3rd PART

"MEDITATION"

"Even if we insist arduously in the task of getting a psychic balance, though, we will never feel full without taking care of our spiritual part. Looking for a larger communication with our Superior Conscience, looking for a larger capacity of wide-ranging of the Universe, in order to wake up our internal God, we present, in succession, fundamental aspects of the process of the Meditation."

 

CHAPTER I

"MYSTIC MEDITATION AND DYNAMIC MEDITATION"

What is to MEDITATE? If we divide the word we will have, by coincidence, the exact sense - ME - to DICTATE. What part of our internal nature can dictate us wise contents or else our own Superior Conscience? The measure of that communication with the Superior Conscience depends on the balance of our organism, and the trigger of that process is the interior transformation, in other words, the balance of our psychic components - mind and emotion.

For any type of Meditation, the fundamental step is to get to calm the mental matter; it is to get the state of perfect concentration. The meaning of the word Yoga is the same of Religion. Religion comes from the Latin and it means to say to connect again that which one day separated - the Spirit.

 

a. "MYSTIC MEDITATION"

The Mystic Meditation, based on the most traditional method of Yoga, the one of Yoga of Patanjali, involves a process constituted by 8 steps. That Yoga was formulated there are more than five thousand years, because she has her origin in the Tantrism, in the primitive Yoga of the Hinduism, of the Vedas.

The first concern is of moral interest. The first two steps, each one subdivided in 5 items, treat of moral aspects.

 

1st step of Yoga of Patanjali

Yamas - interdictions

The Yamas are in number of five:

·         Ahimsa - no violence.

To a certain point corresponds to the 5° commandment - not to kill - only that is much wider and rich in his concept. In the original definition: "To abstain of, in any time and in any way, to cause damages, or sufferings, to any living being, including your own person."

In relation to the vegetables, only to interrupt the natural cycle when there is a purpose.

In relation to the animals, only to interrupt the life when it is going to be used as food; never to hunt and to fish just for sport.

In relation to the fellow creatures, not to harm nor with thoughts, nor with words and nor with actions. Not to emit frivolous observations, defamations etc. Not to judge. To try to understand the reasons that took certain person to practice certain action that harmed our emotion. It is to try to understand the internal prism of such fellow creature, to see the drift of the evolutionary degree of that which practiced that action and to react with justice and not with egocentricity; in relation to the own person, never to emit auto-judgments unjust or depreciative. Not to use products that do badly to the health, such as tobacco, drugs etc. To avoid violent reactions, the ones which, as it was proven by the Psychosomatic, result in irreparable self-aggressions. To observe strictly the balancing laws of the emotion: 1. Serenity; 2. Happiness; 3. Understanding; 4. Sense of humor; 5. Harmony; 6. Humility; 7. Justice; 8. Courage; 9. Determination.

In any hypothesis not let the blood to boil; to elaborate, before any troublesome situation, the mental process - to distinguish the right from the wrong, with isolation of the emotional influence, and to do the right at the expense of the Will. Only like this the decision will be fair.

 

It is necessary to understand well the medium term of Ahimsa; she is no violence activated. The individual doesn't decline of their rights, but he demands them without violence, that Gandhi, with this philosophy, got the independence of India.

 

Luther King was another great practitioner of this Yama. He struggled against the violence inside of the United States and against his foreign policy when he has employed the force to defend their economical interests in other countries.

No violence, far away from being to cross the arms in face of the evils and mistakes of the modern world, as well as of the problems that surround us, it is the most intelligent method, more human, more rational to always evaluate the point of justice of the events and to take an active position in order to get, in all of the cases, an appropriate solution, without violence.

Kennedy expressed the following thought, applicable so much to the social life as to the private life: "Those that turn impossible the peaceful revolution, they turn inevitable the revolution violent."

The magic formula to practice Ahimsa with success is the dialogue - individual, familiar and political; difficult of being practiced because of the egocentricities.

A curious phenomenon exists: for that who reached Ahimsa, the world seems to get better. In such a way there was a change in his form of reacting before the events that the people start to seem good and nicer. But what actually changed was the focus of that which reached Ahimsa.

·              Satya-graha - Truthfulness.

It doesn't have commandment directly corresponding. The eighth, "not to lift false testimony", would be framed here; to take care of the social lie, the political, the commercial, and in the contact with the children. The habit of the lie goes on weakening the firmness of the character; when it is not possible saying the truth, to silence. The doctor, for instance, he cannot say the truth about the serious state of a patient, because it could harm a recovery, always possible.

