and being pulled in, and it was pretty exhilarating in a way, while also stressful. I can’t figure out why. And just when I got into it, I immediately rose to the surface again. So back to the focused breathing, and soon enough, within some 30 seconds, I began to swim back in. This time I stayed there for a bit, and could actually see things in the middle of my temple. Just swirly swirly things and shapes and suddenly a feeling of a small arc of white light coming from the end of a tunnel. Just as soon as it came, it disappeared and I broke to the surface again. And so back in, yet again….breathe breathe breathe…..and go on, and the thoughts came. And it was like I had absolutely no control over them. Then came, and they led me away without my even realising that I was caught in it, and a few seconds of thinking later, I suddenly realised and came back out of the thought. This happened a few times and really made me tired. The heavy feeling in my head intensified and remained. I was deeper in now, but it was in no way comfortable.

10 minutes had passed and I opened my eyes abruptly. There was not much disorientation, but I certainly felt tired, like I had taken a big round in the ring. I just lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes to just slowly come out of it. Somewhere in that process, I slept, without even realising. But it was in no way a deep sleep. It seemed more like a continuation of that deepened state of meditation which had stressed me out earlier. A full hour passed in this manner and I grew more and more tired. Finally, I just willed myself up to take a shower. That refreshed me a little bit, but that same dull heavy feeling persists in my head.

I wonder what it is. When I first started water therapy, I remember how the first 3 days were horrible, with all the toxins being flushed out, I felt completely worn down in the freshest part of my day. But once that initial detoxification took place, I felt just normal. Is meditation also like that in the initial stages? Is this heavy feeling and stress and tiredness, an effect of the detoxification of my mind? I certainly hope so, because its not easy. In fact, I am finding myself a little disappointed that it has to be like this, but I know I won’t give up on it. I need to give this a chance and do it everyday at least for a little while. I need to see if it can get better and really rejuvenate like I have read it can. A part of me reminds me silently that it can and it will get better!

Again, I undertook this in the morning hour, when my mind would be relatively fresh and not subject to sleep constraints. I got comfortable on the sofa, breathed in deeply for a few minutes and then closed my eyes. Right from the word go, it was a bit of a struggle. Not overtly, but very subtly. I stayed on the surface of my thoughts for a long time and then when the deepening began to happen, it was very short-lived. Maybe all of 2-3 minutes? The mind conjured up some strange visions…for instance the sight of Arabic scripts tattooed onto the length of a forearm? I had the feeling of some colours floating close-by, and I didn’t see them, but felt them. There was yellow and green and green turning into yellow and all the varying shades of conversion in between. A little bit of rainbow colours and there just seemed to be some big display of media graphics in there. At times, I felt like I was really seeing things, and at other times, it was just a sense of seeing, and nothing more. There were just 2 things that were significant for me today. That when deepening began, and I had that usual sinking feeling, my head too tilted a little downwards from an upright position. Pretty involuntary, that. And the second, there was the same amazing sensation of losing sensation of the physical body. I just felt utterly light and fused into a whole.

Today, my mind put up the strong urge of willing me to open my eyes. I kept trying to ignore it, but at one point, they just opened, as if on a will of their own. The feeling of a trance was there, and things were swimming around, so I closed my eyes again to try and go back in, but it was over. 10 minutes today and already a valuable lesson learnt. That meditation is like riding a wave. And since, I don’t have a whole lot to write about, I’m going to fill this space with a little quote…

“Meditation is the dissolution of thoughts in Eternal awareness or Pure consciousness without objectification, knowing without thinking, merging finitude in infinity.”

In just 2 short days, I have learnt that doing some meditation in the course of the daylight, is a great thing. After my first start, where I sat down at night just before bedtime, and ended up almost sleeping, I wanted to do it again during the day, when I was most awake. Well, I have done that 2 days in a row now and it has felt good. Mmore than good. It has felt both happening and peaceful all at once.

