A Million Thoughts: Learn All About Meditation from a Himalayan Mystic

You may see a banana, with mindfulness you remind yourself not to pursue the thought and image of banana. You drop the thought, but then out of nowhere you may see a Ferrari or a beautiful sandy beach or something. Continuous flash of images means there’s an undercurrent of restlessness still present.

In a way, this is the greatest and the subtlest hurdle because it is innate, a natural fabric of conditioned mind. It does not leave you even when you are sleeping, causing dreams. As you try to focus on your object of meditation, you find yourself battling with appearances, images stored in your memory. You are not engaging in any thought process or pursuing any mental conversation and yet you keep getting hit with the images of people, things, events, and so on. They severely impede your ability to meditate correctly.

Images: The Flowing Wind

In any place, even if empty of all existence, there always exists air. Further, there is always movement in the air, however inert that may be. So, in a way, wind is omnipresent. Only a vacuum maybe devoid of such phenomenon. A vacuum is an artificial construct though, it is not a natural state. Similarly, even when a mind is empty of all thoughts, restlessness and sluggishness, there still exists memory. In fact, it is the basis of your analytical skills and your intelligence. You may be a Nobel laureate in physics, or a genius in calculus, in an unconscious state, in the absence of memory, however, you are unable to count even up to three.

What Causes Images During Meditation?

Your memory is the source of all imagery. Anything you see or hear even once, always stays in your memory. Whether it is a giant ship or a needle sinking in the sea, it retains both, always and forever. It is not possible to erase your memory. It is, however, possible to cleanse it to the degree that the image flashing in front of you fails to trigger any subsequent thought or emotion. Over time, as you become indifferent to thoughts and images of the past, their impact on your emotional state wears off. And, anything that does not evoke an emotion in you of any nature is not detrimental to your state of peace and calm.

The Remedy

What do you do when you are in a windy area? You cannot battle or win against the wind. All you can do is cover yourself, to not face the wind, and accept it. In much the same manner, there is no need to react to the images. You simply cover yourself with a balance of alertness and relaxation, exertion and pacification. Soon, images start disappearing. As you continue to meditate, intentionally recalling only the object of visualization each time, other images start to fade away automatically. Further, leading a righteous life in line with the virtues spelled out earlier, you find yourself increasingly calm and strong. You recall less and less of disturbing, enticing or exciting images. Their impact becomes negligible and their recollection, faint.

Other Hurdles

A new disciple, after listening to his master’s sermon, approached him and asked, “Is it fair to say that God is one and that same God lives in all?”

“If I say ‘Yes’, you will think you have understood without understanding,” the guru replied. “And if I say ‘No’ you will misunderstand.”

Meditation insists on discovery of your truth based on experiential understanding and not conditioned beliefs. While growing up, we are told this is right and that is wrong, God is an idol or God is a holy book and so on. The path of discovering your true nature with meditation requires that we put aside all our beliefs, clean our slate and let our mind rest in its most natural state. The wisdom, insight and clarity we gain at that time leads us to the real nature of our truth.

Until then, often we keep craving for experiences of a certain type. Shiva Samhita eloquently expounds on other hindrances that are neither physical nor mental, neither psychical nor emotional as such. No doubt all non-physical hurdles are mental obstacles in one way or the other but I specifically wish to list other hurdles separately so you get an idea of how a good meditator’s focus is on un-conditioning of the self. With each step you take in cleansing yourself of your tendencies, desires and bookish knowledge, you get closer to the dawning of realization.

Hurdles of Gratification