Concentration and meditation

Attention with mental force on an object = concentration

Attention without mental force on an object = meditation

Attention on the same object without force for an extended time also creates a state called concentration. Same result, but reached with lesser expenditure of energy.

Attention without force, aka meditation, is initially subject to the impurities and complexities present in the mind-field. They raise distractions and attention moves away from the initial object, as is usual outside of meditation. This movement away also happens due to outside sensations like sounds which cause immediate mental reactions.

In Heartfulness/Sahaj Marg, rejuvenation or cleaning removes the mental sources of distractions, and reduces reactivity.

Training the mind-field in meditation consists of accepting distractions have occurred, every time, and returning to the original object as lightly as possible. The subtlest possible way is to merely recognise the movement of attention. The return is automatic and natural.

Reduction in energy of a mental activity is termed as the conversion - laya - of rajas and tamas into sattva.

Levels in Towards Infinity

Introduction

The spiritual journey is difficult to describe in words, especially those usually used for outward journeys. Still many mystics have tried their best to explain, their own, or the ones on which they guide others. They need not be alike.

Babuji wrote or dictated Towards Infinity, a travelogue/map of the Sahaj Marg/Heartfulness Way journey, in a superconscious state. So he didn't repeatedly describe all the details as one goes to or from each point or levels. But it is possible to come up with a general "algorithm" from going through all the descriptions and give an explanatory perspective on going from level to level.

(Daaji has given an exegesis of the yatra in Towards Infinity in a series of articles, collected in the December 2017 edition of Heartfulness Magazine)

General algorithm

At each point or level [1]:

1. sālokya-ta - "getting the air of the place" per Babuji
2. sāmīpya-ta - becoming roughly like that, near that level, start merger 
3. sārūpya-ta - taking on form of that level, continue merger
4. sāyujya-ta - merger completed, digested, assimilated

These make up increasing laya in or at that level. Babuji terms it laya-avastha in general.

Then living like that level/point and its characteristics, until that level has been sufficiently experienced. [2]

Then negativating those characteristics, that level and its vibrations, to leave for the next subtler level. Negativating means transforming the grosser level vibrations into their subtler cause.

(How? This can be done simply by reaching the next level. Or someone - whose mind-field has merged with that level - can go to that level and raise your own mind-field to that level by physical and mental proximity. Or by pranahuti - subtlest possible level - along with a sankalpa, by Master.)

Repeat...

Another perspective

In Towards Infinity, Babuji talks about sāyujya-ta or refined identicality and then about going to a subtler level to get to the next point. sāyujya-ta of two things is at the same vibratory level. Compare water in water against water in water vapour. Or, food is matter and when it is in sāyujya-ta with us, it has been digested in our material body such that we don't feel it any more. (In our spiritual yatra, we are food and we are also digesting ourselves in the Divine at different levels!)

Then we go to the next subtler level by changing the vibratory level. Babuji calls this negation sometimes. "I negativated it!" he said when light came to him in meditation.

The present layer is the effect of a subtler causal layer. By negation or laya or merger of the sāyujya-ta itself, we go from effect level vibration to cause level vibration.

Thus, our spiritual journey may be understood very simply as going from grossest to subtlest vibration levels.

Background 

A few background ideas, from Sāṁkhya-yoga, may be helpful to understand the logic and implications.

• There is a transformation - pariṇāma - from subtler to grosser levels (of vibration). [3]
• This transformation is real, actual. [4] A grosser level is always the effect of a subtler level. That is, a cause is transformed into an effect, but is still retrievable or achievable.
• The transformation can be reversed, i.e., from a grosser to a subtler level. [5]
• These transformations are not in physical space. [6] 

NOTES

[1] From what I have read till now, the idea of recurrence of these stages is entirely original to Babuji. In other paths, these or slightly different stages cover the entire spiritual journey, they occur only once. E.g., the vaiṣṇavites. Their analysis is obviously much more coarse-grained and so less helpful in daily sadhana or understanding one's journey across its many ups and downs. Sufism has a similar set - fanaa - dissolution - and baqaa - subsistence, which is supposed to occur only once. Again much more coarse-grained.

[2] To be determined (TBD) by one's Guide.

(Or, very rarely, by one's memories of past sadhana, perhaps from previous lives. Alternatively, by the Divine itself.)

[3] Another word for transformation is manifestation. Creation is a misleading word because it implies a creator separate from creation.

[4] advaitins want sadhaks to regard transformation as unreal. At least, until one is settled in a highly subtle stage. While a commendable intention, this confuses sadhaks and novices completely!

[5] Mentally, or better, in the non-physical inside the body. This reversal is not permanent, so one can go up and down the levels at will.

[6] There are physical effects, on the physical body, but physical space is not a factor. Simple example - one has subtle transcendental ideas and gross individualistic ideas using the same brain in the same head. While sāṁkhya-yoga does discuss transformation of physical elements [7], they are not necessary for a spiritual practice initially. Since physical space is not important, neither is time.