There are critical moments in which only a sharpened discernment will be able to say how to act. You are seating under a tree with a very big treetop and you witness somebody, escaping from an enemy, to climb in her to hide. When the enemy arrives, seizing weapon and asking if you saw him, would you tell the truth, or would you lie, hiding the fugitive?

Certain esoteric truths cannot be said clearly. It would be as "throwing pearls to the pigs." An including definition could be expressed in the following way: To speak according to our state of conscience, observing, however, the state of conscience of who hears; to silence, but never to distort.

·         Asteyam - Honesty

It corresponds to the seventh commandment - "Not to steal" - and to the tenth - "Not to want the strange things"; to develop the exact notion of property; to take care with the artfulness in the businesses. In the field of the ideas there exists a lot of undue appropriation. Naturally that the individual can fall back upon the use of whatever is of the public domain, in the scientific and technical, philosophical and literary land, but he should mention the origins.

·              Brahmacharya - Chastity.

It corresponds to the sixth commandment - "Not to sin against the chastity." Yama doesn't advocate the abstention of the sex, but the respect and the balance, just as it is expected of the every human conduct.

Esoterically, the sexuality is linked to a cosmic energy that receives the name of "ojas". That same energy is that acts in the mental and spiritual development. It is for that reason that the excesses and the disorders in that area harm the evolutionary process. To stop, through the fear, the tremendous abuse of the instinct is that appeared in the Christianity the dogmatic concept of sin. As the sin idea has diluted, the venereal diseases appeared, including AIDS, to stop the abuses. Repress is unbalance; it impedes the integration of the personality. The ideal is liberation and control, self-control.

 

·              Aparigraha - Detach of the material goods.

Basically, the material things are means and no ends; means that the vehicle uses to reach superior objectives. A direct relationship exists between attachment and interior dissatisfaction. The man tends to attach - my car, my house. When they increase the internal values, more and more the man needs of less to have peace and to feel happy. It is not to despise or to reject the material things. The man can enjoy all the comfort of the twentieth first century. The problem is in the attachment and in the accumulation. Even in that it is necessary to observe the law of the movement. The mistake is in thinking that they are permanent greatness.

It is necessary to think about how much we are attached to the subjective values: wealth, physical beauty, social prestige, glory, power, not only for great positions, but for simple group leaderships, of the professional life and, even, of the home. The contact with these subjective values and with the material goods generates the attachment and it is the attachment that produces the suffering, because the things are not properly ours and, sooner or later, they will be taken away. There exists a sentence of Huberto Rhoden that defines well that state of being: "I am entitled of having and of doing all that, if I stopped having or doing, would not make me any lack." Bhagavad-Gita, in its chapter III, treats with a lot of property of the theme - Detach to the fruit of our actions.

 

2nd step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Niyamas - prescriptions

Niyamas are, also, in number of five:

§  Sadhana - Purity.

a) External purification: cleaning of the environment, personal cleanliness, physical exercises, free air, feeding; very difficult to take care of a healthy feeding, because the civilization, to facilitate, already adopted the food in cans and the preservatives. The alimentary commercialism generates a national neurosis to create compulsive eaters instead of conscious eaters. There adds the widespread state of pollution, inclusive the smokers that, without the smallest respect, infest the environments. Sedentary life; he who has a car, for instance, never goes by foot. However, we are the Spirit Saint Temple and only the physical body can accomplish the objective of the life on the face of the earth.

b) One of the aspects of the purity refers to the emotional and mental part. Impure feelings and bad thoughts constitute the largest impediment to the Initiation. Hate, envies, jealousy, spite, pride, self esteem, slander, authoritarianism, ambition and vanity doesn't agree in any way to that who looks for the self-realization.

c) In a certain way it involves the "Tapas", word Sanskrit that means austerity, control and that is related with the Meditation and the Contemplation. It is divided in:

- Physical "Tapas" - to maintain the correct position of the body, of the spine; attitude of alert, of success. Correct rest, sleep and leisure.

- Verbal "Tapas" - to maintain the calm, never to explode with words, nor to impose ideas, only to expose what you think. In the book Memoirs of a Follower, we read: "The conversation honest, pleasant, truthful and instructive, besides the habitual meditation about the truths, contributes for the austerity of the word."

