This essay is an enlarged representation of a lecture held by the author in the autumn of 1981 in Arlesheim, Switzerland. It is an interpretation and realization of the grammatical meaning of the Latin word meditari, to ponder, reflect. The Latin word is a depondent, a verb with a passive form and active meaning. Depondents are forms of expression with great linguistic wisdom. For they state that action and experience, doing and suffering can interpenetrate and interchange. In this sense, the Latin word morior, I die, is characteristically a depondent. Even prior to an exact motivation it can readily be seen that a deepened reflection is a performance, undergoing a progressively enriching fulfillment, thus possessing a passive impetus. That and in which way doing and suffering are interpenetrated in the practice of meditation is to be characterized here, what significance this has for the meditants and in which sense the practice of meditation is part of the reality to which we belong, is to be developed in the following pages.
The essential determination of what meditation is as carried out in this publication, which is at the same time an introduction to the practice of mediation, claims to deserve the title of modernity for the following reasons. It turns to the mindset of members of the present western civilization, thus to the alertness and self-consciousness that has arisen through the worldwide influence of modern natural science of the last few centuries. It demonstrates furthermore that underneath the surface of this mindset a subconscious substratum is spread out and active, the consciousness-raising of which already signifies the entrance to the practice of meditation. Therewith the evidence is put forward that the current natural scientifically (meaning materialistically) imbued state of consciousness is based on a potentially meditative underground and that without the latter would not be possible. Hereby however is at the same time expressed that everyone who, according to his education and basic attitude, is part of the European cultural sphere can at any time find in him- or herself the point of departure and motivation for the practice of meditation. And finally, the proclaimed contemporaneity aspired to here includes the grasping of the meaning of meditation that corresponds to an understanding of reality, which can be gained with the means of a natural scientifically orientated self-controlled mode of cognition.
Guided by this orientation, this publication will accommodate a currently widespread meditative need. It will however at the same time distance itself from the numerous meditative practices of Eastern or also occidental mystical provenance, which are very often uncritically adopted or nurtured within a no longer contemporary tradition. Also there where (occasionally in the most grotesque and dubious fashion) it is attempted to adapt these traditional forms of meditation to modern needs, there is (as far as the author knows) nowhere a clear convergence with the quite original approach, which in what follows shall in connection to the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner be worked out.
Before the following indication concerning the nature and practice of modern meditation shall be given, a few comments about its negative characteristic will be made. What the meditation meant here is not, can be recognized by informing oneself about a few meditative practices still committed to past traditions that have (partly with extraordinary effect) advanced into the western world.
Alexandra David-Neel, who informed herself for over twenty years about the technique and character of Tibetan meditation, writes in her book Mysticism and Magic in Tibet[1]: “The Lama’s have especially emphasized this doctrine of the Non-I or Non-Ego by dividing the third article of their dogma[2] into two sub-concepts. In the first stage of understanding, they say, one perceives that one’s own person is a turmoil of permanently changing structures, one believes however to be able to still behold the “I” here and there in the environment. When one attains a higher understanding, one realizes that no form of existence presents an “I”.[3] ”The Tibetans have broadened this formula to even stronger emphasize its absolute, ultimate character. They say, ‘In no individual person lives an ego, no separate things possess an ego.”[4] The perfection of the last, highest thought is silence […] In this silence lies absolute non-violence: Nirvana’”[5]. This extinction of individualization and the process of individualization (which according to the following deliberations permeate all of reality and gives it its meaning) contrasts in the strongest conceivable way to the path of meditation represented here in connection with Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science. The latter is based on the insight that the evolution of the world is a single tremendous process of individualization and that the meaning of human existence is grounded in the transition from an individualization brought about by external forces to self-individualization. Modern meditation starts with this passage.
