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Here’s a lotus meditation exercise that I composed for one of my books on meditation, Awaken to Superconsciousness: "Meditate on the heart. Think of it as a lotus, its petals, like rays of energy, turned upward toward the brain. "Visualize each petal as a specific aspect of your feelings: love, aspiration, enthusiasm, longing, tenderness, fiery devotion, self-dedication, renunciation of lesser goals in life. Direct all of these aspects upward, toward superconsciousness. "Visualize, now, the mud out of which the lotus grows, as it lifts itself high into the air to absorb the sunlight. The lotus looks upward, away from the mud of its origins. Yet it cannot deny those origins, lest it die. Think of it as sustained by them — turned away not in contempt, but gratefully, in its aspiration toward higher realities. "Do not mentally reject what you've been in the past. See God's presence there also, in the mud of your human origins. See God rising through long, arduous effort to reclaim Himself in the Great Self; God in the sunlight; God as the eternally shining, ever-blissful Sun." My guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, used an artistically stylized lotus emblem to symbolize the spiritual eye of meditation, the door through which one must enter to find cosmic consciousness. He often quoted Jesus’ words: "Therefore, if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ... Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness" (Luke 11:34-35). Yoga teaches adherents to live more in the spine. There lies the battlefield where the inner forces of light and darkness are engaged in the struggle for final victory. The spine is a long, downward extension of the subconscious. At the base of the spine, the outward-flowing energy becomes locked at its south pole, where it is referred to as kundalini. The north pole is the sahasrara ("thousand-petaled lotus") at the top of the cranium. (This is no mere metaphor or dogma; the Christian mystic St. Teresa of Avila wrote that, according to her inner experiences, the seat of the soul is at the top of the head.) Every unfulfilled desire, every wave of like or dislike, every karmic action, creates a subtle vortex of energy, which the ego spins around itself. They are held together by the centripetal thoughts: "I want this; I reject that; I like this; I don't like that; This is what I have done; That is what I failed to accomplish." The ego hugs these thoughts to itself until they gain release outwardly in action, or inwardly in Self-realization. These vortices, known in Sanskrit as vrittis, enter the subconscious and sink to their respective levels in the spine, according to the relative grossness or refinement of the energy they express. To work out a desire or a karma in the outer world is, ultimately, not feasible, for out of every fulfilled desire there arise two, or twenty, or a hundred, others. This is the inner significance of the Greek legend of the Hydra, the many-headed serpent that Hercules slew. The mythical monster would grow two heads for every one that was cut off. "Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see God." The teachings of the Galilean Master and those of India's great yogis were cut from the same cloth of Self-realization. Only when the likes and dislikes of the heart, and their resultant vortices of desire and aversion, have been dissolved — in short, when the heart has been purified — can Self-realization be attained. Most efforts to transform oneself involve a laborious struggle to correct an endless array of individual faults. It would be like trying to realign each molecule in a bar of steel separately. The way to magnetize a bar of steel is to introduce a south-north current into it by placing it in close proximity to a magnetized bar. The way to become spiritually magnetized, similarly, is to place oneself in spiritual "proximity" to one's guru; that is to say, to attune oneself to the guru mentally. Because the energy of an awakened master flows naturally upward, toward the spiritual eye, attunement with the guru generates a similar flow in the disciple. Hence the saying of Jesus, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength": that is, "with all thy energy." Numerous techniques of yoga have as their main objective the awakening of this energy flow. The ancient yogic technique of Kriya Yoga, brought to America by Paramhansa Yogananda, is central and direct in its application to this spiritual awakening. Kriya Yoga directs energy lengthwise around the spine, gradually neutralizing the eddies of the vrittis. At the same time, it strengthens the nerves in the spine and brain to receive cosmic currents of energy and consciousness. Yogananda often said that Kriya Yoga strengthens one in whatever path —whether devotion, discrimination, or service; Hindu, Christian, Moslem, or Judaic — one is inclined by temperament, or by upbringing, to follow. Symbols are a means of bringing subtle, inner realities to a focus in outward expression. Within the fundamental unity of consciousness, certain symbols, such as the lotus lifting itself in purity above the muddy water, possess universal relevance and power. Swami Kriyananda is the founder of Ananda and one of the few living direct disciples of Paramhansa Yogananda. His eighty books and over 400 musical compositions have sold over three million copies. He will speak July 19 at Benaroya Hall (Nordstrom Recital Hall). For tickets, call East West Bookshop, (206) 523-3726, or Ticketmaster, (206) 292-ARTS; for more information, see <http://www.anandaseattle.org/>. |
In the East, the
lotus is viewed as a symbol of spiritual unfoldment. The lotus
has its roots in earthly mud, but as it grows upward in aspiration
toward the light, its petals open out in a beautiful flower.
Om Mani Padme Hum, meaning, "Hail to the Jewel in
the Lotus," is the sacred mantra of the Tibetans. The
Jewel in the Lotus is also the name of a play I wrote many
years ago about how we, like the lotus, can transcend our current
realities and offer up our lives in the successful pursuit of
our highest aspirations, in this way fulfilling the very "jewel"
of our desires.