Once you’ve chanted a few times, mentally start recalling the mantra:
Om – Namah – Shivaya.
Om – Namah – Shivaya.
Om – Namah – Shivaya.
Here, the en-dash ‘–’ indicates a small pause.
If you experience restlessness while meditating, just slow down the recall. It could be:
O–m – Nam–ah – Shiv–aya.
O–m – Nam–ah – Shiv–aya.
O–m – Nam–ah – Shiv–aya.
You could slow it down even further by adding more pauses or longer pauses. For example:
O–m – Na—m–ah – Sh—iv–a—ya.
Or even longer:
O–——m–——Na———m–——ah – Sh———iv——–aya, and so on.
If you experience laziness or dullness, you could reduce the number of pauses and increase the pace of recall. This is the best way to maintain your concentration with mindfulness and alertness. It keeps the mind alive and focused.
Meditation on Formless
Some people have a natural disliking for forms and sounds. They find meditating on their breath pointless. Fortunately, there’s another practice in concentrative meditation where you can mediate on void, or on the formless as it’s called.
If you wish to meditate on the formless, there are two ways to do so. Here’s how to do it correctly:
Assume your yogic posture.
Deep breathe a few times to normalize your energies.
Simply close your eyes and remain thought free. That’s it.
Please note that being thought free is not the same as observing your thoughts. You must not observe or watch your thoughts while meditating on the formless. Instead, it is a practice where mind is directly looking at itself. Meditation on the formless is the hardest to do without guidance because there are a few subtle points which can only be demonstrated and not documented. A master is a must if you wish to champion this form.
On my own journey, it took me more than one thousand hours to just be able to recognize correctly the difference between loss of clarity (a subtle form of dullness where you feel thoughts have subsided) versus actual thoughtlessness. I remember the first time I started experiencing thoughtlessness with perfect awareness; it was such an unusual state of mind that I felt nauseated. Due to intense practice, my mind could remain thoughtless but my body thought something was going wrong within. This went on for more than 300 hours spread over 6 months. But once past that stage, being thoughtless was one the most beautiful states of mind. It was like the calm lake on a sunny day. You feel complete, rested, at once at peace. Thoughtlessness of the mind with awareness is a feeling like no other. You feel life bubbling inside you, you get in touch with your soul. It’s the audience falling pin-drop silence after a thunderous applause just before the beginning of a great opera performance.
The other form of meditation on the formless is called expansive meditation. In this you experience yourself merging in the supreme consciousness. Here’s how to do it right:
As always, sit comfortably in the yogic posture.
Deep breathe a few times.
Visualize a bright, effulgent light or a dark infinite universe. This is the expansive aspect in this meditation.
Gradually visualize that your body is disintegrating and merging in the vast, expansive, infinite universe.
When I experimented with this meditation and after about two thousand hours, I could not even walk or look at any object for any more than three minutes. It would feel that everything was merging in me or that I was merging in everything around me (there’s no difference whether the universe merges in you or you merge in the universe). It was a deep dive of bliss but the one that would not allow me to do anything else. It took me more than six months to learn how to assimilate this bliss and still carry on with the normal activities of my life. Like the other meditation on the formless, this too requires precise guidance from a champion meditator because success in this form depends on correctly detecting and removing many subtle flaws.
While doing concentrative meditation, you could do the visualization between your brows, on the tip of your nose or on your heart chakra. Meditating between the brows leads to greater sensations. Visualizing on your heart chakra brings greater calmness. You don’t have to literally turn your gaze on to those points, you just have to visualize there. Sometimes, I see people staring at their nose or between their brows. I find it hilarious. The degree of misconceptions in our world and how sometimes we accept things without verifying them. Such meditation is unnatural and it’s impossible to rise above your body consciousness if you are going to force your gaze by literally looking at the tip of your nose or between your brows.
Your posture should remain the standard yogic posture of meditation.
Now that we have gone past the most arduous meditation, let me walk you through the easier types.
Contemplative Meditation
There was a herdsman in a village who used to take his cattle out to the river every day. He would spend his day letting the cattle roam around, while he rested under the trees, ate his lunch, and then take them back in the evening. This was his life until he met a monk who had recently built his hut on the riverside. Every day, the cowherd saw this monk sitting still and doing nothing.
“What do you do sitting here all day?” he gathered his courage and questioned the monk one day.
“I meditate.”
“What’s meditation?”
“It’s a way to realize God.”
“Can I also meditate?” the herdsman asked innocently.
Out of compassion, the monk explained to him the various aspects of meditation and told him to meditate on light between his brows with mindfulness and alertness. He pointed him to a nearby cave where he could sit during the day and meditate without any interruptions. The herdsman listened with rapt attention. Two days later, he met the monk again.
“How did it go?” the monk asked.
“It was very difficult,” he said. “I couldn’t focus at all. I kept worrying about my home, cattle and I couldn’t see any light between my brows.”
The monk gave him a different method and told him to meditate on his breath and asked him to report back in three days’ time.
“Could you meditate this time?”
“I don’t know, sir, how to tell you this,” the cowherd said lowering his head, “but I just kept falling asleep. Listening to your breath is a wonderful way to fall asleep.”
The monk tried many methods but nothing worked. The mind of the cowherd kept wandering off. Finally, one day, the monk said to him, “Tell me what or who do you love the most?”
“The most?” he reconfirmed. “Yes, who do you love the most?”
“I have a beautiful bull. I call him Hira. He’s my heart. He’s got silky smooth down, wide chest, strong body and huge horns. He’s the king of my herd, I’m merely the caretaker.”
“Meditate on Hira then,” the monk replied and told him to just visualize his bull and report back in three days’ time again.
Three days later, however, the herdsman didn’t turn up. Two more days passed and then another two but the cowherd didn’t return. Worried, the monk went towards his cave and saw that all his cattle were sitting outside. He knocked on the door of the cave but no response came. He knocked again and a couple of times more.
“Who’s this?” a voice asked from the inside.
“Are you okay? How’s your meditation?” the monk asked him.