There are so many different types of meditation that it is sometimes difficult to see how they relate to one another or what their purpose is. Yet all meditation techniques fall into three essential categories: meditation on an object, meditation on the subject, and non-meditation. What follows is a simple overview of these three approaches and the role each plays in the return to our essential nature.
Meditation on an object involves focusing or directing attention on some object. It may be a physical or subtle object, external or internal, but it is always something objective. It could be a mantra, a flame, a sound, an idea, an image of a deity or the sky.
The purpose of meditation on an object is to gather the disparate energies of the mind. Throughout the day, attention is usually directed towards numerous different objects – thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions – so the mind becomes scattered, diversified, restless and agitated. Meditation on an object gathers the mind and focuses it. It is like a boat putting down an anchor on a stormy sea: the object is the anchor that steadies the boat of the mind on the stormy sea of experience.
The chosen object is not arbitrary. It contains some aspect of the qualities that are inherent in our true nature. A candle flame is luminous, representing the luminosity or knowing aspect of our essential self. The sky is empty, representing the openness and spaciousness of our true nature. The breath is transparent, representing the transparency of pure awareness. Such objects not only steady the mind but also infuse it with something of the qualities of our being.
The mantra is perhaps the most potent of all these objects, because it is a condensation of a sacred idea – a distillation of knowledge or wisdom. When sounded or repeated, the knowledge concealed within it unfolds itself in the mind. It is like taking a sip of a fine old wine whose layers of taste gradually reveal themselves.
Another analogy is a Bach prelude that normally takes five minutes to play and contains perhaps a thousand notes. If you played it at twice the speed, and then twice again, and again, eventually the entire prelude would be heard in a single second. It would sound like one homogeneous tone, yet within that tone the whole prelude is enfolded. All the intelligence of the prelude is condensed into that single sound. When taken into oneself, it unravels in the mind. A mantra functions in just this way: a sound with a vibrational frequency whose condensed intelligence unfolds as it permeates the mind.
Many people, without knowing it, practise a small ritual of meditation every day. A vase of flowers on a table, a bowl on a mantelpiece or a painting on the wall becomes a place where the mind rests between activities. Such objects are like small windows in the flow of the day, brief suspensions of attention. They are vertical interruptions in the horizontal movement of experience in time, moments in which being briefly shines. These are spontaneous, informal forms of objective meditation.
Meditation on the subject does not focus on what we are aware of but on the one who is aware. It is sometimes described as turning attention around towards its source, but this description is misleading. One cannot shine a torch on the bulb from which the light proceeds. The movement is more accurately understood as a relaxation of attention, a subsiding or sinking of attention.
The word ‘attention’ comes from the Latin ad, meaning ‘towards’, and tendere, meaning ‘to stretch’. Attention implies the stretching of awareness towards an object. When the object is released and not replaced, this stretching naturally relaxes.
If a rubber band is stretched between two points, it remains in tension only while both points are held. Release one of them and, unless it is immediately fixed to something else, it cannot help but return to its natural state of equilibrium. Attention behaves in much the same way. It is stretched, as it were, between the awareness from which it arises and the objects – thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions –towards which it is directed. If the object is relinquished and one resists the familiar urge to fasten attention to another, the tension in attention dissolves and it returns to its natural state of equilibrium, the peace of awareness.
This relaxation or subsiding of attention is what Ramana Maharshi referred to as sinking the mind into the heart – the mind relaxing back into the heart of awareness from which it arises.
Self-enquiry is not really an activity of the mind, although it may be initiated by a question such as ‘What is it that knows my experience?’, ‘What cannot be removed from me?’, ‘What remains continuous throughout my life?’ or ‘Who am I really?’ These questions invite the mind away from objects and into the depth of awareness itself.
If a question such as ‘What is it that knows my experience?’ is asked, attention naturally withdraws from the objects it was focused on. At this point, the important thing is not to turn the knower itself into an object.
The mind is so accustomed to knowing only objects that it may at first rebel. Finding nothing objective to grasp, it feels redundant, even as if it were dying, and fear may arise. But if one stays with this exploration, the peace of being begins to make itself felt and its gravitational pull draws the mind inward. Resistance softens and attention sinks more easily into the subject, the knower, consciousness itself.”
Self-enquiry gives way to self-abidance.
One may ask a simple question such as ‘What is it that knows my experience?’ and then notice what happens to the mind. Another question might be ‘What is the one thing that remains present throughout all changing experience?’ or ‘What cannot be removed from me?’ One may sound the divine name ‘I am’ within the mind and allow attention to be drawn into its referent.
All these questions or statements initiate the subsidence of attention, the sinking of the mind into the heart of awareness.
Both meditation on an object and meditation on the subject begin with the presumption of separation. They start with the temporary finite self we seem to be and give that self something to do in order to progress toward the self we truly are.
The first type of meditation – meditation on an object – progresses gradually towards our true nature via an object such as the mantra, the breath or the flame. This is why it is sometimes called the Progressive Path or the Indirect Path.
The second type – meditation on the subject – moves directly from wherever we are, whatever the content of experience, back to our true nature of being aware or awareness itself. It does not proceed by way of any objective experience. This does not mean it is quick; it simply means it goes directly. It may be instantaneous or it may take time.
One may reflect: ‘I am obviously not my thoughts; I am that which is aware of them. I am obviously not my feelings; I am that which knows them.’ In this way one may gradually progress back to one’s true nature, but the movement is direct even if not instantaneous.
There are numerous Progressive Paths – numerous objects that attention may be given to – whereas there is only one Direct Path, although it may be initiated through various questions or statements.
The third type of meditation could be called non-meditation. It requires nothing at all. One neither directs attention outward toward an object nor inward toward the subject. It does not involve attention in any way.
Non-meditation does not begin with the presumption of separation. It makes less concession to the temporary finite self we seem to be. It simply involves being.
Sooner or later, all practices resolve themselves in simply being. All methods prepare the mind for this natural resting in and as being.
In simply being, there is no subject and no object. No path is travelled from the apparent self to the true self. One simply stands as what one is. This is why it is called the Pathless Path.
This Pathless Path is what the Sufi mystic, Balyani, refers to when he says:
No one sees Him except Himself, no one reaches Him except Himself and no one knows Him except Himself. He knows Himself through Himself and He sees Himself by means of Himself. No one but He sees Him . . . No one other than He sees Him. No sent prophet, perfect saint or angel brought close knows Him. His prophet is He, His messenger is He, His message is He and His word is He. He sent Himself from Himself, through Himself to Himself. There is no intermediary or means other than Him. There is no difference between the sender, that which is sent and the one to whom it is sent.[1]
In this resting of being, the temporary finite self is gradually, though sometimes suddenly, divested of the qualities it borrows from the content of experience and stands revealed as infinite being, God’s being, the only being there is.
It is to this that we refer when we say ‘I am’. The simple, intimate knowledge ‘I am’, provided nothing is added to it, indicates God’s presence in the heart, God’s presence in and as one’s very own being. ‘I am’ is the first form of that presence, the name of God in oneself, as oneself.
‘I have called you by your name. You are mine’,2 says the book of Isaiah. The name ‘I am’ is given to indicate that it is God’s infinite being that shines in the self as the self. ‘I am’ is the being of our being, the self of our self.
Awhad al-din Balyani, Know Yourself: An Explanation of the Oneness of Being, trans. Cecilia Twinch (Cheltenham: Beshara Publications, 2011).
Isaiah 43:1.