Quite similar to David-Neel is what Gerta Ital expresses. As the “first woman from the western world” to visit a Zen-Buddhist monastery in Kobe (Japan) she has in an impressive way reported about her experiences that she gathered from the teaching of one of the greatest living Zen masters.[6] The goal of the Zen-Buddhist path of meditation that originated from Mahajana-Buddhism is according to her “the redemption from successive reincarnations by merging into the Universal One.”[7] This path of meditation “signifies the successive detachment from everything that is, the detachment from everything imaginable, the detachment from everything, that the meditant believes to ‘possess’ in terms of individual attributes, however excellent they may be. The destruction must therefore in the end be so radical that one’s own nothingness has become absolute, that the last barrier has thereby fallen and the breakthrough into the All-embracing One, as it were something natural, can occur. This occurrence is connected with a state of happiness that earthly words cannot describe. And then the human being is free – and this freedom is something absolute” (Satori).[8] This meditatively gained freedom is thus liberation from inhibitions (in the same way that this liberation according to Zen-Buddhism represents every type of individualization) and attainable by shredding these inhibitions, - but not that highest form of individuation attainable through that modern meditative culture which depicts a completely new, nowhere pre-given consciousness and reality content that is only realizable by the human being himself. The before-mentioned detachment from representativeness is indeed also a modern meditative exercise, which, however, as in Zen-Buddhism, leads not to de-individualization, but to super-representativeness, to becoming aware of living concepts (archetypes, universals). This act of awareness is not the path to irresponsible freedom from all independence, but towards freedom as the highest responsibility for one’s own higher being and its eternal worthiness in the way that it is certain to intuitive evidence. The experiences of absolute nothingness in one’s own being and the act of complete emptying, discharging one’s consciousness also belong (as will be developed in what follows) to the experiences gained on the modern path of meditation. However, what for modern psychic-spiritual development is only a stage of a much farther extended path of experience, only a partial content of far and wide embracing experience, is made here into an absolute in terms of the highest goal.
Entirely in accordance with the foregoing is what D.T. Suzuki puts forward: “The experience of Satori is thus certainly marked by irrationality, inexplicability and immediacy.”[9] “When the Nambursu (‘thinking-about-the-Buddha’) has transformed itself to be able to express a Dharani (magic formula) without any conscious indication to its meaning in the literary or devotional sense of the word, then the psychological effect of it will be to create a state of unconsciousness, in which the streams of thoughts and feelings are wiped away. This is, morally speaking, a state of innocence since there is no difference here between good and evil; and in this way the Jodo instructors can establish that the Nambutsu washes away all the sins that someone during his life in numerous past periods has accumulated.”[10] The transition through successive reincarnations is therefore not considered, such as in the spiritual life of Middle Europe as a path through continuously progressing individuation (Lessing, I.H. Fichte), but to the contrary as one of detachment from individualness. “The worst enemy of the Zen experience […] is the intellect, which consists of and insists on the separation of subject and object.”[11] The spiritual-scientific intuition is also super-subjective and super-objective experience, a becoming aware of revelationary events that fulfill each other in the exchange-of-being. However, the intuitive grasp is not something that was already present before the intuition in the same way and therein asserting itself through the detachment from everything that is different from the revelation of its being. On the contrary, the modern intuitive grasp is indeed complete union-of-being (and in so far detachment from everything of a subjective nature), but also the generation of a completely new mode-of-being that does not exist before and outside the intuition. The intuitive unity-of-being is therefore for the grasping state of consciousness as well as for the grasped consciousness-content the transition to a new dimension of existence. This is mere humanness, which however is not pre-given and which can only be reached and achieved as an effective transcendence of the pre-intuitive mode-of-being with regard to both segments of the unifying process. The deponent meditari is valid for both consciousness segments that merge in intuition into a unity.
At the end of his book, Suzuki quotes a letter from the Zen master Hakuin, of which the following passage reads as follows: “In this supreme moment (of Zen experience) Nirvana and Samsara are, like yesterday's dream, and the ocean of worlds in the great Chiliocosmos appears like a water balloon, and even all holy men from the past, present and future are like flashes of lightning. This is the great moment of Satori that is known as the instance for ho ti i hsia (the exclamation ‘Ho!’)”.[12] In accordance therewith: “The Buddha goes through the four stages of contemplation of the realm of pure form and the four Samapatti of the realm of formlessness. He advances forward to the height of existence, the serenity of cessation. All eight stages he again goes through backwards and places himself once more in the stages of contemplation. From the latter, a karmic neutral place (skr. avyäkrta), he enters Nirvana. The earth quakes, stars fall down, light of the rainbow and music fill all four heavenly directions.”[13] The Sufi mysticism uses the expression for this: “fana fi’l fana”- disappearing into the disappearance.