- Mental " Tapas " - thoughts pure, noble, avoiding the negatives. The mental sharpness, the feeling of equality and the silence contribute for the mental austerity; and for the liberation of the prejudices and of the dogmas. To maintain an opening for analysis of all the ideas because it is the sum of the particular that constitutes the Universal.

§    Santosa - Happiness.

Permanent satisfaction: in the health or in the disease, in the happiness or in the sadness, in the wealth or in the poverty. Our emotion is besieged 24 hours a day - misfortunes, the disposition of the ones that surrounds us; even to spend our money making purchases, we are attacked; lines, hustles, defensive against the dishonesties. Well then, Santosa is, inside of all this, to maintain the good mood, the optimism.

Two forms exist of facing the events.  It is counted that certain tourist, in the center of a great city, saw two men in the middle of a lot of stones and he was curious to know what they were doing there. He asked one of the workers: What are you making there?" The answer, given with a glance of revolt, was: "You are not seeing, I am breaking these cursed stones." Not satisfied with the answer, he went to the second worker and made the same question, and the answer, given with the illuminated face, full of happiness and enthusiasm, was: "ME?! I am building a cathedral!"

Santosa is the capacity to invert the interior state by the Will, using the technique of the autosuggestion. It is the base of the happiness and of the health. The Psychosomatic affirms that the interior state can change the drift of the hormones that circulate through the organism.

Santosa is the attitude of acceptance of the clashes of life, allied to an activated attitude of trying to put upon to the difficulties, having, however, the certainty that a Divine Justice exists in each event. To internalize the sentence: "I am a particle of the Divinity and I am in the Universal flow. Nothing of unjust can happen to me".

§  Saucham - Serenity.

It is one of the laws of the Psychosomatic. Control without irritating and without discouraging. It comes from that certainty that the life is eternal and that nothing can reach in the kernel of our structure. In that, only we can act. A lot of difficulties by which we passed have the function of giving us life lessons. The initiation should be made calmly, just as it is expressed in the sentence of an unknown Master: "The disciple should move forward in the road with the same serenity of a flower that blossoms naturally."

§    Swadhyaya - Development of the internal me.

Deep meditation on the esoteric teachings received; fierce struggle against ignorance; bring the conscience of God to our inner.

§    Ishwara Pranidhana - Constant thought in the Divinity.

To look for the harmonization with the Universe, in order to reach the integration. There says an Oriental affirmative: "As divine flashes we can pronounce mentally - I am Him."

 

To notice that in the initiation of the previous cycle there were rules, there were concrete proofs to be conquered. Today, the initiation is mental, constituted by Yogas and by the interior transformation and the man practices it through the Superior Will.

They are words of Voltaire: "The only way to understand what means exactly something is to practice it. Nor 4.000 volumes of metaphysics will teach us what the soul is."

William T. Stead, famous director of newspapers and defender of the oppressed ones, passed three months in the jail by articles that he wrote. Many years later, he declared that those were the most profitable months of his life: "For the first time I had time to sit down and to think, to sit down and to meet myself.

 

3rd step of the Yoga of Patanjali.

Pranayama - absorption and domain of Prana, the Universal energy

Prana means vital energy and Yama to means transformation.

The Masters, in the East, demanded that the disciple practiced the first two stages of Yoga - Yamas and Niyamas - before they could execute true Pranayama. This because he would wake up and develop interior forces before having gotten the purification of the heart, once the activation of Prana is a technical process. If the man is not pure, he can harm the other ones and himself. He will wake up Prana that is the most powerful force of the Universe, because, according to the Hindu conception, it is her that generates the universal attraction, maintaining the stability of the heavenly bodies. According to the Theosophy, that energy of Prana circulates through a body that, in another dimension, is above the man's physical body - the called vital body. That body is constituted by a type of net formed by a great number of small channels, and concentrations of that energy exist in several points of those net, concentrations that receive the chakras name and that are linked to the central nervous system. They are the several modalities of Prana that the Acupuncture moves to obtain the cure of diseases and the physical balance. Those energies are accepted today by the science, so that the Acupuncture is officially recognized and taught at Universities of Medicine. The entrance of Prana in the physical organism is made, mainly, by the breathing, for that reason the importance of this third step of Yoga, whose purpose is the one of presenting breathing techniques.  It is necessary two preparatory stages to practice the true Pranayama.

