Preliminary Preparations Necessary for the Practice of Meditation?

Meditation is the subtlest of human activities. Success is commensurate with the initial preparation and subsequent equanimity of the mind. The mind and intellect have to be properly tuned before they can be successfully employed in meditation. To ignore the preliminary preparation and attempt meditation would prove to be futile, even detrimental, for the unprepared practitioner. This caution is not intended to turn one away from the practice of meditation. It is only meant to emphasize that the necessary preparation has to be done to achieve success in meditation.

The first stage of preparation is to withdraw the mind from its preoccupation with the enchantments of the world.

Due to worldly activities throughout the day one’s mind become agitated and an agitated mind can never be fit for meditation and an agitated mind seeking sense pleasures in the external world has the following three fundamental imperfections:

(1) The quantity of thoughts entertained by such a mind is excessive.

(2) The quality of its thoughts is poor and degrading.

(3) The direction of the thoughts is set towards the lower material values of life

These faults in the mind have to be rectified if one desires to practice meditation effectively. The quantity of thoughts must be reduced, the quality improved, and the direction changed to a higher Ideal. If such reduction, improvement, and direction of thoughts are achieved, an individual gains relative equanimity of the mind. An equanimous state of mind is an essential prerequisite for the practice of meditation. However, the general practitioners of religion do not realize how necessary this preparation is and plunge directly into meditation only to reap disappointment in spiritual evolution.

The spiritual discipline advised for producing a reduction of the quantity of thoughts in the mind is the path of action (karma-yoga). This discipline is directed to one’s physical personality.

The path of devotion (bhakti-yoga) is prescribed for one’s mental or emotional personality. It improves the quality of thoughts. Devotion is developed by prayer, by mental prostration, and surrender of the ego or, in other words, by dedicating all action to the Lord or the Guru. When this is practiced regularly the quality and the texture of thoughts necessarily improve.

One can change the direction of the thoughts by practicing the path of knowledge (Gyana-yoga). This path deals with the human intellect through the study of, and reflection upon, the spiritual truths and helps in developing discrimination between the Real and the unreal, the Transcendental and the ephemeral. When a seeker constantly studies and reflects upon the sacred truths, the attention automatically recedes from the fields of sense objects and gets more and more established in the higher and nobler aspects of life.

A constant and sincere practice of these paths makes meditation rewarding and such meditation practiced regularly in turn develops the capacity to concentrate and pursue the chosen paths. The two aspects— preparation and meditation—are thus complementary to each other.

Another important sadhana (spiritual practice) suggested as a preliminary step in meditation for beginners is introspection or self-observation. Introspection is a process of self-analysis of the activities performed during the day. It is usually practiced at night, by carefully recollecting and observing all the activities—physical, mental, and intellectual—that one has performed from the time of waking up until the moment of introspection