Whether one defines, however, the supreme experience and the “final reality” as absolute emptiness or utmost fullness is with regard to the character and goal of the modern path of meditation not the decisive point. For in both cases it is a matter of an experience (determined by something prior to it), which is indeed prepared and attained by the path of meditation, but which completely absorbs the meditant leaving him with no proper contribution of himself to the realm of the absolute. But for the path of meditation, which is the object of the following presentation, this is already itself and not only to begin with its goal (albeit with the highest significance), it is the authentic fulfillment, thus not the experience but rather the exercise – which to be sure is not possible without an experience. The decisive novelty that through this treatise is not only to be made understandable but also practicable, is to provide access to a mode of meditation understood to be the highest manifestation of individuation. Since this becomes at the same time apparent as the meaning of the world and man, it is tantamount to the sense of the meaning of meditation. Only under the accompaniment of such a deeper understanding is a cognitive form of meditation possible, not one only accompanied by the blind (and in principle egoistic) will to perfection. The significance of modern meditating lies simply not in the experience but in the exercise, in executing the highest form of individuation. The main characteristic of modern meditation is not reception, but execution and attaining and indeed not only in its preparation, but also and above all in its result. The hereby emerging, completely new consciousness-content is at the same time a completely new cosmic content originating from free human execution. Upon this are based the value and meaning of meditation as well as its social substance, not as the enrichment of a single human being but of all humanity. This type of meditative individuation is not practicable without an understanding of its nature, but is also distinguished by the fact that it is completely shone through by knowledge.
The main difference therefore between modern, spiritual-scientific meditation and the older, eastern one is that it, contrary to the latter, does not give up individual consciousness, but that it preserves and enhances it. Its essential distinguishable feature is rather that it attains its most profound significance not as an experience but as an exercise and that therein lies its understandability, its meaning and cognitive content, which is as it were its aggregate state. When therefore E.J. Jungclausen (OSB)[14] characterizes meditation in the liturgy as follows: “This final reality, experienced as holy presence, can also be understood as utmost fullness” and to “this basic form of all religious experience of the holy God in the Bible up to Nirvana” ascribes an “eminently numinous quality”[15] that it shares with the words of Buddha, then he is in so far right that he does not describe the modern form of meditation. To understand the latter as the manifestation and fulfillment of human freedom is the task that this treatise has set itself. Its objective is to explain the emergence of modern meditation from human freedom as spiritual activity and to interpret it through the use of epistemological means. Only in this way can also meditation be secluded from being lessened by its neighbors with their striving for perfection.
From the numerous (partly grotesque) attempts by representatives of Eastern meditative practices to render them understandable to western minds, only two will be put forward. Paramahansa Yogananda’s publication Meditations for Self-Realization[16] appeared in the publishing company of the Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles. In the colophon, the following note is added: “The Self-Realization Fellowship is a non-profit organization without a sectarian character which in the year 1920 was founded by Paramahansa Yogananda in America. Truth seekers interested in the teaching of Paramahansa Yogananda can turn for a free prospect to the Self-Realization Fellowship.”
