Why and How to Meditate

Why is meditation becoming so popular these days? What does a person feel while meditating that is so enjoyable? To answer these questions, psychologist Lawrence Le Shan interviewed many meditators. To Le Shan, the comment that best summed up the meditational experience was, "It's like coming home."

"Home," of course, is a secure and happy place where we feel that we belong and are loved for being our real selves. Home is filled with relatives and friends who support us. Home protects us from the world's dangers, while allowing us to learn of that very same world's opportunities for our happiness. But today, unfortunately, the feeling of being "at home" is an increasingly rare one.

Philosophers, psychologists, and politicians describe our times with words like "anxiety," "despair," "conflict," "hot war," "cold war," and "future shock." Social commentators tell us that our society is growing more and more mechanical, impersonal, and unsympathetic to human needs. Even in wealthy and relatively secure countries like the United States, families incessantly move from one neighborhood or apartment to another, and if by chance one has physical security, there still remains a pervasive feeling of psychological homelessness. People don't know where, amid society's constant change and crass commercialism, to put their allegiance, where to rest their hearts. Finally, even the simplest life functions (drinking water, eating, and breathing) can now cause us anxiety because of the threat of pollution.

It's natural for us to want to feel at home. Yet, as we see, our uptight, breakneck-speed civilization fails to give us that homey feeling. In fact, modern civilization often frightens us, sends our blood pressure soaring, makes our adrenalin flow, and forces us to seek strong relief. Some people fight their fear with drink, drugs, and/or television. Still, this type of relief is temporary, superficial, and hardly pleasing. Dulling the awareness of a problem doesn't solve it.

In seeking a more permanent and satisfactory solution to these problems, many people (including doctors and psychologists) have now turned towards meditation and have gotten impressive results. Dr. Daniel Goleman reports that "the ability to handle stress increases with practice in meditation." Scientists are discovering that meditation can significantly improve a person's physical and mental health. Dr. Le Shan notes "a greater efficiency and enthusiasm in the everyday life [of meditators]." And meditation achieves all this without any harmful side effects.

What's more, when we read time-tested manuals of meditation (the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, for instance), we find that peace of mind and relief from stress are only pleasant by-products associated with the meditator's attainment of an even higher goal.

For one thing, as the Bhagavad-gita explains, meditation clears away a person's ignorance and unhealthy habits naturally, without harmful repressions, by allowing him to experience a higher pleasure. For example, people smoke cigarettes and indulge in alcohol and drugs because they derive a certain pleasure from them. However, during the practice of meditation, the meditator gradually experiences greater and greater degrees of an internal pleasure that supplants his desire for unhealthy substances. This same principle works to remedy harmful psychological reactions like anxiety, stress, or unwarranted anger. Meditation permits the individual to contact the healthy psychological tendencies already existing within himself. This experience of health is so intrinsically rewarding that the meditator naturally begins to gravitate towards these healthy tendencies in everyday life.

The source of this higher pleasure experienced in meditation is an unfettered and enlightened self. Lord Krsna says in the Bhagavad-gita that this enlightened state "is characterized by one's ability to see the self by the pure mind and to relish and rejoice in the self." The Gita also explains that when a meditator links his individual consciousness in a loving, reciprocal relationship with the Supreme Being (God, or Krsna), the experience of enlightenment develops to its highest potential and becomes permanent. "Being situated in such a position,'' says the Gita, "one is never shaken, even in the midst of the greatest difficulty. This indeed is actual freedom from all miseries…"

While moving towards this goal, the meditator literally has the feeling of "going back home," as His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada describes it. "Home," in this context, means that the individual realizes his true identity and is able to act on it. Meditation, then, not only relieves distress, but also promotes the fullest possible expression of the human spirit.

Or, as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense. The best way to defend ourselves from stress, alienation, and the feeling of homelessness, is to adopt a practice that will move us in the positive direction of going "back home," back to our real selves and a loving relationship with Krsna, or God.