2.5 minutes of magic

Some 130-odd years ago, Swami Vivekananda, in his Raja Yoga lectures [1] quoted the Kurma Purana's definition, in time, of dhāraṇa-dhyāna-samādhi as attention resting solely on one object for 12 seconds, 12x12 seconds, and 12x12x12 seconds respectively.

What does this mean practically?

Say you like coffee. Place a cup of your favourite coffee before you. Start a stopwatch - your phone's clock app is a good option.

If your attention while drinking a good cup of coffee doesn't drift anywhere else for 12 seconds, that is dhāraṇa on coffee drinking. If it stays for 12*12 seconds = 12*(10+2) = 120/60+24 = 2 minutes 24 seconds, that is dhyāna on coffee drinking. 

Please note that becoming aware of your observation is also a drifting away! A meta activity is still a distraction.

Reset your stopwatch if any distraction occurs.

And samādhi? 12*12*12 seconds = (120+24)*(10+2) seconds = 2 minutes*(10+2) + 24 seconds*(10+2) = 24 minutes+240 seconds+48 seconds = 24+4 minutes + 48 seconds = 28 minutes, 48 seconds. (Make sure you brew many cups of coffee!)

All three states of attention must be natural and unforced. Any effort made takes one's mind back to the preceding state of active attention-placement, pratyāhāra, and the stopwatch resets to zero!

If not for distracting ads or incoming messages every few minutes, attention on the TV or, these days, on the mobile phone would be an easy way to explain the meditative state!

In Heartfulness practice, five minutes of meditation practice every day is enough for a start. One has twice the 2.5 minutes needed to reach an unforced and natural meditative state! Please note that transmission makes the practice even more effortless by sustaining the attention on the heart.

(A sincere and serious effort for just one week will give palpable benefits in resting the attention on a single object. They will be even more palpable coupled with Heartfulness  cleaning to remove emotional weight and unnecessary distractions. Try meditation alone for a week. Then add daily cleaning to the daily practice. Finally add the daily introspection and prayer before sleeping, for even greater benefits.)

And the magic? It comes from experience alone.

(Bonus points: before the day's meditation, link mentally to the condition after the previous day's meditation. After meditation, spread today's condition in the space around you, and share it with everything in that space.)

NOTES

[1] Sw. Vivekananda, 2016 ed., Raja Yoga, Advaita Ashrama, Mayavati