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

It was snow all around, sparkling beautifully under the tranquil moonlight. The trees were quiet as if the boughs and leaves were sleeping too. Icy breeze blew gently. My ears and nose froze within the first minute. At a distance, I heard wild animals move suddenly, as if startled by my unexpected presence. A deer grunted loudly and another made a high-pitched ‘baa’ sound. In an instant, the large field was abuzz with a lot of activity. Wild boars made a mix of snorting, squealing and grating sounds and ran upwards to the hills. The bucks and does galloped towards the woods. Other animals, probably a bear, at a greater distance, also moved into the woods.

That night, they were more visible than most other nights, for tonight it wasn’t just the full moon but clear sky as well – a rarity in the past three months with frequent storms, rains, snowfall and hail. The whole field ahead of me glittered like it was God’s playground made from silver-dust.

It was pure bliss to see those wild animals move around.

I felt no fear (fearlessness is a natural by product of good meditation). I was in love, one with everything around. The Vedas call it advaita. Fear only arises in duality, in a sense of separation, that somehow you may lose the other one or that they may harm you. But who can harm you when there’s only you around?

There’s no fear in a divine union. This state of perfect union is the final stage of meditation. In this state, meditation ceases to be an act. Instead, it becomes a phenomenon, a state of mind.

These beautiful beings of the wild were merely an extension of my existence. It is here that you are not afraid of your own body. Like everything in the universe, all the wild animals around were nothing but my own reflection. They were my past lives. I had been a boar, a bear, a deer, a tiger. Everyone and everything around you was once a part of you or you were a part of them. The sum total of all we have ever been over the billions of years, across myriad life-forms, is eternally present in us, with us, around us. At all times. It’s not just a matter of saying. If you continue to walk the path of meditation, one day you’ll experience, know and understand the truth in my words.

I reached out to the roof and picked some snow. It was hardened than usual because it wasn’t fresh snow. It was from the previous night. At any rate, it was delicious. It would soothe the excessive heat generated in my body due to intense meditation.

The subtle vibrations had gradually turned into deep sensations coursing through my entire body and intensifying in my head like waterfalls and streams running through Himalayan hills and vales tumbling into the Ganges. The sensations in my head were beyond bear or expression. I hadn’t yet learnt how to get rid of these acute sensations. A superb clarity of mind, senses, of the past, present and future coursed through the river of my consciousness. Sometimes I didn’t want those sensations for they would render me completely useless to do anything else at all. Even the simple act of putting a tilaka on my forehead after I bathed would become a challenge.

All I could do was meditate and whenever I meditated they would continue to build up to a degree that I felt as if my body was not made from flesh and bones but it was simply a conduit of sensations, a container of energy. The container itself was made from nothing but energy. I pulsated as if there was no physical reality to my own existence. And yet, the body was governed by the laws of nature so I had gone through my fair share of pains and aches. Those aches, however, only intensified my resolve to persist with my meditation so I could go beyond the shackles of this body.

Merely knowing that this body is simply a vehicle, or that we hold within us an entire universe, is incomplete knowledge. It is wisdom without insight and doesn’t lead to bliss but ignorance. I say ignorance because you end up forming these concepts without any experiential understanding. The rigours of meditation aren’t for the fainthearted. Above everything else, in the beginning stages, it requires extraordinary patience and self- discipline.

I had moved deep into the Himalayan woods seeking even more intense solitude. A few villagers had come all the way to see me on the last day of my meditation in the woods. When I emerged from my hut seven months later, they were startled.

They thought a very weak and frail sadhu would come out from the hut for I’d lived on very little for more than seven months in extreme conditions. Sometimes, I would step out in the dead of the night and eat snow.

I had not seen my own face for months. Looking in a tiny mirror, I used to put the tilaka on my forehead once in 24 hours after bathing with icy-cold water. That mirror was too small to render a reflection of my entire face. I didn’t know how I had looked. I knew I had lost weight but I didn’t feel a lack of energy.