 

Steps to practice true Pranayama:

Ø   Complete breathing, denominated Prana-Kriya.

 

-   It can be practiced standing or seating, with the column in the vertical, with the hands on the knees, with the eyes closed and maintaining the mental and emotional attitude calm.

Inspiration (Puraka) - it begins the inspiration by the nose, filling the inferior part of the lungs. Then, slowly, we start throwing the abdomen to outside, in order to lower the diaphragm and to give the maximum of expansion to the low area of the lung. To continue to absorb the air by the nostrils so that the medium part of the lungs goes on filling naturally, while the belly, also naturally, goes on contracting and pushing the air upward of the lungs. Having already the two inferior parts full of air, the disciple, with a movement smoothly energetic of the muscles of the abdomen, contracts to the maximum the belly, while he lifts the shoulders lightly, already in the final part of the inspiration. Through that double movement - retraction of the belly and rising of the shoulders - the superior part of the lungs is literally flood.

To imagine continually that is absorbing Prana in profusion.

-  Retention (Kumbhaka) - To keep, for some seconds, the air in the lungs formulating the mental image that Prana is revitalizing the whole body, mainly the nervous system.

-  Expiration (Rechaka) - To lower the shoulders slowly and to go blowing the air deliberately by the mouth, still with the retracted abdomen and the distended chest, forcing the musculature; to loosen the muscles of the belly emptying the medium part of the lungs; finally, to contract the abdomen to empty the inferior part always blowing the air by the mouth; to visualize that the residues and all the evils are being expelled.

 

Ø  Alternate breathing (Vama Krama)

Search depart from the habitual torrent of your thoughts and emotions, seeking the obtainment of a peaceful mental attitude. It can be made the alternate Breathing and, then, Pranayama, in the position that you feel better; standing, looking at the north and seating or in one of the Asanas, positions which we will present in the 4th step. The breathing rhythm should be - 1 - 4 - 2. For instance, if you use 2 times for the inspiration, spend 8 times for the retention and 4 times for the expiration. Put the index finger (Jupiter) and medium (Saturn) on the forehead, in the root of the nose, where there are two centers of force and the right nostril is shut with the thumb when it is in action the left nostril and the left nostril is shut with the ring finger when it is in action the right nostril. In the alternate Breathing, the inspiration is begun by the left nostril. After, it is made the retention for 4 times the time spent in the inspiration. We proceed to the expiration by the right nostril, for 2 times the time spent in the inspiration. Now we resume, the inspiration by the right nostril, it is retained and, after, it is loosened by the left nostril, obeying the same rhythm.

In the beginning, until acquiring larger lung capacity, the rhythm of 4 times can be observed for each one of the phases of the alternate breathing and to go, progressively, increasing the time.

 

Ø  Pranayama

Pranayama consists of the same form of breathing described for the alternate Breathing, with the difference that, besides observing the right rhythm, the apprentice will have during the inspiration, to conceive the Mantra "OM" and to pronounce it in the expiration, in a soft and continuous way, without sound blows. The rhythm is the same.

When aspirating the air, you should imagine that is driving Prana that enters with the atmospheric air: the lateral currents for the chakra Splenic, from where will be distributed and the central current, for the chakra Root or Muladhara, where Prana receives the influx of Kundaline. Kundaline is a word Sanskrit used to name one of the Forces of the Nature, linked to the power of the life. In the expiration, that Kundaline, which is of red color, goes on bathing and vivifying the chakras along the spine.

When the sun is upright, the effect is larger. During the day, in the vegetable Prana prevails, that is why he eliminates oxygen. During the night Apana prevails, that is why the vegetable eliminates carbon anhydride. Prana is linked to the sun; Apana to the moon. The sun is related with the mental and the moon with the emotion.

 

4th step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Asanas - movement of the energies of the vital body

Pranayama increases the flow of Prana. Asanas have the function of balancing and distributing that Prana.

The purpose of Asanas is the one of juxtaposing the energy centers that, as we already said, they are known of the Acupuncture. If in the assumed positions the centers will not be pressed, there won't be reached the wanted objective. What is looked for when doing an Asana is to alter the flow of the currents of Prana in the organism, so that they can find a circuit that take them specifically to certain areas of the body, activating them more directly.