[7] Babuji, paraphrased - 

"matter to energy" says science, "matter to energy to absolute", I say.

neti-neti to reconcile sāṁkhya and advaita

(Background: understand the Vedantic neti-neti technique - to reach the absolute Self by systematically discarding subtler and subtler, yet not eternal, selves by going inward. Sāṁkhya texts don't talk about practical techniques, but from satkārya vāda and yoga's, or Sahaj Marg's, laya technique, neti-neti can be applied with a twist. The twist is that a self at every level is real, but to reach the absolute Self, the subtler cause of each self - yet another real self - has to be reached and, in turn, transcended, until all lower selves are in laya, and finally the puruṣa is totally uncovered.)

For a one-word reconciliation of "illusoriness" of advaita and "realism" of sāṁkhya - translate neti, neti as:

not (only) this, not (only) this

Or,

not (just) this, not (just) this

An extended traditional translation considers the second iti to point to a different "thing".

not (only) this, not (only) that

Or

not (just) this, not (just) that

EXPANDING IMMANENCE TO IMMANENCE+TRANSCENDENCE

It is like thinking that God is found only in temples. That is OK at first. Then one shifts to God is found in churches and mosques and other religious and not obviously-religious or spiritual places as well. Then:

God is everywhere.

God is inside everyone.

God is in living and non-living things.

God is in all living and non-living things.

God is also beyond all living and non-living things.

God then becomes more abstract, more like a principle or a field.

Yet, God is something that can be felt palpably, tangibly, continuously - every-where and every-when.

(Also see Stages in Vedanta and  The Absolute - Time, Space, and Causation - redux)

NOTES

It is good to 1) discard everything except what one is studying. Initially. Then, after a certain level of understanding, one is able to shift from a tunnel vision of limited data to 2) encompass larger and larger scope or area or volume and reconcile the seemingly diverse and irreconcilable data with the general and minimal theory. Finally, or even at the beginning, 3) spiritual experiences underlying limited theories help in understanding variegated data and theories. Respectively, 1) tamasic, 2) rajasic, and 3) sāttvic jñāna.

Love upon silencing the emotional mind

There are two aspects to thinking - mechanical or technological, and emotional and/or egotistic.

The first is a necessary part of human life, its dharma or ṛta. Its training and application occur both formally and informally.

There are two ways I know of by which the second aspect becomes silent. This training and application is absolutely personal and informal.

Such silencing is by removal of saṁskāras [1] as in a) Sahaj Marg cleaning, or b) through the much more onerous and finicky process of choiceless observation or bhogam without ahaṁkāra.

Per Jiddu Krishnamurti, the energy liberated or made tangible by this silence is Love.

Put differently, from sat-cit-ananda emanates the emotional layer of the mind (among other things). Resolving or silencing or merging that layer back into its source is laya. Thus exposing ānanda or Love.

The memory-less aspect of the emotional layer in laya, of  ānanda, is not appreciated enough.

Chariji once suggested meeting people every time as if for the first time. With minimal, perhaps zero, bias. This is a cure or a workaround for existing biases, and is another way to look at bhogam and resolution of the emotional layer.

For prevention, per Daaji, one should behave in such a way that biases or saṁskāras don't accumulate at all. Or, re-accumulate, after they have been removed.

Maxims Six, Seven, and Eight of the Ten Maxims of Sahaj Marg from Babuji directly address the behaviour to adopt to avoid saṁskāras.

Put so baldly, it sounds like a transactional mentality.

Yet the Master of Sahaj Marg is a living example of memory-less loving behaviour. As were the earlier Masters.

NOTES

[1] Daaji's wonderfully evocative phrase  is "emotional residue".

Commonsensicality of laya

 In Sanskrit, laya means mergence or even dissolving. In spirituality or yoga terminology, laya has a very specific or technical meaning, a grosser effect dissolving into its subtler cause. This technical meaning and how laya occurs is easy to understand with an everyday example.

If I move a few chairs around for guests, I work at mental and physical levels. I - and they - may move the chairs more than once as well. In this set of actions, I think, I decide, I move a chair, I look and act physically, and I gauge and compare, and I move again, and so may the guests. But all this happens quite fast, and indeed, breaking down the mental and physical activities as I have done may actually take longer to read and understand!

We switch between physical and mental activities all the time without thinking about how we do it. Switching from physical to mental or going up or going to subtler levels of thinking is laya. It is not a physical or even a mental dissolving in the sense of an actual transformation (though that also happens). It is simply our attention going from one level of activity to its next or earlier subtler levels. This can happen even at physical levels - moving chairs generally to one location and then turning them to form a circle, for example, are grosser and subtler physical acts, comparatively. They require more and less effort, respectively. That is, more and less energy. 

It is easy to understand that mental activities take less energy than physical activities. But the continued reduction in the amount of energy as attention goes to subtler and subtler levels may not be as obvious.

