We ended the last presentation with the acknowledgement that there are two major sources of impulses that guide our lives. The first comes from our subconscious and the second comes from the emotional and mental environment surrounding our envelopes of incarnation, on these planes. Those thoughts and feelings on these planes did not magic themselves into existence. They were put there by us and others in the first place. They have the potential to drift into our envelopes if we are harbouring sympathetic frequencies in our store of elemental essences. This being the case, the first source of impulse, our subconscious, already contains ideas and feelings that were never our own. This is not to say that we can not manufacture new thoughts and feelings. It is just that an alarmingly high number of these, in our daily lives, are not our own. If we accept this hypothesis, then we have to ask ourselves, how much of our lives are we living and controlling?
I raise this point because we now will start to look at what meditation actually is. Its value will become apparent if the alternative is to swim in a cauldron of other people’s thoughts and emotions. Let us start by understanding that the term ‘meditation’ is used in too restricted a manner. Say the word ‘meditation’ and people often think of some sort of mystic concentration. So, the first thing to state is that there are many kinds of meditation and they all hinge on us being able to collect our thoughts. Meditation can include things such as planning and reviews of actions. Simply put, meditation is systematic and methodical reflection. There, I have said it, we can all go home now. However, should you choose to remain, let us delve a little further.
If you are analysing something, you need to review facts and collate the factors and elements that allow us to investigate something, clarify our insights and increase our understanding. If you just rely on impulses from outside yourself or from stored subconscious thoughts that probably were not your ones in the first place, you are going to learn nothing about your environment. You are just having an automated response to the world around you. Without the ability to meditate, we are in a position to learn little or nothing. If we meditate, we are able to gather material into our emotional and mental envelopes. From here, we can work this material up in our mental envelopes. What did we just experience? What did it mean? What are its consequences? Answers to these questions are only available to us if you are prepared to systematically reflect on them.
We now return to the main lesson in the first presentation in this series. The first step in the process of meditating is to concentrate. To fix our attention on the subject matter at hand, in a calm manner, so that we do not affect our emotions, breathing or circulation. This is why meditation is so often presented as someone sitting in a calm, relaxed matter, with their eyes closed.
There is a sequence to the meditative process, starting with concentration, which leads to meditation. This evolves into contemplation, which finally leads to illumination. What you have just done is an attempt to solve a given problem, in which you have simplified the variables and the parameters you are examining. You discard all unessential information until you are left with just the ‘idea’. This idea is defined as being your ‘intuition’ and it is from here that you find your solution. We have already discussed, on many occasions, that the source of our intuition is causal molecules, found on subplane 47:3. Causal ideas reflect the truth and are not coloured by mental fictions and emotional illusions. In meditative contemplation, we are trying to focus our attention on the most refined matter we can reach with our thoughts. This matter is less distorted than the coarser vibrations found on lower subplanes. A secondary benefit of these higher vibrations is that they are easier to focus on, once you reach up to where they are located. It can not be emphasised strongly enough, that we walk paths that are created by our thoughts.
Remember, meditation is self-initiated activity. You can distract yourself in a number of ways that will prevent you from meditating. So, if you are going to meditate, what is its purpose? Laurency tells us that “the prime function of meditation is to teach us the right use of our attention in physical, as well as emotional and mental respects”. This starts with ordinary meditation, which seeks to make the brain receptive to more refined mental molecules and to then transfer this knowledge from the mental envelope to the physical brain. In the dim, distant past, ancients regarded meditation as a means, by which the practitioner was able to communicate with higher levels of consciousness. In the case of a mystic, they want to communicate with God. What was happening in these cases is that a link was being established between the 48:3 emotional subplane of their Emotional envelope and the lowest of the subplanes in the Unity Kingdom, 46:7. Someone, who is no longer driven by their emotions and could be considered to be a mentalist, through the process of meditation, is trying to establish contact between their Mental and Causal envelopes.
The purpose of meditation is, therefore, to develop the necessary qualities by daily attention, to those you wish to acquire, as opposed to the qualities you already have and do not want. To do this, you have to set up a daily routine, where, through meditation, you form emotional-mental complexes that store energy. This leads to the automatic heightening of vibrations, reaching into the highest attainable subplanes you are able to reach. These complexes then act as regulators of your feeling and thinking patterns throughout the day. It is generally assumed that this effect can be sustained for about 24 hours, hence the need to meditate every day, if you wish to see sustainable results. Laurency tells us that it is not good enough to just desire good qualities. You must inculcate them; meditate on them every day, preferably at the same time each day. This daily repetition forces these complexes into our subconscious, which then feedback into our daily waking reality. These newly formed complexes, help us to automate our lives. They manifest themselves spontaneously, causing us to take the right attitude, hopefully, in all circumstances. This results in us thinking correctly, feeling correctly and acting correctly. Do this often enough and you eventually end up assimilating new views in life and clearing away a lot of fiction as well. You also acquire new feelings in your emotional envelope. Laurency tells us that by meditation, esoteric students, for esoteric, read Hylozoicians, assimilate esoteric mental systems and feelings of an ‘attractive’ tendency. That would make a change, considering how repulsive we naturally are. We, hopefully, end up reappraising our value systems and developing an ideal attitude towards life. Are you ready for this?
We can begin to see the real value of meditation. It allows us to solve our problems; even our latent and future problems. What have we got to lose? Through the process of meditation, we use our consciousness to store the experiences we have had. By activating our mental molecules, through the process of thinking, we prepare solutions to problems, which previously would be unsolvable for us. In this manner, we get ideas into our brains that would otherwise take much longer. What you are able to do through meditation is activate your higher passive mental and emotional consciousness, giving you a better perspective on existence. The purpose of meditation is to activate your superconsciousness. This is where your chakra centres get involved. When you meditate, you vitalise your centres above your Navel chakra. This leads to the activation of passive consciousness in higher kinds of matter. How do you activate your superconsciousness? You do so by developing ‘correct’ ideas, causal ideas, Platonic ideas, reality ideas. Last but not least, you develop a correct World and Life View, one being objective, the other subjective. This process all sounds very mental and it is but this is not the whole story. There is a still more effective way to achieve your objectives. You need to activate your emotional attractive consciousness. Why? Because this leads to action; leading you to live your life, not just think about it. So, how exactly does this work? You have to be prepared to experiment. In this way, you get to see the problems out there and you then have to find solutions. This leads to a much greater understanding, call it a ‘revelation’ if you like. You will make mistakes along the way, this is ok. This is a necessary consequence of learning. We learn by our mistakes. Those souls who are much more evolved than us, receive energies from even higher souls. They take this energy and pass it on to us. We have to be prepared to receive it. Meditation is a way to set yourself up to become a receiving station. You then become a transmitter yourself, connecting with others.
In the next presentation, we will concentrate on the results meditation hopes to achieve.