Purasana is a good position to meditate: seating, without leaning in the back rest of the chair, hands flattened on the knees, closed eyes, erect bust without forcing the attitude, relaxed muscles.

Asanas is what passed to the Occident with the designation of Hatha Yoga. As they are positions that juxtapose the energy centers of the vital body, provoking the movement of the energies, for the practice of the true Hatha Yoga there is need to have the visual perception of the vital body in order to accompany the evolution of the energies. Without that control, the practice of the true Hatha Yoga becomes dangerous. Asanas executed without correct juxtaposition of the centers of force change just in a muscular gymnastics.

The true positions should be learned with a specialist that sees the energies and that can accompany their evolution.

 

5th step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Pratyahara - ceasing of the Writtis; to turn off the mind of the sensations

In Pratyahara, the disciple gets to maintain the mind calm and serene, without thinking. He governs the Writtis, in other words, the mental matter.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Pranayama and Asanas treated of physical operations. Pratyahara consists only of a mental attitude.

While the man conserves himself linked to the objective perception, nothing can notice of the truly real. Pratyahara means mental introspection, in the sense of doing the mind to work to inside, instead of doing it to outside. She drives the mental activity in the inverse sense of that in which it always acted, turning off her from the physical senses to do her to apply on the internal senses.

Pratyahara should be followed to a session of Pranayama. Pranayama develops naturally and spontaneously for the state of Pratyahara.

The eyes should be closed, the body immobile and all the normal mental activity impeded of manifesting. That means, no reasoning, no deliberation, no imagination, no judgment and, above all, no perception of the external world.

With the training, that should be daily, the mind goes on calming and we will get to think only in that which we determine.

 

6th step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Dharana - concentration in an object

Each one of us brings inside ourselves a flash of that primordial principle, that we can call God, therefore, every human being possesses all the wisdom and all the powers of the Universe.

For us to get the connection with that part superior, divine, it is extremely important that are observed strictly the steps that have been described - Yamas, Niyamas, Pranayama, Asanas and Pratyahara. In Pratyahara the disciple must have acquired the capacity to separate the mind of the senses and of the external objects.

After Pratyahara the state of Dharana comes. With the mind perfectly calm, the disciple should apply her in an unique object. With all his concentration capacity, he will pass to the observation of the focused object, staying like this until he has obtained the total image of its form and have, so to speak, sensed all of the vibrations that emanate from the object and that are not captured by the ordinary senses.

Starting from the moment in which the disciple begins to notice in the object something more than what their normal senses had marked until then, he is no longer in Dharana or concentration, because he began to penetrate in Dhyana.

The training should begin with real objects, concretes, and only later to pass for mental representations, as symbols, such as the star of five tips, the Cup, etc...

In the cities of Denver and Chicago, in the United States, 29 scientists made experiences with the patient Serious Ted, 41 years old. After several attempts and more intense concentrations, it was photographed his thought - Chicago Hotel's ward, with the lettering Stevens. The temperature of the body was very high and the heart beat accelerated because of the effort in the concentration. Several experiences were followed with success. The science doesn't explain, but the theosophy knows that the mental matter takes the form of the thought. That mental matter receives the name of Writtis.

 

7th step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Dhyana - participation in the object of the Meditation

Dhyana is already the state of mystic meditation and, in her; the person obtains all the wisdom that no reasoning, for deeper or subtle that would be would be capable to produce. During the meditation the state of full intuition appears and this reveals everything regarding the fact or object on which we meditate. It should not be made any mental formulation. Dhyana is total abstraction. The real nature of the things or objects will be revealed to us by Dhyana.

 

8th step of the Yoga of Patanjali

Samadhi - integration in the object of the Meditation - TO BE

In the state of Samadhi the disciple becomes integrated in the Great One Spirit of the Universal Life.

In Samadhi the disciple doesn't lose the own conscience of self, being conserved as observer or subject of the contemplation. In this state, subject and object are merged. The disciple passes to be that which he meditates. It is the Nirvikalpa, the Samadhi without seed, in which nothing besides the cosmic and global conscience can remain in existence.

Observation - The Yoga of Patanjali should be practiced in all their eight steps, but the disciple should, in the beginning, to always maintain the seed of the meditation, in other words, a symbol or a Mantra, or the figure of a great Being. He should not let the mind to turn empty. Only those that are perfectly prepared for the action of the Meditation, that disciplined the mind in such a way that she can stay for considerable time in only one point, can abandon the seed and to meditate with the empty mind, although the alert state should be maintained permanently. To release the seed before the hour can take to the second sight, to the medium to the possession and to the obsession.

