Meditation Objectives

There are many motives for doing meditation. Below, some are mentioned. There are confusion and disagreement as to what meditation is. Patanjali defined meditation as samyama which are the three highest stages of yoga in a sequence. That begins with dharana deliberate inner focus, which progresses to dhyana spontaneous inner focus and terminates in samadhi continuous effortless inner focus. Prior to samyama, Patanjali listed a system which is called pratyahar but which is before that conjoint samyama. Most people who do meditation, begin and end their session in this pratyahar, which is an engaged power struggle between the coreSelf, and its adjuncts, with their unwanted but compulsory activity in the mind.

This below is a list of some of the objectives of doing meditation (samyama). Any of these may occur when the person has no desire to observe it. There are many mental and emotional activities which happen with no request for any by the coreSelf. This is because a psychological adjunct (equipment) has its own energizing means. It can operate with or without the coreSelf’s approval or request.

·      Cease unwanted mental activity

·      Cease emotional torment (trauma)

·      Isolate the coreSelf from the adjuncts

·      Perception of a deity

·      Contact an advanced yogi

·      Suddenly realize a yoga process (kriya) without knowing who inspired it

·      Reach the chit akash spiritual bliss

·      Vision of things which are beyond physical reach

·      Perception of an adjunct (subtle organ)

·      Absorption in naad inner sound

·      Discovering the coreSelf in a thoughtless mind space

To cease unwanted mental activity, the self may meditate. This would mean that the self turns about in its mind and faces some mental activity which is compulsive and unwanted. A self may instinctively challenge the mind to cease unwanted thoughts. This could lead to an increase in the frustration energy. That could cause more mental anguish, if the self finds that it is unable to cease the activity. Knowing that it faces a powerful enemy, the self may become depressed.

Conversely, if the self is successful in ordering the mind to cease, the self may become happy. It may develop confidence that it has some autonomy in its psyche or existential apartment.

Sometimes due to an ineffective method or due to bad habits which the self cannot cease, it makes efforts to meditate, to terminate unwanted mental fatigue. However, even after weeks, months or years, the self finds that it still cannot command its mental operations, this leads to depression. The solution is to sort the input methods of the mind. How does the mind accept ideas and images? What are the entry points for such mental diet? How can the ingestion of unwanted ideation cease?

A person may meditate to cease emotional torment (trauma). This happens because of an influence from someone else or because the self concludes that it should meditate to master itself. Its handling of emotional energy is different to its interaction with mental actions. Unfortunately, these two aspects are not easy to sort. In fact, many of the psychological upsets are a complex mix of mental and emotional materials, which if not sorted becomes implanted in the mind with deep roots which are difficult to extract or slice away.

If the instance of harassment is from a tangled mass of mental and emotional energy, that would require special attention, and expertise, to untangle. In addition, the process of sorting it may be painful. That will discourage the afflicted someone from making an effort, or from taking advice which would sort out the entanglement.

Many persons learn meditation, or attend a meditation session, with intention of abolishing emotional trauma. Instead of doing that, these persons increase their disgust with their minds, without making any progress in controlling the intake, storage and expression from unwanted emotional activity.

The meditation, for isolating the coreSelf from the adjuncts, is a tall order for any student. This is because the coreSelf has difficulty distinguishing itself from its psychological assisting technology. Even though the adjuncts are distinct from the core, their interlocking with the core, makes it difficult to sort them. On the lower planes of awareness, the ability to sort this is drastically reduced. That is because of the design of the psyche. A core cannot claim that it designed its psyche and embedded itself and its adjuncts. Some other person (God?) or energy (the Absolute Original Power) did that. Regardless of what that original someone or something is, its influence caused the coreSelf to be part of this production.

A yogi may meditate to have perception of a deity. Beginning with that objective, he or she may torment itself, if the perception does not happen. Eventually that person may tire and then abandon the meditation. Someone else may get the perception, for a short or extended period. That person would be happy to achieve this. His or her faith would increase. It may be however that the deity may not appear again, even for years after the apparition. Continued meditation may not be as promising. Hence eventually, the devotee may become disillusioned.

Someone may meditate with intentions to contact an advanced yogi. It is possible to do this, but it is unlikely to happen. The reason being that unless the mind is in a heightened state of awareness any such contact may be skewed or mistaken.

One may get a result from meditation which one did not expect. One may suddenlyrealize a yoga process (kriya) without knowing who inspired it. A valid and technical mystic action or even a physical one, which yields spiritual perception, may suddenly appear in a yogi’s mind space. It may have with it, a method, and the duration for its practice. Such an inspiration may be untraceable such that the yogi has no idea how he received it.

During meditation, a yogi may reach the chit akash spiritual bliss. This may happen. The yogi may have no idea about his achievement. He may have no way to repeat this result. It may be a one-time, once in a lifetime event. It could be that the yogi followed a set method which is definite, which he can do daily to reach that locale.

In meditation, a yogi may have vision of things which are beyond physical reach. This may happen suddenly, where he sees things which are far away in the same dimension in which he resides. Or it may be in some other near or distant dimension. It could be a location which is thousands of miles from his residence. It could be in a few jumps away from this physical place in a psychic realm.

A yogi may experience perception of an adjunct (subtle organ). Most people do not perceive the adjuncts of the self as being a type of psychological equipment. Even in meditation, when doing that for years regularly, still some people never get any evidence to support the idea that there are adjuncts which in conjunction with the coreSelf are experienced as the self. The real self has relationship or is wired with adjuncts. Some of the adjuncts perform functions of perception, which the core cannot, by itself properly sense and interpret.

The adjuncts are

·      Sense of identity which focuses the attention of the self

·      Intellect for calculative operations

·      Senses which feed information to the intellect

·      Memory which provides reference experiences

·      lifeForce which generates energy to power the psyche

For the most part these are realized by studying their functional operations. However, these are psychic machinery which a yogi, if he is lucky, may perceive as different types of lights in the subtle body.

A yogi may become absorbed in naad inner sound. That may happen suddenly. It may happen because the yogi invoked it or found it. Some yogis have a method where they can become aware of naad if they desire to do so. Naad resonance continues always. It is up to a yogi to tune to it and use it for meditative absorption.

If a yogi is fortunate, he/she may discover the coreSelf in a thoughtless mind space. This may happen involuntarily. It may happen because the yogi did a particular focusing practice or method through which he causes the mind to retreat from its pursuits.