What does this mean in the context of meditation? Attention moving from the world outside one's body, to one's organs (indriyas), to one's thoughts, to thoughts at subtler and subtler levels - in terms of greater and greater abstraction, less and less detail, more and more universality - transcendence - is laya. Babuji gives a simple sequence - actions to thoughts to ideas.

Those who only look at spirituality and think about it without practising it may have the idea that laya is a one-time activity. One goes up to the highest level once and that's it! Boom! Enlightenment! Life changes forever! That does happen, but not exactly as expected.

Unless one also stops existing at physical and mental levels, activities must obviously continue at those levels after reaching even the highest level. (There's also the slight problem that the highest or subtlest level keeps receding - there's always a higher or subtler level!)

Having reached a subtle level, it makes sense that one has to return to that level regularly to remember what it's like. One secret of spiritual practice is that reaching a state once, no matter how, is enough to reach it again just by willing it. But its experience may not be the same.

Laya is simple in many ways. Its theory is both elegant and reassuring. Elegant in the simplicity of the reduction of effort. Reassuring in that since we have come through those subtle levels to become who we are now, we can return at will. Secondly, and more theoretically, all subtler cause states are active in a grosser effect state. A simple example is an electric light in which subatomic particles or energy continue to be active at the subatomic level even when the light is switched on. And when it's switched off. In Babuji's terms, an idea continues to be active while we think and act. So the idea of a meeting drives thoughts and activities, including arranging chairs in a circle. We may not keep reiterating the idea while thinking or acting upon it, but it's still there.

Progress in laya

The general approach in spiritual progress is:

1. turn attention inward
2. move or let the attention flow to subtler levels progressively
   
3. receive the communication or inspiration from the Absolute more and more clearly

Another perspective:

Dissolution or laya of effects into their causes until the ultimate cause or level is reached. This merges 1. and 2. above since dissolution requires going from the grosser (outer) to the subtler (inner).

Consider this sequence of subtle causes manifesting gross effects, from traditional Samkhya:

1. unmanifest pradhana or prakrti, unmanifest guṇas
   
2. mahat (sattva-predominant, rajas-tamas minimal)
   
3. ahaṁkāra (sattva+rajas, tamas minimal)
   
4. manas (sattvic ahaṁkāra) and
   tanmātras (tamasic ahaṁkāra)
   - impelled by rajasic ahaṁkāra
5. jnanendriya and karmendriya (from manas) and
   pancabhūtas (from tanmātras)
   

A subtlety at the end of this sequence makes the practice of Samkhya - progressive laya - elegantly logical and consistent. All three elements in 5. refer to the sensing and acting of a jiva, an embodied entity, in a "sensed world". Thus, pancabhūtas, matter and/or energy outside a jiva, are known to it only by inward sensations resulting from their impinging on its sense organs - jnanendriyas. Outward interactions with matter and/or energy occur through the karmendriyas.

 Consider a similar sequence, from science:

1. Energy fields
2. Subatomic particles
3. Atoms
4. Molecules
5. Elements, compounds, visible matter - gas, liquid, solid
   

To go from the grosser to the subtler requires greater and greater input of material energy, as from solid to liquid to gas, from gaseous matter to molecules to atoms and so on, to energy fields.

This could be why spiritual seekers, especially the scientifically-minded, believe more and more mental and/or physical effort is needed to go to subtler levels. On the contrary, relaxing more and more in meditation is the real meaning of surrendering more and more. Keeping up the artificial barriers of individuality and holding on to just my mental stuff takes much more effort than letting go.

(Important Note: The physical body does not change appreciably during the spiritual journey. It may become more sensitive and healthier as various kośas synchronise and eating habits become regular and better. But mental or non-physical changes won't automatically result in a fitter or healthier body.)

A systematic inward journey to subtler levels in sāṁkhya-yoga is simply this:

First pay attention to the outside, one sense organ at a time if you like, but letting the attention of each organ drift easily from sensation to sensation. E.g., the sounds around you, without analysis or visceral mental reactions - liking or disliking. Simply let your attention drift to whatever draws it.

Next, pay attention to the sensing organs themselves. Systematic physical relaxation from feet to head will do this effortlessly.

Then move inward even further to the mind, manas, itself. The easiest way is by choosing an infinite or transcendental object, especially one that goes beyond verbal limits, and resting the attention on that. An increase in subtlety and successive laya [1] will occur naturally. This and the following three require guidance. [2]

Next the ego, ahaṁkāra.

Next the discrimination, buddhi.

And finally back to a balanced state. But like a salt doll, which goes into the ocean and loses its tiny amount of individual salt, while "getting" all the salt of the ocean, there's no "I" left to discuss its state.n

Ispiration/communication from the Absolute - 3. in the first sequence at the top of this post - is a matter of experience.

NOTES

[1] In the Sahaj Marg spiritual journey, Babuji describes laya as divided into multiple stages which repeat at each point.

[2] The Heartfulness Way/Sahaj Marg practices, especially meditation and constant remembrance, use this technique with the inner Master as the guide.