Questions about Meditation

Q: "I'm a writer working on a story that involves meditation. But the concept of meditation has become a jumble of ideas in the public's mind. Can you help me sort through the various ideas that have been assembled under the banner of 'meditation'?"

A: To illustrate how confused the topic has become, let's consider the following questions:

(1) When you meditate, do you think deeply or not at all? (2) Can meditation be applied to your everyday problems, or is meditation a refuge away from problems? (3) After meditating, would you expect to be relaxed, energized, or both? (4) Is meditation associated with Eastern religions, Western religions, all religions, or is it independent of religion? (5) Is your mind a supporter in meditation or a distraction? (6) Do you need a quiet place to meditate? A darkened room? Isolation from others? Or can meditation be done anywhere? (7) In meditation, do you focus your attention inside yourself or on something outside yourself? (8) Is it necessary to repeat a word (mantra) when you meditate? If it's necessary, will one word do as well as another? (9) Is it necessary to breathe in a special way when you meditate? If so, is it a shallow breath or a deep breath? (10) In meditation, do you experience yourself as a very large, expanded self, or as a very small part of everything? (11) Should you trust the images you get in meditation as guidance or discard them as illusions? (12) Should you hope to experience dramatic phenomena when you meditate, or is that a diversion? (13) Does meditation free your consciousness from the limitations of its bodily support, or does meditation make you more aware of the subtle sensations of your body? (14) If you cry in meditation does that mean you've stopped meditating? What if you smile instead? (15) Can you meditate and move at the same time?

(16) If someone says that running is his meditation, would you expect him to be running fast, or slow? Would he be aware of his body, his mind, his breath, the environment, or none of these things? (17) Would you expect meditation to increase or decrease a painful feeling in your body? (18) Are meditation and prayer similar? Meditation and trance? Does one lead to the other or do these experiences diverge? (19) Is a teacher necessary to learn meditation, or can you learn it by yourself? (20) Can meditation be induced through the senses, by listening to special sounds or viewing special lights or images? (21) Is there a sequence of stages in meditation, or does it appear full-blown all at once? (22) Do all seasoned meditators experience the same thing? (23) Could a couple meditate together in a way that enhances the meditation of both partners, or would the presence of a spouse be distracting? (24) Once you have attained meditation, is it a skill you retain even without continued practice, like riding a bicycle or swimming, or is it like running where if you don't practice you become out of shape and unable to run?

In answering these questions, we first have to realize that meditation has several distinct stages with different objectives, methodologies, and pysiological effects. The answers to the questions above depend on the meditation stage. But none of these stages is similar to trance. While trance can be induced by sensory overload or by drugs, meditation is achieved by a conscious request and always requires conscious breath. Once you have reached a stage of meditation, you can very easily regain that stage, even after years have passed. But the attraction will always be for the next stage, and progress toward the next stage of meditation requires regular meditation practice. Once they have been discovered, all the stages of meditation can occur in the same session.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1998 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
Send your questions about meditation to: Email IAM.