Life and the Universe is Maya in its illusory and transient presentation to our life experience.

There are other ways of seeing this, by entering the state of Enlightenment or Realisation.

Maya is then no longer an obstacle on the special pathway, our Sacred Journey.

Then we are: The Witness to the Gunas. (Qualities of nature in Sanskrit). We are then unaffected as we have transcended all.

What is “activity transcending meditation”?

We need to meditate until it is our normal activity in any state. Not about sitting in the lotus posture then!

We probably have heard eulogies given to the scientific benefits of meditation, relaxation, or quiet prayer. Just try sit down for 5-10 minutes in absolute stillness with calm and reposed mind. Can be like trying to tame a bucking bronco. The mind is a wild animal. Or part of a relatively civilized mammal called human.

To reach a state of perfect happiness, peace or self-knowledge, seems to require more application then just sitting in medication for half an hour twice daily. Perhaps to get to a state of perfect yoga or spirit/mind/body union with the Perfect Self, one needs to be a perfect yogi. Maybe ok for one who can sit in a cave for months at a time, living on a very sparse diet and not watching any TV. However it doesn’t really matter whether one is in New York, the Himalayas, or the outback. The setting is not too important, although there are optimum environments, diets and guided practices.

One option to calm the mind is to use something to help focus the mind. This is the use of mantras as advocated by me in great depth in my previous books. It is a bit mechanical, but then so are a lot of medications. It’s about applying something to fix problem.

My other “logic” for using some form of sound as an aid to meditation? Before the Big Bang: In the beginning there was the Word.

If you stay with the inner and Cosmic sounds, you’re connected with all the molecules in the universe, within the milieu that is life. (Yes, it’s not a cure for suffering, pain, and struggle- but that is life also). These sounds have been considered sacred over millennia, although they should be in the public domain, just as any physical medication is fully accessible via any internet search.  Then mantras don’t have to be seen as spiritual, and can be simply a practical representation in sound of what is, “out there and in here”.

Self-Realisation is the acceptance of life as it is, whether you call it divine creation or mundane evolution. We are at all times, part of this totality of it all – Life and the Universe. Just as a drop of water is the same water as in the sea. This is not a religious perspective: just what could be a normal perspective of all life, including your own.

I recommend the use of mantras. That’s it for me. That’s what I do, per breath, per moment. No matter what I do, right or wrong, or what happened, or what’s going on now. I take refuge in the mantras that I use, (and there are a selection, just as one wears different clothes for different occasions). It’s a refuge and a stable mountain of attention. Ultimately the mantra is transcendent through its own sound connection to the Cosmic Sound. We can agree or disagree with much of science, as per choice, but the Big Bang is after all a “large sound’.

The Power of Sound

The Universe is Sound, therefore we are sound.

Buddhism posits a Shunya or void. This void is not empty! It the home of sound. Fist the
big bang”, which is the outpouring of that sound. The thee sound “translated into energy, activity, light, and then elephants. (Or humans). Thus if we go back to our roots in Cosmic Consciousness we don’t just live in a nothingness. We also “hear’ or rather are immersed in the Cosmic sound.

Isn’t this going to be a bit boring? After our life on earth with our collection of toys, pets, progeny and other riches. Well it might be a heavenly type experience, which apparently is not bad. It is also Blissful in the purest sense. Still not sold on this end-of-existence product?

The problem is that it doesn’t particularly matter what you think or believe in the universe. We are destined to go to our final place due to the experience of life, which pushes us into renunciation via suffering. We don’t need though to surrender to our destiny as it will happen anyway. How we accept and possible embrace it is much more important. Here as far as my Journey is concerned it has been about allowing the Cosmic, (or Divine), Sound to be my core Being. This has been greatly assisted by an understanding of why that Sound is the “be all and end all”. It is the experiencing of the Witness State as per the Wheel of Suffering in previous pages. It’s about being in the centre.

Not outside looking at life.

Next:

Understanding the Mantra as Cosmic Sound emanation.