Though talking about meditation, or writing about meditation is NOT meditation – not the
experience of it. Still, it is good to have a good map – a good intellectual understanding – of what
we are doing and the scientific basis for what we do.

Neither is meditation about twisting your body into pretzel like positions, or breathing x number of
times through one nostril or another, or other exotic physical acrobatics. It is true, that some forms
of meditation employ these practices, but this is not the essence.

Nor is meditation about staring at your belly button and chanting in strange and barbaric tongues.
Again there are some systems that use these things, but meditation is something else.

Basically meditation is very simple. (Simple to talk about but not always simple to do.) I define it as
a prolonged concentration on one thing. Whatever your posture, whether you are in lotus position
or lying on a couch, whether you are in the rose garden or on the surgeon’s table, as long as your
mind is focused on one thing – without “breaks” – interruptions – you are meditating.

Meditating is actually the most natural thing in the world. So natural, that virtually every person is
meditating – they might not realize it, but they are. The sick person is meditating on his or her
sickness – and generally in a very “one pointed” way – so one pointed, that if you try to distract
them – to take their mind off of it – you will have a battle on your hands. And even if you succeed for
a time, generally, the meditator on sickness, will go right back to his or her meditation on disease.
It takes dramatic measures to break their concentration on their sickness – and the cosmos in its
great mercy often supplies these measures.

When you see a poor person, you are looking at a “meditator on lack and limitation” – if not in this
life, in past lives.

The person with insurmountable problems is meditating on his or her problems – and they get what
they are meditating on.

The businessman is meditating on profits. His or her mind is always on how to expand the
business, how to create more profit. And over time, they acquire the knowledge and the power of
what they want. Most business people that I know are involved in their business 24/7 – even when
they are sleeping.

The Saint is meditating on the Divine. Little by little the Divine qualities come into the Saint.
Eventually, with time, the Saint will actually “become God”. With all the powers and privileges that
come with it.

When you put your mind on something for a short time, we say that you are “paying attention”. If
this attention is prolonged, we call it concentration. If the concentration is prolonged, it becomes
meditation.

And this is the whole essence of it.

A child in rapt attention on his toy, is in a state of meditation. The lover who cannot stop thinking
about the beloved is in a state of meditation (and by the way, this is a high state of meditation).
The working man planning his vacation – with joy and anticipation – is in a state of meditation. The
mind is totally focused and engaged on the object of its love.

Wherever we find ourselves – in whatever condition or circumstance – it is a result of our conscious
or unconscious attention and meditations of the past. We have focused on certain things and have
manifested them.

Meditation works by an immutable spiritual law. That upon which we place our attention,
establishes a mental/spiritual connection with that thing. This is the state in the interior worlds. The
attention connects with the object of attention.

We can liken it to radio or TV. Your focus determines the channel or program that you will receive.
Thus you will receive the energy, thought, knowledge, vibrations of that upon which you focus. If
you focus on Beauty you will start to receive the emanations of the “beauty” broadcasts of the
cosmos. You will become physically more beautiful (over time). Your thought and feeling will
become beautified. You will emanate – with almost no conscious effort – the vibrations of beauty.
You will also be able to create beauty – either through the arts, crafts, or in your relationships.
If you can imagine an Infinite Mind, with an infinite number of stations, you can see that a person
skilled in meditation has many, many options that an ordinary person doesn’t have.

Meditation also works by natural law. Life and growth always proceeds from the “within to the
without”. As we absorb the vibrations of that upon which we meditate – it must, by the spiritual law,
express itself in our outer world and circumstances. And this expression will always be natural and
harmonious.

It matters not how solid or insurmountable an outer condition is. Meditation on its opposite will
inevitably dissolve it and bring in its opposite. It is true that the outer condition can have a strong
momentum and persist for a while, but the new energies brought in by the new meditation, will first
prevent the condition from getting stronger (no new energy is feeding it) and then gradually
dissolve it.

So, the implications of meditation are indeed vast. Poverty can be transformed to wealth. Sickness
to health and wholeness. Weakness to power. Even death itself – the last enemy – cannot prevail
against a meditation on eternal life. And death can be overcome.

Anything that one can desire, exists on the inner planes. If it didn’t exist somewhere in the universe,
you couldn’t desire it. You would be mentally and emotionally incapable of such a desire. And by
meditating on the object of your desire, you connect to it – you bond with it – its energy comes into
you – and by the spiritual law it will appear in your physical tangible reality according to the power
and purity of your meditation and focus.

What an awesome power has been granted to us!

The natural question is, if we have something so powerful, why isn’t everybody doing it?
My contention has always been, that if people understood what meditation was, everyone WOULD
be doing it. But it seems to me that the main reason people are not meditating stems from a very
powerful materialistic perspective on the universe and reality. A belief that “matter is fact” – that
appearances are real (and not something that is manufactured) – that the reports of the 5 senses
are the only reality. Since meditation lifts us to subtle realms – realms of spirit and energy – these
are considered by the “mortal” sensual mind – as somehow abstract, unreal, philosophical.
Dreaming. Fantasizing. And this materialistic state of mind is a big blockage to meditation.
Little do these people know that every solid object, everything in their world, began as a “dream” or
“fantasy”. This is the beginning of the creative process.

Religious people, Bible believers, would say that Man’s Original Sin, caused a separation from
spiritual reality and a denseness to spiritual teaching. There is much to be said for this perspective
as well – its just another way of describing the state of materialism that humanity is in now.
If the universe is strictly material – strictly objective in the Aristotelian sense – then it is only natural
that solutions have to be material as well. Matter must act on matter for something to be done.
But if we understand that the so-called material universe is only the shadow – the end product – of
processes happening in other dimensions – vibratory levels – then it is not so difficult to understand
that if we change the state in another dimension, we will change the so-called material state.