Meditation and Self-reform

by Gerald Boyce

The present wave of popular interest in meditation in the west may be, to some extent, a matter of idle curiosity. Some desire to use it as a means to escape from the confusion and pressures of daily life; some hope to use it to fill the emptiness of boredom; some want something new, strange, thrilling – a safer or cheaper substitute for drugs or alcohol.

Their souls may really be searching seriously for real Inner Food and Drink; but when the superficial mind – which has been fed, indeed, on trivialities, piled up and multiplied indefinitely, only to make a bigger pile of trivialities – dominates life, even the approach to serious subjects is superficial, academic, verbal unless some rather vital direct experience – perhaps shocking or tragic experience – forces a deeper examination of life. Idlers who wish to take up meditation as a popular fad will not derive much benefit with their superficial approach to life. Until one is willing to look at life directly and in depth, life has no reality for such a person, except as an ‘intellectual’ pastime to amuse or to profit him if he is generally comfortable, or to build dream castles and substitutes for him, if he is unsatisfied. Fortunately, even the generally shallow do have moments of clarity, and may then pay some attention to statements of fundamental fact.

The real cries of the soul of real aspirants do not permit wasting energy in unnecessary dealings with the flippant and self-satisfied when they insist on remaining that way. Unless the Master-Power moves them from within or until life itself shocks them into seriousness our words are unlikely to reach them. Our usefulness in meeting inquiries concerning meditation is limited by two factors: our own understanding of the matter and by the seriousness – or lack of it – on the part of the questioners. The temptation is strong to try to lead others, especially if they ask for help or information from us for we can then easily convince ourselves that we are thereby helping them. But help for the soul is essentially different from treating a diseased body, or changing a particular part of outer circumstances. The soul in itself is not really diseased; its state is more like that of a prisoner who is bound by captors who may be consciously brutal, or merely indifferent to the welfare of the prisoner. The soul, its needs, its life are totally alien to the native of its captors; the captors cannot help the prisoner. The mind and senses, with their rigid forms, their desires, their lust for thrills, gain and power – that total outer expression of the mind, and its desires and cravings – that mind: when in a position of dominance, is the world’s worst master. The soul needs a Master of its own essential nature, a spark of the Creator, an active expression of the All Light, the Master-Power, a very ocean of all harmony and Love.

And it is freedom that is needed, rather than a change in the soul’s nature, brought about by the mind. The mind is essentially unfit to improve the soul. It could conceivably be a useful expression of the soul, and of God, if it would be strictly, wholly, accurately, constantly, at the service of the soul – subordinate to it. Otherwise, it can only make mischief.

The recent wars of clever weapons – designed and made by the clever, the cunning, the crafty – under the control and direction of those with pretensions to intellectual supremacy – these wars serve the ambitions, the craving for ostentatious comforts, the smugness of ideological assertiveness, the lust for class and factional and national dominance – this usage of the mind constitutes a clear record of the mind’s nature when not subordinate to the Universal Wisdom of God. That mind, separate from God, out of the context of God, using God – that mind cannot possibly ‘improve.’ When the mind functions as an independent power without regard for the needs of the soul, and therefore, often at war with the needs of the soul – that relation of mind – and soul constitutes a sort of cancer of the entity; a state which cannot possibly be good while it remains uncontrolled. To speak of the mind improving the situation is like expecting a cancer to cure itself by continuing to exist. In a sense neither the mind nor the soul is at fault. It is their relationship of un-relatedness, so to speak, which causes the mischief. The mind can be vary useful in its proper field as a servant of the soul. The thinking mind is essentially symbolic, representational, derivative, limited; and therefore, its products are inherently shallow; it cannot function usefully in the world of ultimates.

The practical usefulness of the mind is obvious – in dealing with daily tasks, or when it contributes to social recognition or economic rewards. There is no danger that it will be undervalued. But there is a very real danger that those who crave a reputation for learning will be satisfied to read about all the techniques of meditation, attend all the lectures on the subject, and then give talks and lectures themselves, and write essays on what they have read and heard, while all this learned activity is carried on without once seriously trying and doing any real Inner Practice themselves. Such teaching may be economically valuable to them, but not otherwise significant. We may say that it is possible to meditate without ethical life, or that it is possible to live ethically without meditation; but it is doubtful if either possibility can really exist in practice. What is easily separable in thought and as a matter of grammatical expression is often not separable in the world of reality. Some temperaments do lean in the direction of contemplation without sufficient outer action, and others do lean towards outer-action without thought of consequences or outer-action without considering the full implications of action. These divergent tendencies do exist, but they are balanced in the fullest expression of human life.

