Once your mind is alert again, resume your meditation but don’t exert. Exert only when you feel a drop in your mindfulness or attentiveness, which means if you find yourself pursuing a thought and only realizing several seconds later that you were supposed to drop the thought instead of following it. It means a certain dullness has come about. If you are visualizing and find that your object of visualization has faded on your mental canvas and yet you sit unaware, it’s loss of clarity. It means your mind is experiencing dullness, thus exert.
Mental exertion and relaxation is like driving a car on a highway. You don’t step on the accelerator once your car has reached a desirable speed. You keep your foot there just in case or you may gently press if your speed drops, but mostly you just keep a certain pressure to maintain your speed. You are alert to press the brake as soon as you need to. If you don’t, you can have an accident.
In meditation, you don’t keep exerting once you’ve reached the right equilibrium. You keep yourself alert to press the brakes when you need to. When you slow down, you step on the gas again to gather momentum. As you gain experience in driving, you know when exactly to take your foot off. But, you have to be alert and mindful to be effective. In meditation too, with practice, you learn to be in the ‘cruise mode’ without undue exertion or relaxation. This is the science of meditation, the art of balancing between mental exertion and relaxation.
Remember, meditation is about discovering your natural state of peace and bliss. To be in the natural state, you have to be natural, it is effortless. This effortlessness, however, comes after a great deal of practice. A concert pianist who can play even the most difficult pieces effortlessly has reached that state after serious, intense and prolonged effort spanning over years. Concentration is not an intense effort. Once you have established your concentration during your meditation, you simply have to maintain it.
It takes great practice to artfully maintain a balance between exerting and relaxing. If you are mindful and alert and if you carefully alternate between exertion and relaxation, Samadhi – ultimate realization, equipoise or insight – is imminent. I promise you that much. Just like a river’s natural course is to merge in the sea, mind’s natural course is to merge in the supreme consciousness. I say this from my experience.
The Nine Stages of Bliss
In the striking picture on the opposite page you’ll find three key elements: a monk, an elephant and a monkey. Additionally, the monk is holding a noose and a goad. The monk represents the meditator treading the windy path of meditation, where, until it’s mastered, no two days are alike. Some days you experience good meditation and at other times, it’s the opposite. The elephant represents dullness and the monkey restlessness.
The goad and noose represent vigilance and attentiveness in meditation, respectively.
In the first stage, the meditator is like a rocky boat in a turbulent ocean. There’s virtually no control on the mind. Concentration at this stage ends up wherever the drift of thoughts take it. The monkey and the elephant constantly disrupt the meditation and the meditator is struggling to tame them.
In the second stage, there’s a small white patch on the elephant and the monkey. It shows progress. It means the meditator is able to have short periods of quality meditation when the mind is devoid of thoughts. Think of a flag that flutters whenever the wind blows. If there’s no wind, there’s no fluttering. Similarly, the mind at this stage is stable for a short period before the winds of thoughts start to blow again causing waves in the stillness of consciousness.
The persistent meditator gets to the third stage and this is a significant progress in its own right. Now, they are able to detect their dullness arising in meditation. In the scroll, it is shown by a bigger white patch on the elephant and a noose leashing it. Restlessness or stray thoughts are still a great challenge at this stage.
In the fourth and the fifth stages, while the meditator makes a giant leap by even greater taming of restlessness and dullness, a new challenge presents itself. You’ll see a rabbit riding the elephant now. This signifies a state of calmness which makes the meditator go into a sort of torpor or laxity. Often, most meditators who get even a tiny glimpse of this calmness, mistake this as the ultimate state of bliss.
In the sixth stage, the monk can be seen leading both the monkey and the elephant, but the animals are not fully white yet. It means the meditator has mostly tamed them, he’s able to lead them, but, there are still subtle elements of excitement or stupor that can distract the meditator.
The elephant is completely white and the monkey sits by the feet of the practitioner in the seventh stage. It shows that the meditator has nearly perfected the art of attention. He experiences lucid awareness during the meditation but the presence of monkey shows there’s still a chance of feeling excited or restless. Think of a still pond where dropping even a tiny pebble causes ripples.
In the eighth stage, there’s no monkey. Restlessness has completely disappeared for this meditator and a constant state of bliss always leaves him calm. But, sometimes in this state of bliss, the lucidity of awareness is adversely affected. Think of someone under the influence of a mild intoxicant. At this stage, the meditator hasn’t yet learned to rise above the bliss.
In the ninth stage, the monk is sitting down with the white elephant. Bliss has become a close companion and it no longer interferes in any worldly activity. All mental and emotional battles cease, the war of thoughts stops and there’s virtually no effort in meditation now. The meditator has become the meditation.
The stages beyond show the monk riding the elephant. These indicate other dimensions of existence. The meditator is ever calm, abiding in bliss. Any inner struggle or stress completely disappears. The meditator has gone beyond the meditation.
Here comes an important question I’m asked frequently, “Generally, what kind of an effort is required to reach the ninth stage?”
Roughly 1,500 hours of quality meditation is required to cross each stage. With right guidance and initiation, you may bring it down to around 1,000 hours. It’s almost the effort a concert pianist puts in before they play under the spotlights in front of a large audience.
Epilogue
It was towards the end of February 2011. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, in a Himalayan forest, with icicles hanging outside from the thatched roof, I sat in intense meditation. Ten hours of perfect stillness of the body and mind had passed as easily as the night turns to dawn.
The soft beams of the full moon landed on the Sri Yantra, a mandala, in front of me. This mandala was a geometrical representation of kundalini or Mother Divine and was an integral part of the meditation I was doing at the time. In that hut, there were enough fissures and holes letting light and air to enter how they pleased. It was a magnificent sight, to have the center of the mandala light up with a moonbeam.
I had drawn it on paper with a pencil and had used that simple piece of paper for seven months. The small rundown hut was plunged in darkness but for the moonlight that lit up the yantra most mystically, if not mysteriously. I’d started at 5 PM and it was 3 AM by now. It took me years to get here, a stage where I could sit in one posture for as long as I needed without affecting the lucidity of my meditation or the sharpness of my concentration.