Shyam23
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Nov 5, 2005, 10:28 AM
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The Effects of Meditation
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Dear all,
I enclose below an article that I have written about the effects of meditation. Luckily in the Iyengar group people do not practice Dhyana and so I dare to mention the effects!
Best wishes
Shyam
"The Effects of Meditation
By Shyam Mehta
The Loving Heart Centre
www.lovingheartcentre.net
The only guide to meditation in the world is the Yoga Sutras of Lord Patanjali.
In my forthcoming book "The 108 Heads of Lord Patanjali", I carefully analyze the sutras and show that they have two main purposes:
· To "sting" those who do not worship God
· To provide the worshiper with the three gems of knowledge he needs to know for his religious progress.
An advance copy of one of the chapters, called is also available on my website: “Commentary on Sutra 54 of the Third Chapter”.
These three things do not include meditation.
Meditation for someone not instructed to meditate my God has the following two effects:
1. You become dull.
2. You imagine nice things, such as that you are getting close to God.
Meditation stops you doing your duties in life which in the main consist of helping others as and when you are ready to do so.
So what are the stings from incorrect practice of meditation? There are three:
1. You destroy conscious brain cells, through inactivity without the presence of God
2. You destroy sub-conscious brain cells, through inactivity without the presence of God
3. You use contact with reality, because the effects of imagination are much more powerful when your brain is still than when you are leading a normal active life.
What is the speed by which these three stings take hold? I discuss the effect after one year of 30 minutes of practice per day:
1. Ten percent of your ability to think is lost
2. Ten percent on your ability to initiate thinking is lost
3. Contact with reality can be measured by your ability to absorb information (do you notice if somebody is walking towards you, do you notice the tree that you passed, etc.). You lose 10 percent of this ability.
It is not as bad as it seems. The 10 percent loss is multiplicative in mathematical terms, not additive. You do not lose, for example, 100 percent of your ability in these three areas after 10 years. You only lose 65 percent.
Here is an example of what happens to someone who meditates a lot. It relates to one of India’s greatest saints with temples all over India. But this is not personal criticism of him: http://www.neebkaroribaba.com/index.htm “Maharajji was born in the village Akbarpur (Firozabad district) of Uttar Pradesh(India) in a wealthy Brahmin jameedar(landlord) family. He was born on Shukla Paksh Ashtmi in the month of Margsheersh and was named Lakshmi Narayan Sharma by his father Shri Durga Prasad Sharma. From early childhood Maharajji was detached from worldly attachments. At the age of eleven he was married to a girl from an affluent Brahmin family.” “One day he came out and all he said all day long was "thul-thul, nan-nan," repeating these words to himself like a mantra. Days went by like this and somebody finally said: "Maharajji, what are you saying?" And it turned out to be an old Bihari dialect and all it meant was "too big, too big, too little, too little". When he was finally asked why he was saying this, he finally said: "Oh, all you people, you live in the world of judgment. It's always too big or too little."”
He is a great man, a Maharajah of a man. On another of his web sites He is claimed to know everything: http://www.neemkarolibaba.com/index.html “It is believed that by the time Maharaj-ji was 17 years old He knew EVERYTHING. This is to be taken to mean a knowing that is actually incomprehensible to you and me. A knowing that is all. The knowing of Bhagvan. The knowing of God.”
”I bow to the lotus feet of my guru, who is an ocean of mercy and is Sri Hari in human form”.
Unfortunately he is dead so you cannot interview him and find out whether what I say is true. You have to rely on the words of His devotees, of who there are many many. But, you will find that there are many great saints and swamis in India, many avatars and gurus and all you need to do is find one who is alive. This is easy too: All you need to do is go to any "ashram" in India. Ask them how many hours per day they have been meditating and how many years. Then, judge yourself in each of these three areas and see whether you agree with me.
Sometimes, you should know, that one thinks that a person is able to think when he cannot. He has memory of past answers to many questions. Also there are two types of memory. A person is able to access both conscious and unconscious memory banks. The unconscious memory banks are built to have a perfect memory of all activities that you undertake, all experiences. It never fails. A 'yogi' may have 'perfect memory' but may at the same time be senile, having lost 70% or more of his conscious brain memory cells. So, when you interview a person you need to be careful not to make hasty deductions about his capabilities. THe unconscious memory bank is filled during sleep. Hence you can ask questions about what has happened during the day, but not about questions that arose the previous day to such a yogi.
Example: You ask someone what are you saying and he may say “nan nan”. This does not necessarily mean he is thinking. If you ask him a question that he has dealt with in the past, he will be able to remember and then answer you. You may have asked him this question before or he may simply be hungry and wants some bread (nan is a Hindi word for bread. Not many gurus speak Sanskrit these days so this tip may be useful to you).
Another day, I will mention to you which incorrect yoga practice destroys memory.
The test of whether someone has an ability to analyze is twofold:
· Can he initiate analysis? Often, a person gets flummoxed at the very thought of answering a question that he has not encountered before. His mind goes blank. The appropriate cells not being there.
· Can he analyze? He is able in principle to answer your questions, but cannot quite figure out how, the appropriate cells not being there.
What does it mean to say there is a 10 percent loss? Either you can answer a question or you cannot. This is logic. It is all to do with time. With perfect mental ability, the amount of time taken to initiate analysis is in the order of seven to eight seconds. This depends on the nature of an individual. Some people act quickly and may take five seconds, others are more careful and take ten seconds. A 10 percent loss of initiating capability means that on average they take 30 seconds. A 50 percent loss means that on average they would take 17 minutes, if their ability to concentrate is unimpaired through yoga or other practice. A 50 percent loss is a disaster.
It is worse in the case of actual thinking ability. The brain is like a computer. Its thinking speed is dependent on the number of chains required for the analysis, but the more chains there are the longer it takes. If you were only a computer, a non-linear process that has four steps will take a lot more time, that is more than twice, than a process which has two steps. For a human being, the speed all depends on which path of analysis God takes you. This is because thinking is not necessarily a linear process.
Of course, when someone says he is meditating, it is not as bad as you think. Lack of adherence to truth and yoga practice often go hand-in-hand (another sting from Lord Patanjali). Mostly when people say they are meditating, they mean they are thinking. When you sit and close your eyes, your thinking process slows. Because it is slow and your memory is not quite as good as perfect, you end up thinking of the same think over and over again. Because it is slow, your brain cells are inactive. They do not get used also because most of the time you are remembering rather than thinking. The loss of initiation, analytical and absorption abilities has more or less the same effect as if you are meditating. Hence, you should not worry: you can do either."
The Loving Heart Centre
www.lovingheartcentre.net
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