Swami Veda Bharati gave a lecture at the Asilomar-Contemplative Alliance Conference in Monterey, California, USA, on October 11, 2010. The lecture began with a short Guided Meditation.
[Guided Meditation]
Once more with a little method to the silence approach, if you would join me in balancing your body first. Placing both feet on the ground, placing both feet on the ground, hands apart, shoulders balanced, the mind drawn to the temple of God that is your body.
Un-wrinkle the mind.
Relax the forehead.
Choose one name of God or a sacred phrase.
Feel the flow and the touch of your breath in your nostrils. The divine breath flowing as a grace through you. Breathing gently, slowly, smoothly.
Exhale and inhale with the one thought, the thought of the divine name or a sacred phrase.
No break between the breaths. No break in the cycle of the thought of the divine name. Vocal organs silent.
All the bubbles on the other bubbles of the mind subsiding and merging into this smooth stream of consciousness.
And now cease even this process, the mind becoming a chamber of silence.
From that chamber again the thought, the word-thought, the mind and the breath flowing as a quiet unified stream.
Without breaking this stream of consciousness, gently open your eyes but let the silent stream continue even with your eyes open.
[Lecture]
In such silence a field of divine unity is experienced which is not a unification of many parts, but parts exist in that one infinite field. For thousands of years many traditions have taught systematic methods as to how to enter this interior of what, interior ekanta, interior silence.
In my ashram we have people who do ten days of silence, forty days of silence, ninety days of silence, but it is done methodically, and scientifically guided. In that silence, sooner or later, the true face of God becomes apparent, makes its appearance. It is not a face with features. It may be, as described by Arjuna, light of ten thousand suns shining simultaneously in the sky, in our interior sky which is more minute than the minutest atomic particle, which is more expansive than all the expansive space. All within us becomes filled with that light, with that noor, with that jyotih of which the Vedas have sung, of which the Quran has spoken, of which the Christian saints have sung hymns and psalms.
On the other hand, it may not even be the proverbial light. Just a field of infinity in which all sciences become one, all philosophies become one.
From the mineral through the plant through the animal to human and superhuman, angelic, all mind is experienced in one simultaneous oneness, and then one walks in that awareness. One walks in that union, and then such a one’s words and actions become the guide to others, and his voice is heard deep in the interior of the heart of many.
It is that one, that tajjalāniti śānta upāsīta.
[from Chandogya Upanishad III:14.1]
When one has reached the shanta, pacific stillness, one sits together with that one from whom the entire universe is created, in whom it is sustained, into whom it dissolves, from whom our minds have emerged, in whom our minds are sustained, in whom our minds merge and become only pure consciousness.
Whether we believe in a God or do not believe in a God, whether we call it God or not, whether we call it paramaartha-satya, paramaartha-satya, there is this transcendent experience of being. That God that the highest contemplative experiencer sees, realizes, unto whom such transcendence becomes not an intellectual pursuit, not something to be imagined, but becomes real. To such a one in that moment of realization God is not how God has been described in words. One knows that reality beyond words, beyond names, where even the divine name falls silent.
What is it like then if it’s not the way it is described in words?
Only silence can convey it or personal experience of contemplative heights and depths which then create a planet wide field. Not in just one nation, because there are no nations. There are no countries. These are all artificial imaginations.
Even not many religions but the religion of transcendent reality. When we dwell in that reality at all hours, we become the vehicle for all what needs to be altered in humanity.
Through that power of silence, collective silence of many, many, many going deep into their practice these generated fields are unified, united consciousness. It becomes more and more intense and the true golden age of interior peace will dawn.
May we realize that God who is beyond verbal descriptions, who is only in His silent, brilliant light.
Thank you.
Dear AHYMSIN family members,