The publication contains prayers and meditations, in which Christian (or rather those understood as such) and eastern notions are mixed together – mostly with indications concerning bodily posture and concentration on certain organic spheres. One finds here an “explanation about the concepts ‘Om’ and ‘Christ consciousness', 'Meditations on Christ', 'Christmas meditations', a meditation with the title “The Transfiguration of Christ” and others. The publication is a guide to happiness that expressly recommends itself as such. “Oh, quiet divine laughter, shine on my face and shine through my soul. I want to become a happiness millionaire and after your coins strive for eternal new bliss. With them, I can satisfy all bodily and psychic needs.”[17
Similar naive notions appealing to the coveted realms of the soul concerning practices to achieve perfection that lead back to the paradisiacal state of pre-historic times cover a whole segment of the literature, e.g. Thorwald Dethlefsen Destiny as Chance: “Love wants to overcome the polarity of contradictions and lead man back to that unity of consciousness from which he once fell because of the paradisaical sin.”[18]
The other example for an approach by the eastern to the western mindset and the attempt to gain an understanding of it, is Sri Aurobindo,[19] who gained world fame (even though that has faded again today). Romain Rolland has greeted him enthusiastically: “He is the greatest interpreter of India today, who has realized the most perfect synthesis that the genius of West and East can achieve at all.” That his basic attitude as well is not one of exercising freedom as spiritual activity but an experiential-desirous one, is attested to by statements like the following: “One can only attain a greater perfection by the entry of a higher power taking control of the complete actions of the human being. The second stage of this Yoga consists of laying all actions of nature persistently into the hands of this greater power, to let its influence, occupancy and activity take the place of personal efforts, until God, to whom we aspire to, becomes the immediate Lord of Yoga and He Himself produces the total spiritual and ideational transformation of our being.”[20] Granted, the personality of God (in the sense of a superpersonality) is emphasized (and here Aurobindo endeavors to recognize western understanding) – without however recognizing the problem that arises here. Because the notion of a superpersonality is confronted with the question, whether such a consciousness-content (at least by approximation) is attainable for a consciousness that does not through a free thinking will and action out of knowledge attains an intuitive vision of itself – whether thus superpersonality for an experience that has not itself achieved at least the preliminary stages of a supersubjective and superobjective effort in one’s own being, can in its form be anything else but something of a sub-personality. On this question neither the formulations like the following that approach Western modes of thinking give any answer: “God is in any case Himself a concrete and not an abstract being or a state of pure and spiritless infinity. The original and universal existence is ‘He’. God is a Person above all persons, the home and fatherland of all souls.”[21] “The essence of all spiritual knowledge is an inner conscious self-awareness. Every action of man must be a self-formulating by himself of this self-awareness.”[22] In a letter to a couple of Sadhakas I have emphasized his novelty (the ‘new Yoga’ represented by Aurobindo) in order to explain clearly that a simple repetition of the goal and overall idea of the old Yoga does not suffice in my eyes, that I am placing something to be attained before them that was never attained before and clearly grasped as a goal, even though that objective is a natural but nevertheless still hidden result of all earlier spiritual efforts.”[23] This and many other statements by Aurobindo seem to clearly depart from the eastern traditions, for he emphasizes after all himself: “Because there is indeed no essential difference between the spiritual life in the East and the West.”[24] But that the viewpoint and meditative practice represented by him bear nevertheless no resemblance to the cognitive mode and practice developed in the subsequent pages, is borne out by the statements such as the following: “Since the power of consciousness is the universal creatrix, the nature of a given world will depend on what kind of self-expression this consciousness gives in the world. Accordingly, for each individual the way it sees or represents the world will depend on the mindset or the imprint that consciousness has assumed in it.”[25] Such a point of view clarifies the differences that are to be recognized in sharp contours. Aurobindo’s designation of the universal creative mode of consciousness is (under the premise of a spiritual world outlook) only just applicable to that state of consciousness that precedes the meditative consciousness as is meant in the following treatise. Pre-meditative consciousness (as are generally all modes of existence not shaped by meditative self-formation) is indeed an expression of universal consciousness. The modern meditative consciousness meant here is on the other hand an imprinting of individuality into the universal consciousness. Aurobindo, therefore, designates in his “New” Yoga an essentially old mindset and in the meditative mode of experience represented by him an - in relation to spiritual scientific meditation – pre-meditative state, which in a real advancement in consciousness must be overcome. For further clarification, the following texts are cited: “The origin of the overmind is not able to completely eliminate the ignorance in the earthly evolution.”[26] “The ultimate meaning of the course of our life on the one hand, and the goals of the world on the other are beyond our knowledge.”[27] “The root forces of human life, its most intimate origins lie deep beneath us, are irrational, they lie far above, are super-rational.”[28] It is not to be denied that the word “super-rational” can be classified in a sensible context. The latter can in a contemporary fashion, however, only be grasped through the further development of the current object-orientated vigilant level of consciousness.