The activities roughly grouped together and classed as ‘meditative’ in the popular speech of the West comprise systems of affirmations, self-hypnosis, visualising, contemplation (sometimes in a ‘thinking things over’ sense), prayer, (especially prayer, of a repetitive kind), some physical exercises adapted from Hatha Yoga etc., or just sitting quietly (as among the early Quakers) – nearly all these methods, except the last, stress the personal will and intellect, both being used as tools to advance what the personal will considers good – or what the class, party, faction, religion or social group considers good.

The emphasis is on using meditation by the will for personal ends or ‘for others’ – but such others as we wish, to the extent that we wish, and in the forms that we wish. In such cases the personal will and self-hood is paramount.

It is quite possible – but not directly known to me – that these various self-oriented attitudes also exist in the East. It’s not really a matter of geography, but of the prevalence of self-will and fixity of thought patterns and of our commitment to customs of action and thought, which we adopt without, examination.

Adding another meditative technique to existing ones, if it is to be used in that way, with that attitude and approach, may do little good to people in general even though some persons may find it advantageous.

Initiates of Sant Kirpal Singh have been given accurate instructions concerning Inner Practices; and they should be engaged in daily meditation. But even initiates – who have an obligation to carry on such practices – often approach them through the screen of their past experiences, and are sometimes under the influence of faulty theories and popular misconceptions surrounding the subject.

Some who have a naturally loving temperament and an intense desire to please the Master or God, may be able to press on without conscious analysis of mental obstacles, by rising above the mental chattering into a state of adoration. In such a state and to such temperaments, neither the mental obstacles nor the mental ‘explanations’ apply. But most others find the mental and the emotional aspects of their nature less happily balanced.

Our less balanced natures can scarcely approach meditation without preconceptions, without the adult’s faulty habits of thought, without some false – or unexamined – assumptions. Such approaches can be major obstacles to accurate practice. The harm of faulty assumptions is indirect but quite real and basic. Because the effect is to block or to disrupt – and therefore to distory – fullness of attention. This is especially far-reaching in the case of the Surat Shabd Yoga because that is essentially the yoga of the attention.

But in our concern for accuracy in meditation, we must not overlook the fact that initiates of Sant Kirpal Singh Ji have also been given instructions to watch closely what they do, what they say and think, and to keep a record of such matters, to send a report to Him, to wed out wrong practices wherever possible, and to keep attentive to the Master-Power to avoid being drawn into wrong practices and situations.

It may be well to keep it firmly in mind that the Path of the Masters as exemplified in the lives of Kirpal, Sawan, Jaimal, Swami Ji was and is more than a theory, more than a body of dogmas or a collection of wise sayings and also more than a means to see pleasant sights and to hear pleasant sounds. The Path of the Saints may be all these things, but it is more than all these.

The seekers of intellectual certainty and of academic distinction, may be quite scornful of the seekers for sense thrills, but both are far from the deep Inner Polarization which held the Saints so steadfast that They not only thought about God, and derived joy from God, but They became One with Him. And that Oneness was not mearly a claim that They saw a vision of God telling Them that They were One with Him. But Their Oneness was objectively manifest in Their outer life and in Their Inner Life of consciousness so they could and can actually express Love, freedom from fear, power to transform life, etc. The scriptural command is clear:

Be ye perfect even as your heavenly Father.

But who obeys? Only a few Saints, out of millions of talkers!!

We must first attend to our own need for accurate and long-continued meditation, and for deeper self-understanding for this is our duty – to reform ourselves (so far as personal effort can go) for only so can be hope for any success in really helping others. Not that we should neglect others until we become perfect, but the emphasis must be on self-reform as the only reform that is directly related to our own immediate efforts.