Meditation - the direct encounter

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Picture: Meditation - The Direct Encounter (3).

Picture: Meditation - The Higher Self.

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Meditation is a spiritual exercise which aligns the physical brain with the soul.

The dance of experience while meditating expresses the freedom, harmony, love and joy of the soul.


Picture: Jesus meditating. Bruce Harman.

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Silent meditation with a group of like-spirited people can exert a powerful positive influence on the energetic balance of the locality, particularly if half the group is female and half is male.

Perhaps the most potent form of group meditation is transmission meditation.
 
It is worth recalling the work of Father Anthony de Mello, a psychotherapist and Jesuit priest from India, who died in 1987. He was one of those intuitive Christian priests who could sense the commonality of spirit underlying eastern and western traditions.

In the context of meditation, Anthony de Mello spoke of the possibility of enjoying an intuition of God without form or image, and of the experience, in meditation, of dissolving into God as salt dissolves into water.

And ever realistic about the importance of Jesus, he described the difference between Jesus and the rest of us as lying in the fact that whereas Jesus is awake and fully free, we, too often, are spiritually comatose and immobilised by fear – particularly by the fear of growth.


Picture: Chakra activation by meditation (1).

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Here is a meditation by Anthony de Mello SJ, on growth:

"Calamities can bring growth and enlightenment," said the Master. And he explained it thus: "Each day a bird would shelter in the withered branches of a tree that stood in the middle of a vast deserted plain. One day a whirlwind uprooted the tree, forcing the poor bird to fly a hundred miles in search of shelter - till it finally came to a forest of fruit-laden trees." And he concluded: "If the withered tree had survived, nothing would have induced the bird to give up its security and fly." 

This meditation, and many more, by Anthony de Mello, can be found here. And Michael Brooke has a useful introductory essay about Anthony de Mello here.


Picture: Chakra activation by meditation (2).

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In May 1976, Frederick Toppe delivered a paper to the American Lutheran Southwest Michigan Pastoral Conference. It was entitled "Meditation: Pagan and Christian."

He said: "Of all the hard facts of science, I know of none more solid and fundamental than the fact that if you inhibit thought (and persevere) you come at length to a region of consciousness below or beyond thought…and a realization of an altogether vaster self than that to which we are accustomed."

"We can describe meditation and meditational methods as the means used to achieve the feelings either of religious bliss or of natural bliss. The means used to achieve the break-through into the altered state of consciousness are almost limitless in variety, reminding us that in meditation we are not dealing with an exclusively religious phenomenon, but with a phenomenon that is, in itself, a neutral event, neither religious nor unreligious, but capable of being interpreted in either direction. This means it can be used in Christian and in pagan environments and be interpreted accordingly as either a Christian or a pagan or a secular phenomenon."


Picture: Theologue. Alex Grey.

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Toppe has a lot to say about the German Protestant reformer, Martin Luther (1483 – 1546). He cites Luther's commentary on Psalm 50:2. The text here reads: "From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth."

Luther's comment is: “With these words God pours himself and his dear Son Christ into us and draws us into himself, so that He is completely 'vermenschet'' (incarnated) and we are completely 'vergottet' (deified).”

Toppe speaks also of the great Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910), who was himself a gifted mystic, and makes the comment that: ".... Tolstoy often reflected the Orthodox bias for the direct experience of God as opposed to a mediate perception through the Word."

Toppe then goes on to relate a famous story told by Tolstoy:

An Orthodox bishop is on an inspection tour of his diocese. He hears of three pious monks living on an island in a lake and takes a boat to visit them. The monks turn out to have no knowledge at all of Scripture and doctrine. Patiently the bishop seeks to teach them, but finally he has to settle only for teaching them the Lord’s Prayer; they are too simple to learn anything more.

The bishop departs with some doubt over the genuineness of their faith. As his boat leaves the island for the mainland, in the distance he sees three figures moving towards him. As they come closer he sees that they are the three monks from the island, running across the water to catch him.

The monks climb into the boat and admit that they have already forgotten the Lord’s Prayer. The bishop falls on his face before them and says that they are holier men than he is, for they truly are in God. They need not concern themselves with such matters as creeds and doctrines, for they already know God directly.

The three monks return to their island, still running on the water, and the bishop goes his way, realizing that to be in God is more than any intellectual understanding of Him. 


Picture: Green water woman meditating outdoors.

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In the years since Toppe's paper, there have been many scientific and medical studies of the effects of meditation on the physiology of meditators. I cite three of these below.

(1) In December 1989, C.N. Alexander, E.J. Langer, R.I. Newman, H.M. Chandler and J.L. Davies of the Department of Psychology at Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa, published a paper. It was entitled: "Transcendental meditation, mindfulness, and longevity: an experimental study with the elderly."

They asked a question: "Can direct change in state of consciousness through specific mental techniques extend human life and reverse age-related declines?"

To address this question, 73 residents of 8 homes for the elderly (mean age 81 years) were randomly assigned among no treatment and 3 treatments, highly similar in external structure and expectations: the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program, mindfulness training (MF) in active distinction making, or a relaxation (low mindfulness) program.

A planned comparison indicated that the "restful alert" TM group improved most, followed by MF. This was in contrast to the relaxation and no-treatment groups.

A related study with the same sample group addressed paired associate learning involving two measures of cognitive flexibility; mental health; systolic blood pressure; and ratings of behavioural flexibility, aging, and treatment efficacy. Here, the MF group improved most, followed by TM, on perceived control and word fluency.

After 3 years, the survival rate was 100% for TM, and 87.5% for MF. This contrasted with lower rates for the other groups.