We now come to the third and final way we can focus our thoughts, that of Contemplation. A reminder, the three stages are:
1. Concentration: The focus of attention on an object.
2. Meditation: The activation of consciousness focused solely on the object, exploring it from various perspectives to gain new insights.
3. Contemplation: The active centring of consciousness on the object while suppressing lower activities of consciousness, concentrating on the received insights. This can be defined as concentration at the highest level of thought or meditation.
In Hindu terminology, the stages are amplified and named as follows:
1. Pratyahara: the preliminary stage, which involves complete control of the senses.
2. Dharana: concentration.
3. Dhyana: meditation.
4. Samadhi: contemplation.
Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi are collectively known as Sannyama.
The process of meditation involves comparing and reasoning about an object until we can no longer do so. At this point, we stop comparing and arguing and focus our attention on the object itself. This is known as contemplation. It’s important to understand that meditation is a lifelong practice, and pure contemplation may not be achieved in the early stages.
Contemplation can also be described as concentrating one’s consciousness on a single thing until the thinker and the object become one. When a well-trained mind can maintain its focus for some time and then drop the object while still maintaining concentration, the stage of contemplation is reached.
During contemplation, the mind shows no images and remains perfectly calm, like still water. This state is brief, like the “critical” state of the chemist between two states of matter. Another way to describe this is that as the mind becomes still, consciousness escapes from it and moves between the mental and causal envelopes.
When this happens, a momentary loss of consciousness occurs when objects of consciousness disappear from our awareness. This is followed by a heightened state of consciousness in a higher realm. When lower-level objects of consciousness disappear, they are replaced by objects from a higher plane of existence.
In this heightened state, our sense of self can influence our thoughts and feelings, shaping our mental state to align with higher levels of consciousness. We can then convey these elevated ideas to our lower consciousness, enlightening our ordinary mental state with extraordinary thoughts.
These extraordinary thoughts, often referred to as flashes of genius, come from a source beyond our ordinary mental state. These thoughts come from within, even if we cannot explain how they originated.
“The power within me pealing Lives on my lip and beckons with my hand.”
Instances of ecstasy and visions experienced by saints of various beliefs and throughout history are also of this nature. In such cases, prolonged and intense prayer or contemplation has led to a specific brain condition. The heightened inner focus has blocked the senses, resulting in a state similar to what the Raja Yogi intentionally seeks to achieve involuntarily and in a spasmodic manner.
The transition from meditation to contemplation has been described as moving from meditation “with seed” to meditation “without seed”. Once the mind has been steadied, it is held at the highest point of reasoning, the final link in a chain of argument, or on the central thought or figure of the entire process; this is meditation with seed.
The student then releases all mental activity while maintaining the gained mindset, a state of heightened alertness at the highest point reached. This is meditation without seed. By remaining poised, waiting in silence and emptiness, the individual is in the “cloud”. Suddenly, a clear, immense, and incredible change occurs. This is contemplation leading to illumination.
For example, one practices contemplation on the ideal person or a Master, first by forming an image of the Master, then contemplating it with ecstasy, immersing oneself in its glory and beauty. Subsequently, one strives to ascend towards the Master, endeavouring to elevate one’s consciousness to the ideal and merge oneself with it.
The temporary feeling mentioned above is known in Sanskrit as the Dharma-Megha, the cloud of righteousness. Western mystics refer to it as the “Cloud on the Mount”, the “Cloud on the Sanctuary”, and the “Cloud on the Mercy-Seat”. It’s the sensation of being surrounded by a dense mist, aware of not being alone but unable to see. Eventually, the mist clears, and the awareness of the higher plane emerges. Before this happens, the individual might feel like their life force is draining away, as if suspended in a void of profound darkness and loneliness. However, “Be still, and know that I am God”. In that silence and stillness, the voice of the Self will be heard, and the glory of the Self will be seen. The cloud dissipates, and the Self is revealed.
