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Meditation
for Calming the Senses
By Swami Kriyananda,
from Rays
of the One Light
Once your mind
is calm, try meditating on the image of a flowing brook. Let its
crystal waters sweep away your remaining restless thoughts. If any
stray impression enters your mind, toss it lightly into the flowing
waters, and watch it dance swiftly away.
As your mind
becomes still, practice calming the senses also, one by one:
Concentrate
on the sense of sight. Withdraw the energy from your eyes. Imagine
a mist descending over your outward vision, releasing your attention
for contemplation of the divine light within. Remember, it is because
of people's attachment to the sights of this world that they fail
to behold the heavenly scenes within.
Next, concentrate
on the sense of hearing. Withdraw your energy from the eardrums
and from the thought of earthly sounds. Feel those sounds merging
into the rushing water of the brook, dissolving themselves in its
steady murmur.
Gradually let
your concentration shift to the sounds you hear in your inner ear-preferably,
so yogis say, in the right ear. Imagine the voice of infinity speaking
to you through the inner sounds.
Next, concentrate
on the sense of touch. Feel that the surface of your body is not
your skin, but an aura of light surrounding your body. Expand this
aura. Feel as if, with every outgoing breath, you were gently inflating
a shining balloon of radiant light.
Now, reach out
in all directions around you with finger-rays of astral light. Touch,
feel, and explore the greater reality of the Spirit around you.
Try to sense behind everything the subtle presence of divine consciousness.
Finally, concentrate
on the senses of taste and smell. Withdraw your energy from the
tongue—from the palate—from the nostrils. Feel as though
you were drinking great draughts of peace and happiness from a crystal
chalice at a fountain of eternity.
Offer up the
energy of your senses to God. Ask Him to fill you with His bliss.
The deeper you
go in meditation, the more your energy will withdraw naturally from
the outer world of the senses. It will awaken you to the infinitely
more wonderful world of the Spirit within.
When you find
your mind becoming freed of restless thoughts, mentally build a
dam across the brook that you first visualized. Watch the waters
slowly rising, until they become a large lake.
Gaze calmly
into the mirror surface of this lake. See reflected in its water
the blue sky. Expand your consciousness into the overarching heavens.
Feel, in infinite space beyond our earth's atmosphere, the vast
calmness of Spirit.
Stilling the
senses is one of the best ways to rise above body-consciousness.
Stilling the mind and the emotions is the way to enter the kingdom
of Spirit.
Also see:
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