Meditation- Part 1

I sat to meditate after a tiring day. Just before sitting down in the meditative pose, I read a watsapp post by a friend titled- horror stories wrapped up in a line or two. Not a good idea if you are just about to meditate.

But I started anyway. I have learnt this Yoga routine that lasts for close to thirty minutes, but in recent times I prefer to just sit with my eyes closed. Which is what I did, breathing slowly, chin slightly upright, shoulders relaxed, wrists resting on my knees, index finger and thumb touching each other at the tip- forming a perfect circle, straight spine with a cushion gently holding it up.

It did not start well. For I saw a ghostly figure trying to disturb me from my rest. Perhaps a symptom of that watsapp message. I remembered the words of the Buddha, I read a few days ago. It went something like this (not quoting exactly)- it is important that men sit in caves and forests and try to collect their thoughts. They should try to arrange them and grapple with them till they find the truth.

Hmmm... Here I am sitting in a room, air-conditioned and comfortable. The door is not latched and my wife is somewhere downstairs- watching TV perhaps. I am safe and sound. There is no ghostly presence, and I can feel secure. Which is what I did...

My mind was at ease. Like 'Mike' my Alsatian dog who looks at me a certain way when he gazes into my eyes, his head slightly tilting one side, I too gazed at the universe that sat before me. My eyes still closed. I remembered how some sages are able to travel through time and are able to see what they were in their previous lifetimes. Before I knew it, I was in a similar journey myself.

I existed as sperm who swam to his mother's ovary. My mother a sperm too who swam from her father and to her mother's ovary... so was my father. I felt 'motile.' I split into two- one in Kerela and one in Tamilnadu. And later split again, one in India, one in Africa. The continents were one and some part of me migrated to the colder north and became a white skinned being. I was not sure what I was before all of this. I felt my self being in a hot and clouded place, a notan breath giving my form life... the breath itself existed on its own, the negative exhale and the positive inhale wrestling into oblivion.

I cannot not express what I felt beyond that moment for what I felt transcends language. Language does not exist at these boundaries... I can make an attempt in hindsight. I felt the little light in the room, pierce my skin and the universe was making an attempt to become one with me. Or was it the other way around? Was the body, that I exist in, trying to breach its boundaries. I could feel my molecules exploding at an atomic level.

The door clicks and my wife walks in... About ten minutes later I open my eyes. I had been meditating for close to an hour.