Ruler of the castle of nine gates. By Matsyavatara das (Marco Ferrini)

An evolutionary journey requires a conscious use of our senses, at the risk of being trapped by the illusory nature of our perception of reality: our energy may thus be absorbed by that of the objects around us and the psychological pressure they exert on the mind (vritti). Every action we enact produces a tendency that is enforced through repetition: these repetitions develop into habits that ingrain attachments that are difficult to dismiss. Hence the relevance of carefully selecting our experiences.

In the Bhagavad-gita, Krishna  (V.5/13) encourages Arjuna to become the ruler of the castle of nine gates: the body is the castle and the nine gates are represented by the orifices that connect him to the outer world.

Body and mind are a laboratory where we can experiment elevating our goals: “you where not meant to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge” (Dante’s Inferno Canto XXVI).

Nature (alias prakriti) is actually an expression of the spirit and should be a tool for evolution rather than quagmire that absorbs us in its quicksands.

Spirit and matter are not oppository within the conscience of those who have attained spiritual realization. Thus all that is created, all creatures and the Creator represent an undivided triad. It is a single entity that splinters and diffuses itself in infinite expressions. We must experience our knowledge of reality with a proviso: that reality may not become a tomb for our soul. 

If we are unconnected to superior values we are consumed by vices or by whatever we have come to depend upon simply because it conditions us.

The Bhagavad-gita teaches the art of being rigorous, self controlled, wilful and determined: to what avail?

The aim is to rediscover our primeval condition of knowledge, eternity and bliss. Yet even this understanding alone is inadequate because we need to put these qualities into daily practice so as to prevent them from becoming an abstract and purely theoretical knowledge that alienates us from society and the human adventure. 

Deep-rooted and authentic wisdom leads to compassion, solidarity with all creatures and to the extraordinary experience of sharing and Love.

The Science of Meditation (part 6). By Matsyavatara dasa (Marco Ferrini)

The principles of liberty, justice and love are irrepressible and everyone tends to realize them, hence, insofar we dedicate ourselves to developing our idealities, we act ecologically for our environment; it means that we do not just help people who live with us, but the environment in general and we integrate ourselves into Humanity and with all Creatures. This ideality can be initially experienced in a sporadic way with the practice of occasional meditation, but it should become a whole life modality daily constant, in order to reach the perfection of meditation.

Perfection does not exist from a human perspective, but what exists is a tending toward, moving toward, nevertheless there is no need to fear for taking action and to think that, since we are not perfect, our action will be imperfect. Anyway, it will be imperfect, but if we take first steps in the right direction and move toward perfection, each step will carry us back into the essential, inner happiness with full satisfaction, santosha, and contentment, tushti, that make the person extremely tolerant and humble. Regardless of social position, heralds or uniform and colors we wear, what determines the level of realization we can reach are our humbleness and tolerance. For this reason, awareness and wisdom should be transformed in emotional detachment, detaching ourselves not just from what is aimless, but from what is harmful and is an obstacle on the path to evolution. The first level of detachment to be realized is to retract senses from their objects (pratyahara), in order to avoid that senses become like wild horses, without any violent opposition or repression, but converting them into an evolutionary path, useful for our inner growth. This renunciation is not a brutal deprivation dictated by dogmatism or prejudice, on the contrary, it is an appealing and effective abstention we practice naturally when we have been given something superior: the incarnated soul can abstain from sense enjoyment, although the craving (for sense enjoyment) remains. But if the soul becomes detached by experiencing the superior pleasure, it will remain steady in the spiritual consciousness.

Translated literally from Sanskrit param means “superior” and drishtva “having seen”: when we will develop a superior vision, we can renounce an inferior one. We do not have to fear inhibition: some cerebral areas, as well as some organs in the body, are inhibited when we do something requiring to focus our attention. It is certainly not such kind of inhibition that may block our evolutionary path, on the contrary it is something we can dominate by ourselves, so we can deal with it in a sensible and expert way when we give up something inferior for a superior benefit. This act can be called asceticism, in Sanskrit tapas, that is our capability to renounce with a volitional act, with deliberated intention, something inferior for something better. It involves an extraordinary coherence and a plan to achieve liberation from conditioning, thus to dissolve virulent samskara that affect the individual behavior. The resulting benefit is extended to all those feelings of guilt and complexes that populate our unconscious, which stemmed at some point in our lives and in our existential history, thus dissolving negative effects and setting the individual free from the imprisonment suffered till then. Although meditation does not exhaust itself in the meaning of ascetism, the latter constitutes a detail that cannot be overlooked; it is associated both to prayers an right acts for the benefit of all creatures, harming as little as possible (ahimsa), for example by living on natural and wholesome food, that involves minimum of violence: cereals, vegetables and legumes. So, our aim should be to provide an ongoing way to structure our lives, focusing on the highest evolutionary level in this segment of existence, consequently striving for a more evolved physical body in our successive live. The Vishnu Purana explains there are 400.000 varieties of evolutionary human species, like human, subhuman, superhuman, saints and brigands, various types as much as there are various psychic structures and related chthonic impulses arising from the unconscious. These drives can affect individual behavior, they can dominate a person inexorably and, when destructive and antisocial, lead him or her to commit horrible crimes. To know that some of these forces could be irrepressible and beyond an individual’s own control, has made possible in the Jurisprudence context that similar cases are not be condemned to prison but treated in Judiciary Psychiatric Hospitals. Anyhow, before arriving to such extreme and severely compromised situations, there are prophylaxis and preventive treatments focused on resolving, that can be applied. Meditation practice is associated to them and represents a concrete example.