This time I started meditation with some pranayama, with my eyes open. Those deep conscious breaths helped me to get a little centered and got me into the groove, so to speak. I felt like prolonging pranayama and not closing my eyes, because of that same fear of riding into the unknown. Therefore it was with some trepidation, but I finally closed my eyes, after about 3 minutes of breathing, and plunged right in. I hadn’t decided on anything w.r.t what to focus on. I would take it as it comes. So I started off with just centering myself on my breath, and steadying myself with my eyes closed. In and out and in and out and in and out, and on it went, until at some point the deepening began.

Deepening. I can’t think of a better word to describe this feeling. From my breath, I found myself looking in at the center point between my eyebrows, and the more I looked, the more there was to look at. At first, it was all a void. And black. But soon, the colour red appeared. Black and red and black and red. At times they resembles shooting comets with trails of light at the end, at one point it got a little funny and resembled spiderman like goggles. The mind does such a pretty dance in imagination, does it not? And then there were the vibrations. Or what felt like vibrations inside my head. A steady whirring like feeling. Hard to explain. With that, my head was getting heavier, and there was a feeling of being sucked into something deeper (hence the term deepening!)….almost like someone switched the vacuum on, took off the carpet attachment, left only the tube on and you were being sucked inside it….involut-ing within. At times like that, the vision of my eyes visibly darkened, compounding the dizzying feeling of moving into a vortex. Sometimes, the vision lightened once more, which signalled to me that I was surfacing once again to the realm of my physical body. It was exhilarating in all its peaks and troughs!

With more and more minutes going by in this manner, there was the very real sensation of my body dissolving away. I was no longer aware of individual body parts, and it felt like one solid block that was just there to support my head. The breaths were coming very easily and most unconsciously now, and they were light intakes and breaths out. There were some random thoughts which broke to the surface every once in a while and took me along with them, and my initial impulse when I became aware of them was to unceremoniously get rid of them, then and there. But I persisted with a conscious imagery of welcoming them respectfully, and then gently wiping them away, much like the wipers clear up the raindrops on the windscreen in gentle swishes of motion.  

That is when I realised that meditation in its initial stages, serves the purpose of clearing all the clutter of thoughts in your mind. The mind thus has an exact purpose when it keeps popping up little thoughts in your head as you meditate, thus seeming to derail your purpose, but in fact aiding it, but helping you to consciously extinguish all the myriad thoughts that have accumulated in untidy heaps inside. I feel soooo much better on understanding this, because one of my biggest fears, in how to deal with my thoughts, is now made easy to handle.

Soon I felt the need to focus on something else besides the center of my temple, so I switched to the Divine Theme once more. And with the help of visual imagery, I once again went over the idea of the Oversoul as an Ocean of Bliss and developing urge to know Himself. Bubbles arise, consciousness is born, sanskaras get formed, evolution takes place, forms of the bubbles keep changing, sanskaras get winded, all until the form of the bubble is now a man. A human being. Then begins reincarnation, with each experience acting as a shaking factor in loosening up the knots of tightly winded sanskaras, making the soul finally ready for God realization. I developed a very keen sense of imagery for it, and managed to replay the entire theme, without too many interruptions. I did get stuck in a few places, but I extricated myself from the web of that thought and moved on. At the end of the theme, the feeling of final consummation with God felt for a moment, like complete bliss and stillness. It was as if I had fused perfectly with my origins.

At this time, there was absolutely no sensation of the body at all, and it served to remind me, that I am not the Body. I am not the Body. And I kept thinking over and over again…I am God, I am God, and in this thought rose a picture of being completely flooded with white light. A few seconds of being in this trance, and there came the thought to open my eyes. I tried to stay in it for some more time, but that spell was broken. And I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. 20 minutes had passed. Not bad, I thought. I was feeling completely spaced out and a feeling of being totally not here. I was looking around the room but not really seeing anything. I was dazed, not disoriented, but a calm dazed. I brought my attention back to my body and knew that my fingers were laced together. I knew it, but did not feel it. So to feel it, I unlaced my fingers, and that’s when that sensation came alive again. It was the same thing with the rest of my body. I knew it was all there, but could not feel it. I willed myself to get on my feet and when I moved limbs and stood up, I realise that I had separate body parts. I walked then, but felt like I was gliding on air. There was a feeling of weightlessness almost, but my head felt heavy. In fact, it seemed to be holding the rest of my body in place, giving it stability.

