The Present Moment-Part II

Add as a preferred source on Google

Remain as a witness

Not to identify yourself with the rising tides of thought but to remain as a witness of them all is a definite stage in the efforts at meditation. In an atmosphere of your own unconcernedess, your thoughts will get suffocated and will die by themselves. So the Rishis advise the seekers on the path of meditation: "Moment to moment disassociate yourself from continuing any thought that consciously rises in the mind.

This practice sweeps the mind clean of all rising thoughts, leads you to the state of thoughtlessness, and you arrive at the Holy of holies."

This non association with the rising thought-disturbances is achieved by training ourselves to remain as a witness to the flood of happenings in ourselves. To be a mere onlooker of the lusty parade of thoughts in revelry is to withdraw from thoughts their ability to continue their inner carnival any longer. As a witness we remain in the present, without being conditioned by past associations or enchanted by future expectations. This state, called the neutral condition of personality, will, in its sweep and depth, ultimately bring us to the thoughtless condition.

This no-mind state is the very divine substratum upon which the present exists and which serves as the threshold of time where the future becomes the past.

The no-mind state is the experience of pure awareness, with no distracting objects-only the infinite self, the changeless and the unique. This is the goal to be reached, the truth to be realized, the experience divine to be lived as the meditator's own essential self. It is not a thing to be objectively recognized or even intellectually comprehended. This state is to be spiritually apprehended - in and immediate, personal, inner experience. In this state meditation gets fulfilled, and the meditator becomes the one Self, where the triple factors, meditator-meditated-meditation coalesce to become one vital experience of total transcendental awakening, or Self-realization.

The goal is, no doubt, extremely covetable and supremely enchanting. But to attain it, the meditator must have the necessary equipment, fully prepared. In our times we find that failures in meditation are reported more often than successes. This is because the seekers, in the spirit of our hurried times, dash into the act of meditation without first procuring the required pre-flight attunement of their "machines - off-light". The takeoff never happens!

For establishing a scheme of life most conducive to helping meditators grow into meditative attunement, the masters give advice in the most general terms: "Stop remembering and craving for things bygone; entertain no joy or sorrow as they reach you in the present; remaining thus, you shall grow into the great glory of your own Self." Therefore, let us learn to surrender our past unto His feet in love, and let us learn to remain in those sublime heights of divine awareness, where worries and joys cannot reach to cloud our vision and upset our equipoise.

Be patient, be steady. Strive continuously, cultivating these qualities. Success is sure, and the Upanishad rishis assure for us the experience of the Self. Towards this acme of life hurry without haste; hasten slowly. About the author

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda the great master's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.....