I am practicing asana but at a level where the quality is meditative. The
totality of being, from core to skin, is experienced. Mind is unruffled,
intelligence is awake in heart rather than in head, self is quiescent, and
conscious life is in every cell of the body. That is what I mean when I
say asana opens up the whole spectrum of yoga's possibilities.
Meditation (Dhyana)
I have often said that yoga is meditation, and meditation is yoga. Med
itation is the stilling of the movements of consciousness. It is bringing
the turbulent sea to a state of flat calm. This calm is not torpid or inert.
It is a deep tranquility, pregnant with all the potential of creation. Re
member the biblical phrase from Genesis-"And God's breath moved
upon the waters." When you ruffle the waters, you create. You create
everything in the manifest world, from nuclear war to Mozart's sym
phonies. The yogi is journeying in the opposite direction, from the
world of things and events, which are so joyful, painful, baffling, and
unending, back to the point of stillness before the waves were ruffled.
This is because he wants to answer the question, "Who am I?" He
hopes that if he can find that out, he will be able to answer the ques
tions, "What is my source of Being?" and "Is there a God I can know?"
The culmination of this chapter is the experience of the existence
and plenitude of the individual soul. But the practice of meditation ex
tends into the next chapter, which concerns samadhi (total absorption
and immersion in the Ocean of Being or Universal Divine). The fron
tiers we create to explain are artificial. Yoga is a ladder we ascend, but
whereas with a real ladder, when you are on the seventh (dhyana) rung,
all your weight is on that rung, in yoga your weight is still equally on
the preceding rungs that have aided your ascent. Should any one of
those crack, you fall. We shall see that especially in chapter 7 when we
examine the ethical code that is both the foundation and, in its real
ization, as you say in English, the proof of the pudding.
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