There
are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, “Meditation” and “Contemplation”. Meditation means properly the concentration
of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a
single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or
idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of Dhyana, for the principle of Dhyana is mental concentration whether
in thought, vision or knowledge.
There
are other forms of Dhyana. There is a passage in which Vivekananda
advises you to stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as
they will and simply observe them and see what they are. This may be called concentration in
self-observation.
This
form leads to another, the emptying of all thought out of the mind so as to
leave it a sort of pure vigilant blank on which the divine knowledge may come
and imprint itself, undisturbed by the inferior thoughts of the ordinary human
mind and with the clearness of a writing in a white chalk on a black
board. You will find that the Gita
speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of yoga
and even the method it seems to prefer.
This may be called the Dhyana of
liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking
and allows it to think or not to think, as it pleases and when it pleases, to
choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of
Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana.
Meditation
is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results;
contemplation more difficult, but greater; self-observation and liberation from
the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in
its fruits. One can choose any of them
according to one’s bent and capacity.
The perfect method is to use them all, each in its own place and for its
own object; but this would need a fixed faith and firm patience and a great
energy of Will in the self-application to the yoga.
References:
Growing within
– The psychology of Inner Development
(Compilation
of the works of Sri Aurobindo)
