YOGA MEDITATION

What is Meditation?It is not, as so many people assume it to be, a process of "thinking things over " Rather, it is making the mind completely receptive to reality.It is stilling the thought processes, those restless ripples that bob on the serface of mind so that truth may be clearly reflected there.It is listening to God and computing oneself. This is how all the great discoveries have been made-not by human creation, but by receptivity to rays of inspiration from higher sources than those with which the concious mind is familiar. Try meditating every day for at least fifteen minutes (half an hour would be even better) Usually,the best time for meditation will be directly after your practice of yoga postures.

Yoga,literally, means "union." This union can be understood on different levels: philsophically, as that of the relative, limited slef with the absolute soul with the infinite Spirit: psychologically, as the integration of the personality-a state wherein a person no longer lives at cross-purposes with himself;emotionally, as the stilling of the waves of likes and dislikes, permitting one to remain in all circumstances complete in himself. It is this last level that serves as classical definition of yoga by the ancient sage Patanjali. Patanjali's pro-found Yoga Sutras, or aphorisms, have been looked upon for millennia as yoga's definitive scripture. He wrote: "Yogas chitta vritti nirodh" - "Yoga is the neutralization of the waves of feeling." Chitta(feeling) has been variously trans-lated as "mind-stuff," "consciousness," "subconciousness," "the lower mind."

Yoga is the neutralization of ego-directed feelings, because once these become stilled, the yogi realizes that he is, and that he has always been, one with the Infinite- that his awareness of this reality was limited only by his infatuation with limitation. The different paths of yoga, then,must be understood in the light of how they help to bring about his neutralization of the waves of feeling. Merely to whip oneself into a lather of devotional excitement does not constitute bhakti yoga. Merely to work hard,even in a good cause, is not truly karma yoga .Merely to study and philosophize intel-lectually is not the path of gyana yoga.All thes paths must be followed with a firm awareness of the goal of all yoga practices: Yogas chitta vritti nirodh