What should you keep a secret and what should you confess? Find out with SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR

Meditation is the journey from sound to silence, from movement to stillness, from a limited identity to unlimited space. There are five ways through which meditation happens.

Physical manipulation: Yoga, Tai Chi, all these come under that. By stretching and contracting the body, the mind experiences a state of awareness that you can call meditation.
Breathing exercises and pranayama: The mind becomes quiet and still.
Through the five senses and sensory objects: You can experience a state of no-mind, no thought, calmness, serenity and inner beauty.
Watch empty space: On a free day, just lie down and keep looking at the sky; a moment comes when the mind becomes still, there are no thoughts and you don’t know where you are, but you know who you are. Experience the centre everywhere and circumference nowhere. Limitless awareness can happen by just watching an empty space, because our mind is also space; consciousness is space.
Intellectual stimulation: Through knowledge and awareness, you can go into meditation. This is called Jnana yoga.

If you have been into a space museum, you are in a different state of consciousness when you come out of the museum. There is a different context, because you have seen yourself in the context of the universe. Who are you? What are you? Where are you? How are you in reference to the unfathomable, infinite universe?

If you have studied Quantum Physics, you start to see that everything is just atoms, just a wave function, just energy. If you really listen to Quantum Physics and then you study Vedanta or the art of meditation or yoga, you will find striking similarities. You will find that the same language is being spoken.

Adi Shankara said, ‘All that you see doesn’t exist’. Eminent scientist Hans-Peter Durr said, “I studied matter for the last 35 years, only to find out that it does not exist! I have been studying something that does not exist”. So, through knowledge also you can experience a state of meditation.

What is the secret of meditation? There is a difference in the Orient and in the Occident when it comes to secrets. In the Occident, anything that is shameful is kept a secret. In the Orient, anything that is sacred is kept a secret. I find a startling difference between the two.

If you say something is very secret, it must be very sacred. That is the attitude in the Orient. In the Orient, a shameful act is never kept a secret; it is always confessed. There is nothing to hide there. But what is to be secret is one’s mantra — a sound which is kept very secret in the mind.

Why is it kept secret? It is said that mantras are like seeds and seeds sprout in secrecy. You put the seed under the ground and cover it with mud and then the seed sprouts and becomes a tree. Of course, the sprouts you eat are different. The ancient concept of mantra is a sound which is kept very secret in you; itgrows from inside; means it resonates inside you. Anything that you keep to yourself as a secret does not leave you, but it takes you deeper and deeper to  subconscious layers. That is one of the reasons for confession also.


Sound Mantra
Why do you confess and say something out? This is so that it does not go deep into your consciousness. A mistake or sin that you committed, once you confess, it just goes out. It no longer stays in and bothers you. But the mantra; a sound which has been given, and that too by one who is deep into meditation, one who has mastered it, helps you go deeper. The sound (mantra) is given to another person, a student saying, ‘Keep it to yourself, it is your personal mantra, and let it grow.’

Here, the meaning of the sound is not important, just the vibration is. Understanding the meaning is superficial compared to the vibrational aspect of any sound. It could be the same sound which everybody knows.

A child’s mind is always focused on something and it sticks there. But as the hormones in our body start functioning more and more, the mind starts swinging and wavering, and that focused attention becomes less and less. In earlier days, before this happened, before someone gets into their teenage, they used to train him in yoga and meditation. So, all through the teenage years when the mind is swinging and going here and there, already a youth is trained how to handle the mind. It is a very good age to start, at eight or nine years. Just before the hormonal changes start appearing is the right time to initiate one into meditation, yoga and all the martial arts. The body is ready and is flexible and mind is ready. This is most ideal, but any time is good to start meditation, any age is okay.