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Meditation

1 Continuous thought on one subject; (a period of) serious and sustained reflection or mental contemplation. Musing over, reflecting on; considering, studying, pondering 2 The action or practice of profound spiritual or religious contemplation or mental concentration. Oxford Dictionary

There is a vast difference between the clumsy translation of the Eastern Spiritual trance-inducing practice (as epitomised by the word ‘dhyana’) and the Western meaning of meditation: ‘thinking upon; considering’.

In the West to meditate means to be thoughtful; to engage in contemplation about, to exercise the mental faculties, contemplate, think about, think over, muse upon, ponder upon, reflect on, deliberate about, mull over, have in mind, plan by turning over in the mind, fix one’s attention on, observe intently or with interest, concentrate on, consider, ruminate, study, intend, project, design, devise, scheme or plot. And meditation is continuous thought on one subject; a period of serious and sustained reflection or mental contemplation, consideration, reflection, deliberation, rumination, mulling over or being in reverie, musing, pondering or brooding.

Whereas in the East to meditate means to be thoughtless; meditation is the concentrated action or practice of a profound spiritual or religious state of consciousness for whose description words are considered to be totally inadequate. It is the highest state of consciousness, associated with direct mystic experience of reality and cannot be experienced until a condition of mindlessness has been created through the deliberate elimination of the objects of thought from consciousness. The organs of sense perception are so controlled that they no longer pass to the mind their reactions to what is perceived. The mind loses its identity by absorption into a higher state which precludes any awareness of duality, although a form of unitary awareness of the conventional world is retained.

Entering into Eastern meditation, one experiences the heart as being wider than the universe and experiences infinite bliss and immeasurable power exceeding any occult power. It is a yogic state of formless ecstasy when there is absorption in divine reality and a loss of body sense ... and the ego has been transcended. In this state one rests in highest consciousness ... one has become lord and master of reality. Very few spiritual seekers have reached this level for one is manifesting God in every second, both consciously and perfectly. There is identification with the transcendent, radiant being in which all phenomena are seen as temporary, non-binding modifications of this all-inclusive divine being. The divine self is realized beyond the view point of the physical body, or the mind or the independent personal consciousness. When phenomena arise to notice from this formless and unqualified presence or love-bliss there is ecstasy of perfect spontaneity.

Thus Eastern meditation, as in being thoughtless imagination, can evince an Altered State of Consciousness whereupon one realizes ‘I am God on Earth’. For an actualist meditation, as in thoughtful contemplation, can evince a Pure Consciousness Experience – a direct ‘self’-less experience of the perfection and purity of the infinitude of the physical universe.

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