The Science of Meditation (part 5). By Matsyavatara dasa (Marco Ferrini)

In the Veda “Vac” is the root-word that creates the Worlds. It is so, as we reveal our mood with the use of words and they must be as true as possible, since before deceiving others we deceive ourselves. The word, as the action, is however just an exterior manifestation of an inside process, the process of reflection, vicara, of thought and before it of desire. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad it is explained that “Man is nothing else but desire”. Thus, it is essential to select one’s desires, since quite a few reside in the unconscious: “an entire herd of pawing horses” quoting Plato. We are supposed to orientate and direct these unconscious drives, as soon as they are crossing the threshold to consciousness or conscious thought, becoming thus aware. Our temperament is the result of a concatenation of desires, thoughts, reflections, words, actions, repeated actions that involve an interaction of more or less emotional factors, becoming tendencies, salient features of our character that incites the actions to take, if we do not funnel it in the right way. In order to act upon these quasi-unconscious phases, it is necessary to accede the dimension that resides beyond the threshold of awareness; there are different ways to do it as meditation, prayer and dreams that Freud indicates as “the royal road to the unconscious”. All these ways can help us in exploring our internal dimension and expanding the lightness of our consciousness, thus restricting the darkness of the unconscious, as well as of the unknown, leading us to a deeper acquaintance with ourselves. The application of these techniques requires different theoretical and practical areas of knowledge, that can be experienced in daily life. Meditation experience can endure while talking, walking, eating, sleeping: we do not meditate just when we sit in a crossed-leg posture. But to reach a constant meditative state and to be always aware about our deep nature and its interaction with the phenomenal exterior, we need to consider some aspects: first that our psyche is like an arena, where titanic oposing forces are continually raging and struggling. 

Sometimes these are entropic tendencies, sometimes they are syntropic, evolutive or devolutive ones, good or bad for health. Through the potency of the mythical language, it can be defined as the ceaseless fight between Good and Evil. There are several obstacles to meditation; Patanjali outlines these obstacles, like distraction, vikshipta, obfuscation and blunting of consciousness, the lowering of attention, mudha, whereas a selective attention is fundamental to succeed in meditative practice.

Another central aspect we have to consider about meditation concerns the individuality. Every individual is peculiar to himself, everybody is an individual with his own path, there is no sameness within these terms, since everyone has a human story and personal experiences.

According to the three modes of material nature and the work associated with them, the four divisions of human society are created by Me. And although I am the creator of this system, you should know that I am yet the nondoer, being unchangeable.

When the subject, the spiritual being, leaves his physical body he travels incorporated in a psychic bubble constituted by samskara and vasana; the strongest tendencies will particularly determine the nature of next birth, consequently the place, the belonging to a certain species and other factors related to a new material body designed to be inhabited by that particular jiva.

The psychic structure differs by the experiences we carry forward from our previous lives and, life after life, it determines different births also for monozygotic twins, what about “simple” brothers, fellow countrymen, compatriots or people who shares the same culture. The influence of the three archetypal forces, guna, that compose the material nature, prakriti, and the background of recent or less recent past actions, karma, are individually different, therefore, when a person wishes to start a meditation practice it is suggestible to get acquainted with him/her personally, since they should be assisted and introduced in a special manner, peculiar to them and according to their guna and karma. If the individuality, the specificity of that particular model of personality, is unique, then liberty should be conceived as its natural corollary. No practice can deprive individuals of their liberty and no Master shall deny liberty to his disciples. There shall not be any induced suggestion, but obedience related to free will to accept an offer from a model considered pre-eminent by the individual. In this relationship the liberty of the meditator must always be respected, because the person will be able to meditate to the extent that he or she will be free. Certainly, he will make mistakes, he will not avoid to be subject to mental automatism typical of who knows how many past lives, he will not immediately succeed to renounce and get beyond all obstacles, like mind conditioning, a certain habit, food or beverage, a relationship etc… but if we know the positive sense of liberty and recognize the specificity of that pattern of transitory personality, then the individual will be free to express himself accordingly to his or her consciousness level, without any destructive imposition, but rather by offers infused with the pure spirit of bhakti, loving relationship, prema, with an affective investment, as Love by definition does not need any counterpart, it is self-sufficient. Another important factor in meditation is the social integration, not with a corporatist meaning, much less of caste. Social integration means the capability of harmonic interaction, constructive, evolutive and with all creatures, the attitude to valorize any creature, whether they are birds, reptiles, fishes and what about men, potential travel companions from whom we may learn, in order to grow and develop spiritually. In a certain sense, all that can fall within one of the most important abstentions Patanjali indicates: Nonviolence, ahimsa. Finally, one fundamental element for an effective meditation practice is the spiritual tension, that irrepressible need every human being has to apply and orientate towards ideality. Meditation cannot prescind from the necessity we have to realize our Inner Identity.