Meditation, some answers

As i said in my opening post, i am going to discuss not only what but why too so after reading my suggestion of doing of above mentioned practice each night, the first question that must have been crossed to everybody's mind, is why do all this, in the first place? What is its purpose, why it is necessary, or how it can be helpful in any way? What it has to do with the meditation? Is it meditation, and if not, what else is meditation?

Let me address these questions to the best of my abilities: what i experienced in person, what i derived via those and what i learned through other sources. But, let me make one thing very clear here that, though my explanations may have some borrowed portions, but my experiences are absolutely not.

The first thing that is required while discussing anything is its definition. One cannot know for what exactly one is looking after unless one has its that much clear definition, which is enough to recognize that particular thing.

Thus, first of all, we have to define meditation, but, the problem is that the meditation neither can be defined nor understood without understanding our mind, thus, we have to go though those details of the mind which are necessary to understand meditation.

As most of the intellectuals agree that mind is basically works in two ways: consciously and subconsciously, or we can say that our mind is divided into two basic parts: conscious and subconscious. Conscious part/working or the mind is that phenomenon, with which we mostly determine as ourselves. We have direct and total control over it. On the other hand, we consider that our subconscious mind is not in total control of ours. It rather learn/experience though conscious mind, derive conclusions autonomously, and impose those on the conscious mind. This theory is by and large true.

But, there are some more details, which are very pertinent here to understand both of the working of the mind and meditation as well.

The fact of the matter is that our subconscious is even more dominant over its counterpart that we assume. It is subconscious that takes most of our decisions, though mostly indirectly. The act of thinking/learning is mostly done by the subconscious mind only. Being in the direct control of the body, conscious merely implement the decisions of the subconscious. What we consider as habits, are nothing but the default/permanent decisions of the subconscious, and that is precisely what forms what we use to term as will. And, for whatever reasons, whenever conscious goes against those default/permanent decisions of the subconscious, we call it will power. And, that is precisely why it is called free will. It is called free only because it is still within the capacity of the conscious, but this does not mean that it very easy to implement, though the term free gives somewhat impression. Free merely means it is available, nothing else.

And, meditation is all about this will power. In simple terms, meditation is nothing but breaking that default dominance of the subconscious and making it listen to the conscious.

One more important thing to understand here is that though conscious and subconscious use to interact constantly, but it is mostly one way traffic: from subconscious to conscious. The duty of the conscious is mostly limited to inform the subconscious, what conscious has experienced through the body. Or rather, the system works in such a way that being in a kind of witness/spectator position, subconscious is automatically aware of the experiences of the conscious. Conscious cannot hide anything from the subconscious, but on the other hand, the majority of the working of the subconscious remains hidden from the conscious.

Again, meditation is all about removing this one sided veil and allowing conscious not only witness but also interfere in the working of the subconscious by converting this one way traffic into two way.

I think that is enough for one post.

One thing i want to say the readers. I do not want this thread to become a monologue. All questions and criticisms are welcome and i will try to address those to the best of my abilities.

with love,
sanjay