Meditation is becoming popular nowadays. However, given people’s preference to do things their way, many meditators meditate on whatever object catches their fancy, without considering traditional guidelines for meditation.

Certainly, focusing steadily on any object may give us some calm in our age of external hyperactivity and inner distractedness. Consider people who meditate on space. On contemplating the vastness of space, we can see our life’s upheavals in perspective, as not worth hyperventilating about.

Ultimately however, we seek not just pacification but also satisfaction. For example, if we have arthritis that makes moving our hands painful, we may mitigate the pain by resolving to not move our hands. But that’s not a lasting solution; we need to cure the arthritis so that we resume normal motion.

A similar dynamic applies to our consciousness. Usually, our consciousness gravitates towards worldly things, and the craving for those objects agitates us. By meditation, if we direct our consciousness towards something material that doesn’t induce similar craving – such as space – we get some peace. If we see such peace as a pointer for further, deeper meditation, that that meditation can serve as a valuable stepping-stone in our spiritual journey. But if we see such peace as the full fruit of meditation, we delude ourselves. Our consciousness just moves from an agitating sensual object that keeps us spiritually forgetful to a relatively pacifying object that keeps us similarly unaware. When meditation on space perpetuates our spiritual forgetfulness, it spaces us out.

The Bhagavad-gita’s sixth chapter describes the process of committed yogic meditation. And the chapter concludes (06.47) by declaring that the topmost yogis meditate on Krishna. Why? Because he is the zenith of spiritual reality, the all-attractive supreme person, and the whole whose parts we are eternally. Only by meditating on him can we relish endless love and joy.

Think it over:

  • How can meditating on space pacify us?
  • How can meditating on space delude us?
  • Why do the topmost yogis meditate on Krishna?

 

To know more about this verse, please click on the image
Explanation of article:

Podcast:

Download by “right-click and save”