A Powerful Meditation Practice

By Swami Nikhilananda


Warm-up; 3-5 minutes: Sit in a comfortable upright posture. One part at a time, feel your body parts from the feet to the head. Feel your feet, but in such a manner, that you don't do it from your head down, but rather are present in the feet and let the feet feel themselves. Then proceed to the lower legs, the upper legs, and so forth. Spend as much time each place as is needed to feel the presence there. When you done the head, then feel the entire body. Notice the body is breathing by itself. Don't interfere with the rhythm, simply observe it.

The meditation consists of three meditation methods you switch between. When one reaches a plateau, you switch to the other method, when that reaches a plateau, you switch back to one of the other two methods, and so forth. Change between the techniques. Maybe do one for three minutes, the next for ten, then the third for one minute, as works best. Remember the objective is to raise your spiritual energy (Shakti) more and more and merge with it.. When the Self reveals itself, let go of the practice and merge. Let go of the methods at the right time. The purpose of the meditation-method is not to train oneself to do it perfectly, but to generate a state within where the Self may reveal itself.

1. Body Breathing: Feel the skin all over the body while following your breath. It is as if the sense of touch all over the skin senses the skin itself. Now feel that on the in-breath you expand out through the skin. On the out breath simply let go. An other way of saying it is that on the in-breath you feel the Shakti growing in intensity and size. On the out-breath you let go of any control and duality and merge with Shakti in and around the body. As you progress, you will discover the sense of Shakti becomes more tangible than the limits of the body; you expand. Do this as long as Shakti gets stronger and you merge more and more.

2. Spine Breathing: When breathing in, feel you are breathing up the entire spine at once, pulling air from the perineum to the top of the scull. You can remember the word "shakti" as you breathe in. On the out breath imagine you are radiating energy, or love-bliss, in all directions from the brain. You can remember the word "om" as you breathe out. But these words are really not important, the important thing is to feel Shakti grow and to merge with Shakti. With a little practice the two phases will merge so that you on both the in-breath and out-breath sense the flow up the spine and the radiation from the brain. Do this as long as Shakti gets stronger and you merge more and more.

3. Inflow-Outflow (Void): Ignore the breath. Just sense love, bliss, Shakti, presence, Being, flow into you and radiate from you at the same time. It can be a little tricky imagining the two opposite directions at first, but once you get the knack of it, you will suddenly feel the double flow going on by itself and you may enter the void.

Merging in Love-Bliss; surrendering to the Self: When you experience being filled with Shakti or lovebliss, or Pure Being grabs you, then let go of your methods and merge with it. This is the goal of all practices and methods, so no matter what practice you are doing, if you are on the verge of transcending I-ness and merging, then let go of the method/practice and merge in lovebliss/Pure Being/Shakti.

Ending meditation: Don't just stop and get up when it is time to end meditation. First of all let go and see if you don't go deeper by letting go. Spend some time like this. Then open your eyes while staying in meditation. Or open and close your eyes a few times while trying to hold the meditative state. Then meditate a while with open eyes. Notice the difference in your state now compared to when you began meditating. Remember: we don't go out of meditation, because meditation is merging with the Self and we don't want to go out of the Self. We take the meditation into out daily life.




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