Meditation is described as a process of removing everything that is not divine within us. It purifies body, mind, and intellect, creating a foundation for deeper spiritual states. An Acharya explained the benefits of meditation not as gains but in what he lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, and fear of aging and death. Meditation is thus a path to shedding mental burdens and attaining inner peace and enlightenment.
Levels of Purification Through Meditation
Purification through meditation occurs in multiple dimensions. Physically, it starts with discipline and mindful living. Emotionally, it grows through love, truthfulness, and non-violence. Intellectually, it deepens via wisdom and contemplation. Spiritually, it culminates in surrender and devotion to God. As impurities dissolve, consciousness shines clearly, the mind calms, and the heart reflects the inner divine.
What Causes Inner Transformation?
Transformation is not caused by simply focusing the mind on objects like a candle or breath. Instead, it depends on the intention behind the focus. Meditation infused with spiritual purpose, aimed at growing virtues and shedding vices, leads to transformation. When meditating on sacred, pure objects, the practitioner experiences various signs such as balance, serenity, and a purified mind.
Signs of Transformation
- Balance and serenity: Restoring the mind’s original equilibrium and clarity.
- Purified mind: Letting go of anger, greed, envy, and delusion.
- Cultivation of virtues: Truthfulness, humility, compassion, patience, forgiveness, and contentment emerge naturally.
- Emotional shifts: Fear changes to faith, agitation to calmness, self-centeredness to empathy.
- Peacefulness: Inner peace independent of external circumstances.
- Full potential: Clarity, intuition, creativity, and harmonious relationships blossom.
- Evolution of consciousness: Ascending from inertia through activity to purity and beyond with divine grace.
The Paths to Salvation Through Meditation
Different spiritual paths culminate their meditation practices differently. In Jnana Yoga, enlightenment occurs when the self is realized beyond body, mind, and ego. However, ultimate liberation requires Brahma jnana—knowledge of the Supreme Brahman—granted only through God’s grace along with devotion.
Ashtanga Yoga ends in samadhi, with surrender to God enabling mastery over the mind and realization of God as the inner Paramatma.
For Bhakti Yoga, complete surrender to God results in divine grace breaking the bonds of maya, leading to union with the Supreme Beloved and the goal of reaching God’s abode.
The Ultimate Meditation State
The goal is to move from the act of meditation to a sustained meditative state, where one is immersed in the Source while aware of the world. Meditation becomes seamless, life itself a continuous expression of awareness, love, and divine harmony. The transformed self is the highest gift to the universe.
