Hello All,
I have decided to put a some more words from Dr Rampa on Meditation – enjoy
-takenfrom his book Chapters of Life
The discipline of meditation is essential if one is to make any real progress in spiritual attainment. Just as an armywould be useless without discipline and without drill, so the human psyche becomes as a member of a rabble without the discipline and training of meditation correctly applied.
It is useless to try to practice meditation by reading a book which has been written by a person who cannot himself meditate. So many occult books are just indigestible conglomerations of misunderstood Eastern parables; books which are written by people who really do not know the first thing about meditation, for it is clear that unless one can meditate oneself one cannot tell other people how to meditate!
It should be remembered that in many countries of the world—non-Christian countries, that is—attendants at a temple would meditate before entering the temple, they would meditate so that their mind was clear and opened ready to receive, what one might term in Western parlance, Divine
Revelation and Instruction. It is quite useless to pray, for example, if one is just giving a babble of instruction to one’s God. It is useless to pray that one shall win the beauty contest, or that one shall win the Irish Sweepstake. The process of praying should always be commenced by a period of meditation which clears the mind of the garbage of thought, and makes one ready to receive information from higher planes. To repeat—too many people flap down on their knees and start
ordering their God to ‘deliver the goods’, then they say that prayer never works. Well, let them try meditation first. Meditation actually has four different parts:
l. The first part is that meditational practice which assists in the development of the true personality of the meditator, and if one can meditate and develop one’s personality then one obtains a happier and more successful life. One becomes happier in the personal aspects of life and one
becomes more successful in association with one’s fellows, that is, in work. Successful meditation here also increases the mental capacity.
2. The second stage of meditation is that which almost automatically follows from successful completion of the first stage. The second stage of meditation is that which brings
the physical body in rapport with the Overself ……[...]….. Before one can meditate to this, and higher standards, it is essentialthat one has a pure and lust-free life.
3. The next stage of meditation is that which gives one all the benefits of stage 1 and stage 2, but which enables one in addition to have full occult understanding. That is, when one reaches the third stage of meditation one is able to comprehend and apperceive. Apperceive, of course, is different from perceive. Apperceive is the mind’s perception of itself (all that which enables the Overself to improve its own spiritual condition).
4. Lastly, there is the mystical meditation, so called because it is so far removed from earthly concepts that it is rather beyond the understanding of those who have not succeeded in reaching that stage. ….[...]…The first two stages of meditation are the essential steps and you should concentrate on them first.
-Dave Enjoy