I walked downstairs, still in a trance like state, and R asked me whether I had slept or meditated. I realised my spaced out feeling would be showing in my eyes and face too. It reminded me of something that came on the Spiritual Reality CD. That sleep is unconscious meditation and meditation is conscious sleep. So in that sense, I had indeed slept, and my looking it was proof of that. The trance lingered for a while longer. Being in that slightly limbo state made me feel very calm, composed and very elegant and graceful in movement. The way I sat, walked and wrote in my notebook seemed so fluid. Especially the act of writing, which came unbidden and unthought. Completely inspired, swift and flowing rapidly, and my fingers kept perfect pace with my thoughts. And I know that if I analysed it any further, these very thoughts would vanish like vapour, and away from my grasp forever!

After such an experience like this, early though it is and brief though it was, never again will I view an external journey to a place in sightseeing and discovery, in quite the same way as this journey within!

I have been wanting to get into meditation for around 2 years now. It all started when we came upon a VCD on our last India trip, called Spiritual Reality. That was the introduction we needed to be convinced that a whole different world existed within ourselves and was within reach through meditation. We read Swami Rama’s ‘Science of breath’ and another book on meditation, and started off in earnest. It didn’t go so well. I think I was still very immature to tackle it, had way too many expectations, and in the struggle to keep my mind thoughtless, ended up getting very stressed. And that little bit of effort put me off it. I kept a distance from meditation from then on, preferring to read about it instead and talk to people who did meditate and try and learn bits from their experiences.

Well, I am done with that now. I have read enough theoretical knowledge, I have gathered enough 3rd person accounts of it, and I have watched enough of that CD. Now I am ready for direct experience. I am ready it go into without any expectations. After all, what can I expect from something I know nothing of? All I know is that I need to do it. I need to.

Last night was my first time. I picked the moment right before bedtime. It would be quiet, there would be darkness, and I could be comfortable propped up with pillows on the bed. I decided to read up on the Divine Theme, just before, to help in the visual aid when I do close my eyes. A little digression here….I know there are many different forms of meditation. And there is perhaps no one right way. I chose the Divine Theme because it really spoke to me when I first read it, and with each successive reading I always felt that one more veil in my path of understanding was lifted, revealing to me yet another gem of self knowledge. So contemplating on it, would perhaps, help me to understand it more and more each time? Secondly, the idea that the mind cannot be completely free of thought, especially at this early stage of beginning, made sense. And so it would be better to have something to focus on. Something tangible, even in the form of an idea, a story. And so I began.

I started picturing in my mind’s eye, the idea of God as a vast expanse of ocean. And with the latent urge to know Oneself, bubbles began to emerge from the Ocean, armed with just a little Consciousness. And so on and so on….till I reached the evolutionary process into a metal. That’s as far as I got. The fear, as always was there. The fear that I would fail at it. It was hard to shake off, but I just tried to focus on the theme each time. I don’t know if it was because of the fact that it was right before bedtime, but there was this feeling of being pulled deeper into something…it lasted only a few seconds, but it was there. A strange name I had never even heard of came to me in that time and it was an English name, not even an Indian one…and it was weird. I don’t even know if I dreamed it. I ended it at all of 3 minutes, because I was really getting sleepy. So when I opened my eyes to get settled into bed, I had this feeling of coming from some place far far away.

It was very stilling, this brief experience. The fear of dissolving within myself is still there. I don’t know why. But I am not looking back anymore. I want to experience meditation. I want to step into this completely uncharted territory and find my own way in there, to wherever it may lead me.