 

 

b. "DYNAMIC MEDITATION"

The practice of the yoga of Patanjali has for purpose to take the person to reach a state of perfect mental concentration. In the Dynamic Meditation, after reaching the state of Pratyahara, when the mind separates of the sensations, the disciple should take a theme and to apply in him the laws and functions of the intelligence, without losing the thread, trying to follow a logical chain of reasoning, step by step, without allowing the least digression. After accelerating well the mental, when reaches the highest point of his reasoning and to notice that it doesn't get more arguments, to arm an equation, to do a type of summary and to leave everything in suspended, without definitive conclusion, because our concepts are relative. The objective of the Meditation is not of reaching a conclusion, but the one of provoking an opening of the mental in order to give entrance to new ideas, to new concepts. There be the conclusions stratified that form the dogmas. After such intense mental activity, drop it and rest the mental starting any other type of activity. There will be an unconscious elaboration and the answers will appear through intuitive "insights."

Inside of the science countless cases of discoveries exist in the period of mental rest. Einstein said: "I think 99 times, then I stop and suddenly the answer comes." Naturally the answer comes as a consequence of the previous work which left in the unconscious an armed equation.

 Dr. Frederick Banting (1.891-1.941), Nobel Prize in 1.923, clinical and Canadian surgeon, concentrated his attention in the damages caused by the diabetes. There was not method to stop the disease. He used great part of his time reading and studying contents that dealt with that matter. Exhausted, one night, he fell asleep and he dreamed about the possibility of extracting the residue from the pancreatic tube of a dog. That is how the insulin appeared.

 Friedrich von Stradonitz worked since a long time trying to rearrange the 6 atoms of carbon and the 6 of hydrogen of the formula of the benzine. He was perplexed and unable of solving the problem. Exhausted, he stopped thinking about the subject. Little later, when he prepared to embark in a bus of London, whose line gave a turn, it appeared in his mind the image of a snake biting the own tail and rotating around itself as a weathervane. This vision gave him the answer to what he was seeking for such a long time of rearrangement vircular of atoms, that is known as the benzine ring.

 The inspiration or Newton's "insight" in relation to the gravitation Universal came when he saw an apple fall of the tree. The apple was attracted by the earth in the same way as the earth was attracted by the sun.

 The "eureka" of Arquimedes (287 a.C. - 212 a.C.) comes after a desperate mental work. The king Hirão of Syracuse asks Arquimedes if his crown would be made of pure gold, or there would be in it a mixture of other metals; but how to verify that? The science of that time was far away from offering an answer! After days and days of suppositions, when entering in a bathtub replete of water to the surface, he notices that there is a displacement of water. It was then that the law of the specific weight of the bodies appears: "Everybody dived in a fluid receives a vertical thrust, driven from bass to upward, equal to the weight of the volume of moved fluid and applied on the center of the thrust."

 In a dinner in commemoration to his 70th birthday, Hermann von Helmholtz, famous physicist of century XIX, said to the friends and colleagues gathered that he hardly ever found the answer for a difficult problem of science, when he was tired or working on his table. He had to wait for "happy thoughts", as he called them. These came after a reparative sleep or during a walk.

 The great French mathematician, Henri Poincare, also spoke about moments, when he left to walk, in that the solution of a mathematical problem occurred to him naturally. He believed that the unconscious work tends to continue when the problem is put aside, taking then to the solution.

 The psychologist of Gestalt, Wolfgang Kohler denominated that of "intuition." Karl Buhler, other psychologist, called that of "experience aha."

 In 1.926, Graham Wallas wrote "The art of the Thought", where he specified the four stages of the creative thought, today very known. They are:

 Preparation - this involves collection of information, analysis of the problem and attempt of developing a hypothesis.

 Incubation - when the problem is put aside, although the person thinks about him once in a while, while she is in charge of other activities.

 Illumination - when the solution or a key of the problem occurs in a glance and the person cries out: "I already know!" It is the "insight", the intuition, the experience "aha" or the great scientists' happy thought.