Before transitioning from meditation to contemplation, all wishing and hoping must be completely relinquished, at least during the practice period. In other words, desires must be perfectly controlled. The mind cannot be undivided when it is filled with wishes; every wish is a seed from which anger, untruthfulness, impurity, resentment, greed, carelessness, discontent, sloth, ignorance, etc., may arise. As long as there are unfulfilled desires, they will distract one from the path. The flow of thoughts constantly tries to divert into small tributaries and channels left open by unfulfilled desires and indecisive thoughts.
Every unsatisfied desire, every unresolved issue, will demand attention and distract the train of thought. Tracing interrupted chains of thought will reveal that they originate from unsatisfied desires and unresolved problems.
The process of contemplation begins when conscious activity shifts direction, attempting to understand a thing beyond its usual nature and plane. When attention is undivided by comparing activities, the mind will move as a whole and appear still, just as a spinning top may seem motionless during rapid motion.
In contemplation, one no longer thinks about the object. It’s better not to consider the self and the object as two separate things, as this may introduce bias. The goal is to detach oneself and start contemplation from inside the object, maintaining mental enthusiasm and energy throughout.
The consciousness is to be poised like a bird on the wing, looking forward and never looking back. In contemplation, thought is carried inwards until it can go no further, and is held in that position without turning back or shifting, making an intense effort to see something definite in the indefiniteness, without descending to the lower regions of conscious clarity and precision.
A practitioner of contemplation focuses more on feeling rather than thought. During contemplation, the individual rejects their identity with external bodies and the mind. This process involves shedding limitations rather than attributes. The mind is faster and more liberated than the body, and beyond the mind lies the spirit, which is even more liberated and faster. Love is more attainable in the peace of the heart than in any outward expression, but in the spirit beyond the mind, it is absolutely divine. Reason and judgment always correct the limited evidence of the senses; however, the insight of the spirit perceives truth without the need for senses and beyond the mind.
Success in all these practices can be achieved by halting lower activities while maintaining a full flow of conscious energy. Firstly, the lower mind needs to be made alert and active, after which its activity should be hindered, while the gained momentum is utilised to exercise and enhance the higher faculties within.
An ancient science of Yoga teaches that when the processes of the thinking mind are suppressed by deliberate intent, a person will experience a new state of consciousness that surpasses ordinary thinking and controls it, in the same way, that thinking exceeds and selects among desires, and desires to drive specific actions and endeavours. This heightened state of consciousness cannot be explained using the terms of the lower mind. Nevertheless, its attainment signifies that the individual is conscious of being something beyond the mind and thought, even when mental activity is ongoing, just as cultured individuals acknowledge that they are not just their physical form, even when that form is in action.
There is another state of existence, or rather another living conception of life, beyond the mind with its laborious processes of discernment, comparisons, and causal relations between things. This higher state can only be realised when the activities of consciousness are taken, in all their earthly fervour and vigour, beyond the groping cave life in which they normally dwell. This higher consciousness will come to all people sooner or later, and when it does, all of life will suddenly appear changed.
As the student meditates, they will become richer in spiritual experience and gradually become aware of new phases of consciousness opening up within them. When a student is fixed in aspiration upon their ideal, they will start feeling the influence of that ideal radiating down upon them. As they make a strong effort to reach the object of their devotion, for a brief moment, the floodgates of heaven will open, and they will find themselves united with their ideal and suffused with the glory of its realisation. By transcending the formal figures of the mind and making an intense effort to reach upwards, they will attain a state of spiritual ecstasy, where the limits of personality fall away, and all sense of separateness vanishes in the perfect union of object and seeker—unity consciousness (46) in other words.
You cannot travel on the Path before you have become that Path itself. “Behold! You have become the light, you have become the sound, you are your Master and your God. You are yourself the object of your search, the unbroken voice that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, free from sin, the seven sounds in one.” A Sufi mystic expounded such truths in public and was promptly put to death.
It is pointless to try to describe such experiences further because they are beyond the reach of language. Words only serve as signposts to point the way to something incredibly wonderful so that the traveller knows where to go.