Let me resume from my basic premise about meditaion- It is all about revesing the default process of information/ knoeledge flowing from conscious to subconscious.
In that light, the first question comes to mind, how can one do that!
Before answering that, we have to remember that Subconscious mind is many time more stronger than the conscious one. So, the most ovisous way to reverse this process is to make conscious mind stronger. Now, how can we do that!
Mind works in the same way as the physical body does. when we want to make any part of the body stronger, we try to use that body part more and more, and over the time, the muscles of that part becomes developed and stronger. We all see that with body builders. We have to do the same in the case of conscious mind too.
The very simple and perhaps the only way to do this is to focus the conscious mind on one thing. That thing can be anything, a mantra, A picture, a thought, a sound, light or any thing else. The object of concentration does not matter much. From my personal experience i can say that without any hesitation. Even the image of one’s girlfriend or boyfriend or even a naked pron star pic would fetch the same result. That may look absurd to some people but it is true.
It is the same as one is doing cardio erxecise. As we know that ther are many types of cardio exercises like jogging, running, skipping, running srairs, Burpees etc. They all are differnt types of exercises but their impact on the body is the same. They all burn fat and makes our heart stronger. The same is with the concentration. Irrespective of the focussed object, all kind on concentration give the same result. The diffference comes only after certain stages, and we will discuss that later to avoid any confusion.
Technically speaking, the focussed object may be anyting, but for practical reasons, it is easier and more fruitful not to choose not anying as an object which is being seen by the eyes. The reason for that is our default mechanism of us being conscious. For a normal person, all the time he/she is awake, conscious mind pays the most attention to what we see with the eyes. The experiences of all other organs comes later. This is a natural phenomenon. During all awaken times, the consciousness resides in the eyes all the time, unless it is required to pay attention to other organs because of some important resons. So, if we keep our eyes remain open during mediation/concentration, it would npt help much because in that case it would be very difficult to concentrate the conscious mind on one thing. Mind will again and again come back to what we are seeing with the eyes. So, the only remedy is to keep the eyes closed and find somethng else to focus upon.
May of us may themselvs have experienced in their lives or seen others closing their eyes while thinking seriously on anything. That is quite natural. And, reason is precisely what i stated above, the default procees of the conscious mind is paying attention to the eyes all the time. When we think seriously on anything, we force our conscious mind to focus exclisively on that thing. And, in order to do that it has to withdraw its focus from eyes and thus they close.
To understand this, i would like to put this into compuer terminology. Think that the conscious mind has A certain RAM( Ramdom access memory), Say 3 GB and, 2 GB from this is deployed all the time to eyes and rest 1 GB takes care of the rest of the body. But, when we force it to concentrate intensly and exclusively on one thing, that 1 GB spread all over the body becomes insuffcient and that forces mind to withdraw permanent deployed 2GB RAm on eyes and use it to that issue. And, the only way for the mind to withdraw its focus from the eyes is to close them because as long as they remain open, the mind would have no choice but to focus on what is seen by the eyes.
I think that that would be enough for one post.
Next post would come in some days.
with love,
sanjay