Course XLVII - Teaching 26: About Meditation (December 20th, 1956)

This lecture is given as spiritual instruction, and contains warnings of the Knight Great Master about prayer, its practice and the moment to alter one’s method of prayer.
The Sons state that during the hour devoted to meditation they experience dryness, distraction and drowsiness. This is vitally important to us; so we must be quite careful.
Exercise is indispensable until the identification of the soul with it. Of course we shall need it, but then we do not realize that we are practicing the exercise and it comes to us naturally. As we know how to sew or weave, we do it so mechanically that our mind does not follows the movement: but if we make a mistake, we must pay attention again.
A meditation exercise follows a technique and one makes it at once, but never becomes an obstacle; if it became an obstacle, it would not be because we possess it, but because we neglected it for long time; so we wasted our time.
Also those that have reached notable meditation states experience the same. By this exercise we can get such a right transcendence that we make it instantaneously; “to transcend is to possess”. Discursive Meditation: Men converse driven by their current emotions and respond to a mental vibration of people, race or city in which they stay.
Discursive Meditation teaches a more intimate and self-centered conversation, and needs our total powers and re-concentration. Once sees with clarity that the beginners do not know how to converse; they respond to this mental vibration of the place in which are born or educated. They have nothing to say to the Divine Mother, and if they encounter a friend, they tell all.
To enter ourselves, we should not converse simply as men, but be guided by our intuition; we should practice discursive meditation.
We should begin with our backward review, and to talk again as in our childhood.
Usually a child talks to imaginary beings; seemingly he has someone close to him. So he comes out of his mental confinement of civilization and culture in which he stayed. It is right to invoke the Divine Name and say: “Mother of mine, Divine Mother, I love you”, but we should not spend much time in this because many times this is no more than a repetition of things that we learnt, and it is not a conversation between the Mother and the soul within. You should discard the old conversation habits to possess the true Discursive Meditation technique.
We should learn how to converse alone with the Mother, and to tell her our little things, even any nonsense, all. So we are able to converse with God, and we touch something so far unknown, which is in the depths of our heart.
As soon as one achieves this, we understand how much we neglect this conversation.
How can one hate Meditation in Dialogue if we never possessed it? Perchance did we hear the Voice of the Masters, this Divine Voice that it is not like any other? As soon as we hear this Voice, our whole mind and being is there; one suffers and despairs when there is darkness.
So we must remove the veil that covers the soul, by conversing with the Mother and telling her what we never said to anyone.
We should give life to this Being whom we are going to speak to. As when we give this life, prayer is ours.
Otherwise, all this is a human talk that becomes heavy and unbearable as time goes by.
The same occurs with Affective Meditation.
Affective Meditation is: to strengthen one’s imagination, the mental mirror, through which those images that we want to observe are reflected.
An important thing: Many Sons practice Affective Meditation as if this meditation was a painting, and they fix their imagination on an image. This occurs because one comes back again to the human and usual side. An idea or an image is something panoramic and objective. But Affective Meditation wants us to reach the non-real and non-existent side; “it is something that cannot be translated into the back-drop of the world”. It is something created by the Imagination while it stays in us, but this Imagination ceases to be as soon as is reflected outside.
As we meditate, we want to awaken certain affection; so we need the active exercise of Affective Meditation. This exercise educates one’s soul to lift the sensitive plane to a higher spiritual plane.
This would be the first part of the exercise.
Picture: I see the mountain, and I remain captivated by its beauty. I see Kaor, the lake at my feet, and I feel my soul expanded as I see this.
This exercise tries to reproduce the same sensation as when I see it materially.
Another picture: The Divine Mother, her meek eyes, her holy mouth, and her Hands blessing, and I feel joy.
So, the usual side is translated into a psychical and imaginary, which is ever objective.
The second part: I perform this when this sensation or the picture is only focused on me: when I created my own image; this image is outside me.
Example: when you hear a song, and later at work you hear a choir that you did not recall, or you feel the Mother close to you. Then we gave life to this; it is outside oneself; now we are not this. It is a power in me, which repeats this in a mechanic way. This is Sensitive Meditation Now, you have this sensation, but this sensation passes. Example: a Sister attending a sick person with enthusiasm; and after this, we continue to attend; only a plain charity remains, and our acquired habit makes us not to feel anything. In front of us there is just the object that means the Name of God.
This occurs with children. We cannot to be with a continuous affection, because this is not possible. As soon as one has achieved the object by means of one’s sensation, then everything disappears, and the object remains. So, reality does not consist of repeating a picture to feel again a sensation. We have to repeat until we feel this sensation; but after you reached your aim, then only the plain object remains.
Sensation is no more than the first meditation grade; so, if you insist, finally you do not feel anything; it is difficult to practice this.
Image is the true Affective Meditation: you should not charge it with sensations; you must make it subjective (and not objective); it should have inner power.
Now, this image shall be objective if remains outside the potential imagination, Example: if you make a drawing, all can see it, but if I have an idea about this drawing but I do not trace it –affection strives for the image, but if I repress this impulse– then I stop the horse of my mind and impede its development, and this power remains in the soul. Then I achieved Affective Meditation. So, imagination stops being human, and our power remains in reserve in case someone needs it; we should not respond to our instinct, but to our will.
So, the Affective Meditation becomes negative: I do not see, I am not, I do not want. I stay here, it is all. Example; the Mother’s standard, with no form, just stays: it stays. If we allow sensibility to fly, then one’s sensibility is spent and nothing remains. We must keep it at all cost.
When we are greatly enthusiastic to serve Cafh, our lower senses “spend” the sensibility.
But the Affective Meditation has to lead us to other super-possession state.
Questions: How is my Affective Meditation? Do I “spend” this sensibility?
I do not want to “spend” what I do not feel, and I keep and hide it. I keep in me elements that give life to the picture. I keep joy and affection.
If I see a child and want to touch him, I keep this so that my nerves may not “spend” this affection. Affective Meditation keeps this affection for due time.
Later, if we act to, we keep our strength during the day.
If you spend joy, later you feel sad because you do not have it, but if you keep it, later you have joy.
Dryness indicates that the screw is not rightly fixed. Our will fixes “the screw” and keeps the power in our heart.
This weariness is a blessing; one has to drink it, to take care of it, not to yield, and not to let any sensitive thing or of the world escape, because this weariness shall give us the “spanner” to adjust, to remove and to fix energies of the heart. This weariness transforms one into an owner of our own heart.