 The own psychology already detected the value of the pause as creative and because of that the vacations were instituted. The person leaves saturated, and returns new, full of enthusiasm for the same activities. The sleep is a pause of the nature. The death is a pause for rising of that which was accomplished, of that which incorporated to the personality. The relaxation is a pause for the muscular operation of the body.

 

Concluding these considerations on the mental, it is convenient to emphasize the following: Yoga of Patanjali begins with the moral aspect, because the mental process is only completed in the heart. Mental is a bridge, instrument, but the key is emotional. The person thinks that will penetrate the mental superior through the rational, as continuation of the work purely mental, as consequence exclusively of the training of the mental elements, but that is not true. I can know whatever the science discovered, to manipulate the laws of the reasoning, the logic and never pass for the field of the intuition. Others, with less knowledge but with internal disposition larger, they can pass. If I don't get right the heart, I have difficulty of entering in Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi.

The purpose of the Meditation is the one of getting to reconcile the opposites of the mental so that he can notice what is besides the sensitive. The following account, that tells the experience between a disciple and his master, exemplifies well that truth.

 Certain Master orders certain disciple to concentrate in the fish and, after the stipulated period, to return to tell the experience. He returns and talks properly about species, how many fins, scales, medium length of the species, color, weight etc. The Master simply says: "Well, but that everyone knows and sees."

 After returning several times and obtaining the same answer, certain day, the disciple says, a little fearful: "Master, I am with a great doubt. I don't get to notice if the fish sleeps. He doesn't have eyelid, he never closes the eyes." The Master opened a great smile and said: "You began to enter in the road. Continue." The disciple became a great Ichthyologist, teacher of University. After 15 years, he returns and says: "Now I am under the impression that I know everything." The Master asks: "How is the conscience of the fish?" The disciple becomes perplexed - he had never thought about that. The Master puts the hand in his forehead and induces him to reach the state of Dhyana and Samadhi. For some instants the disciple was a fish, passed by whatever had studied and more the conscience, the imponderable. Now he knew everything. The Master, then, makes the following observation: "This could have happened 15 years ago, but they were necessary 15 of work and persistence, 15 years of tireless mental application to firm the mental matter and to be possible the Integration."

A correspondence exists among Yoga of the Hinduism, Yoga of Patanjali and that which the science is unmasking on the mental processes:

  

YOGA HINDUÍSMO

YOGA PATANJALI

SCIENCE

 

 

 

Bhakti Yoga

1. Yamas. Interdictions

2. Niyamas. Prescriptions

Psychic balance

Mind and emotion

Hatha Yoga

3. Pranayama. absorption and domain of Prana

4. Asanas. movement of the energies

Gymnastics with

breathing synchronized

Jnana Yoga

5. Pratyahara. ceasing of Writtis

6. Dharana. Concentration

State of Alpha

Attention, observation

 and concentration

Raja Yoga

7. Dhyana. participation in the object of the meditation

8. Samadhi. integration in the object of the Meditation

To visualize, to participate, to live the ideas

Great intuitions

 

 

For the control of the mind there is need to know some of their factors and to have an idea of his dynamics, for that in the next chapters we will present: "Mental components '', "Formal laws of the thought" and "Functions of the intelligence." However, before passing to those subjects, I would like to do the following observation:

Inside of the science, there came being traveled a road that made possible the opening of doors for the encounter of the man's transcendent part.

Henri Bergson (1.859-1.941) and Edmund Husserl (1. 859-1. 938) they already try to do a distinction among the fact, the objective phenomenon and the essence that operates from behind.

Karl Jaspers (1.883 - 1.969) affirms that the man brings innate an interior appeal that takes him to look for the transcendence of God.

Viktor E. Frankl affirms the autonomy of the spiritual dimension.

Jung, Rank, Carl Rogers, Assagioli and all of the scientists belonging to the movement Humanist, such like Maslow and Anthony Sutich, all are determined in the self-realization by the contact with the Superior Conscience; this to mention only some.

Finally, that long road that came being traveled through the times, culminates, in 1. 960, with the Transpersonal that intends to melt the Western psychology with the esoteric methodologies of the East. It is considered as the "4th force" in psychology and has as one of the leaderships Stanislav Grof. She involves the expansion of the conscience besides the ego and of the space-time and considers the man as a total being, whose structure consolidates by the interaction, by the integration of the levels of conscience physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

She uses, among other practices, breathing techniques, of relaxation and, inclusive, of meditation.

 

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