Central Chronicle
We should reflect on every aspect with the perspective of anekanta. Meditation, thoughts, concentration, pranayama, restraint of the senses and passions and discipline are all rules for spiritual practice. When they are associated with knowledge they become rules for spiritual practice.
When they are used to achieve learning, then they motivate spiritual practice. When they become rules for materialism then they dissuade spiritual practice. They should never be given any value.
The basic rule of spiritual practice is to know. It is never anekantic. To know for the sake of knowing alone and not towards consumption: that is the rule for spiritual practice. All that get associated with this become rules for spiritual practice. Know and perceive. Know your breath and see it. Do not react to it. The secret of spiritual practice is to know, not to react to it, not for consumption. When man begins to use everything towards consumption, he becomes sad. But when he only knows, he does not become sad.
There is one single lofty rule for both meditation and religion: know pain but do not experience it. There is pain in the body. Know that, do not experience it. The one who only knows, reduces the intensity of the ailment while the one who experiences it increases it. If there is pain somewhere, know it and you will find it reduces. When you start experiencing it, it increases. Those who know illness and see it, treat it as a guest. Poor thing has come in today to leave tomorrow. If he wants to stay longer, let him. What difference does it make? A guest is after all only a guest, not a permanent resident. He comes and goes. When man begins to experience his illness then he becomes restless and takes all kinds of medicines to treat it. He wishes to erase it within seconds.
There is fear of pain. That fear creates imbalance in the whole body. One will experience pain commensurate with the fear in the person. It is in proportion to the unhappiness we feel, to the fear of pain that we experience, that the functioning of our systems will also be affected. Napoleon lost the war of Waterloo. Why? Here is a secret. Doctors had examined Napoleon and reported that his pituitary glands were not functioning properly and so he could not take the right decision. Fear gives rise to diffidence. Due to anger the glandular functions become imbalanced. They have to work much harder. Its natural intrinsic functioning gets arrested. And this is harmful. The pituitary glands help in taking decisions. When there is too much stress on them, they get tired and take the wrong decisions. It is not just Napoleon but many Napoleons like him who have lost wars due to this.
Those who wage world wars, those who fight wars, those who cause unrest and violence in society are those whose glandular functioning is imbalanced. Such people harass their glands so much due to the passions and anger within them that they become imbalanced and that makes them take the wrong decisions. Such people not only destroy themselves but bring destruction to the whole world.
The one solution that emerges from all this is: the need to know the natural mode and the yogic modes. The cause for the manifestation of the natural mode and the key to the transformation of the yogic mode lies in being the knower and not the consumer. Only knowing, not consuming. We should know the event, not experience it. We should not get carried away by the event. The one who gets carried away will ever be able to understand reality. Only the one who is standing on the shore can understand the event, not one who has been carried away by the flow. The one who gets carried away gets caught in quicksand. The one standing on the shore can understand all that is happening.
Meditation is a method of knowing. Know, know every event. It is not bad to know. Not only the good events, know the bad ones too. Not only the likeable events but also the disliked events. When knowing happens then nothing is bad or good. Nothing is liked or disliked. Like - dislike, good - bad, beautiful - ugly, these are things that happen after experiencing an event. It has no links with getting to know. A great seeker was meditating in the forest. It was a full moon night. Moonlight was spreading herself over the entire earth. Some misled boys kidnapped and brought a girl into the forest. As soon as opportunity presented itself, the young girl escaped. The boys chased her. They reached the place where the sage was meditating. He finished meditating and the boys asked him, "Did you see a beautiful girl run past!"
The sage replied, "A figure passed, I do not know whether she was beautiful or not."
The boys exclaimed, "She went before you and you did not know if she was beautiful! Since when have you reached such a state?" Replied the sage, "Since I have awakened to myself I have been in this state. Now I am fully aware of myself. Now nobody is either beautiful or ugly to my eyes. They are all figures, reflections to me."