AN INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION

What is meditation?

Meditation is the method by which the human being evolves to the level of superman and even beyond. The normal human being is not at the highest evolutionary level. This is why there is so much crime, war, and suffering in the human world today. The evolution of the human being is something more than biological. It is to a great extent psychological. This psychological evolution is the evolution of the human consciousness. Evolution of consciousness cannot take place unconsciously as in biological evolution. It is a consciously executed systematic process. This process has to be discovered by trial and error, or learned from someone who knows. There was a time in human history, when supermen were in existence and even men who had evolved even beyond this stage to the highest level where the evolutionary process comes to an end.

When a person has evolved to the highest level, he is called an Awakened One. This is because this person has “awakened” from “the dream of existence.” This means, “existence” is understood to be a dream. In other words, we are not “really existing." If one carefully examines Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, one finds that what he discovered was that evolution takes place because of a struggle for existence, while there was only the survival of the fittest. In fact no individual really survived, only the species continued if it fitted the environmental conditions. Otherwise even a whole species would die. In other words, only a struggle for existence continued, but no individual survived.

It is only when the evolutionary process reaches the level of the human animal and the human consciousness evolves to the highest point that the human being becomes aware of the mistake that the evolutionary process has made. The mistake is that the struggle for existence is unrealistic and futile. No individual really exists. Existence is an appearance, not a reality. Existence is an illusion, or more correctly a delusion. So the individual who reaches the highest level realizes this and so “awakens from the dream of existence.” At this point the struggle for existence ceases, and therefore the evolutionary process stops. This is why that stage becomes the ultimate point in the evolutionary process.

This highest stage in the evolutionary process the person becomes a no-person. All self-centered emotions and all selfishness ceases at this point. The person becomes completely selfless. This means the person becomes completely good. This person also becomes fully wise. One has also conquered death and become immortal. If one does not exist how can one die? In other words such an evolved person has become God.

God therefore is not the creator of the world but a human concept. It is the human ideal of perfection, which human beings struggle to realize through the practice of religion. When one realizes this ideal “man becomes God.” This is the union with God that all religions talk about.

Why meditate?

The simple reason is to evolve. This is the ultimate purpose of life. Otherwise it is the common struggle for existence, which is to prevent death, or become immortal. When we realize that this common struggle for existence is futile, we struggle to stop existing. Existence is not an entity but an activity, which is really a struggle to exist rather than an existence.

This struggle to exist continues because of self-centered emotions. Emotions are blind they are incapable of becoming aware of reality. Only our rational faculty can become aware of reality. But the emotions prevent the rational faculty from becoming aware of reality. The purpose of meditation is to purify and calm the mind first, and then train the rational faculty to become aware of reality. The first effort is called samatha and the second is called vipassana.