This short overview did by no means endeavor to present an extensive and radical appraisal of the varieties of the eastern state of consciousness and their corresponding meditative techniques – and even less of their current wide-spread contortions and degeneration. Merely a few examples will be put forward that today are (directly or as frequently modified typical mindsets) influential in the Western world, from which an anti-thesis will be sketched in the following treatise. In order that it in its particularity be all the more emphasized by its antinomy, such views and efforts will be contrasted to it in the following characterization and aspirations that are most of all suited to hinder a modern development of consciousness.
The now following deliberations lay claim to being understandable for an unbiased and willing attentive mind. For they are unbiased and therefore appeal only to that what every reader today can observe in his own consciousness and in connection to what is observed can assess through his thinking. They make however no concession to the complacency common today that wants to be effortlessly provided with pre-fabricated facts. Instead, the presentation has been consciously made in such a way that it (above all what concerns its overview) requires for those wishing to become acquainted with it a certain amount of effort. For that is part of the nature of the path of meditation sketched here, which does not promise any picking of ripe fruits outside one’s own soul, but rather attains its essential meaning from incessant effort.
H e r b e r t W i t z e n m a n n
Garmisch-Partenkirche, Easter 1982
[1] The German title of this
book is Der Weg zur Erleuchtung, Geheimlehren und Zeremonien in Tibet (The
Way to Enlightenment, Secret Doctrines and Ceremonies in Tibet), of which it is
not known whether this is the title referred to in this essay. There is an
incomplete PDF file of Mysticism and Magic in
Tibet in which only the line on p. 23, “No ego exists in the person,
nor in anything" could be found. As a consequence the quotations will be
translated from the German version with the footnotes pertaining to that
volume.
[2] “Kanzak dag med pa;
tschos dag med pa”: No thing is the “I”.
[3] Loc.cit. 1960, 107
[4] Loc.cit. 217
[5] Loc.cit., 220
[6] In her books The
Master, the Monks and I – A Western Woman’s Experience of Zen and A
Way to Satori.
[7] In Wege der
Meditation heute (Paths of Meditation Today), published by Ursula von
Mangoldt, 1970, 51; it is not known whether an English title exists.
[8] Loc.cit. 52
[9] Zen Koan as a Means
of Attaining Enlightenment. The above quote is translated from p. 46 from
the German edition of 1957 entitled Der Weg zur Erleuchtung as
will also be the others.
[10] Loc.cit. 203
[11] Loc.cit., 111
[12] Loc. lit., 223
[13] Mark Tatz and Jody
Kent, Rebirth: Tibetan Game of Liberation, 1978. Quoted from the German
translation Durch Wiedergeburt zur Befreiung, Das
tibetische Orakelspiel, 1955.
[14] Ordinis Sancti Benedicti
(of the order of St Benedict)
[15] Wege der Meditation
heute 1973. English title Paths of Meditation Today,
not known whether a translation exists.
[16] Quoted from the German
translation, 3rd ed. 1971
[17] Loc. lit., 74
[18] Loc. lit., quoted from
the German translation Schicksal als Chance, 1981, 267. From
Catholic quarters as well attempts are made to unite Christian and eastern
notions and thus to legitimize the need for depersonalization, e.g. H. M.
Enomiy-Lasalle (SJ=Society of Jesus) Zen meditation for Christians.
[19] Aurobindo is quoted from
O. Wolff Sri Aurobindo, 1967 (Not translated.)
[20] Loc. lit., 87
[21] Loc. lit., 94
[22] Loc. lit., 100
[23] Loc. lit.,101
[24] Loc. lit., 128
[25] Loc. lit., 125
[26] Loc. lit., 130
[27] Loc,.lit., 136
[28] Loc.
lit., 142