Contemplation is the soul on its own plane looking out into its world and making contact with that world. This causes a pouring down into the brain, via the controlled mind, of soul knowledge and its energy produces illumination. This action energizes the centers, awakening them, as the consciousness shifts to a higher level of abstract thought, to the soul. Two stages follow: illumination, when the polarization shifts back into the mental body, allowing abstract idea to be turned into understanding; inspiration, the result of illumination, working out as service. The process becomes a pattern for ones life with the end result that the soul controls the threefold lower nature using it for service to humanity.CONCENTRATION
The meditation process begins with concentration and stilling the lower mind. Concentration is focusing the mind on an object and holding the mind steadily on that object. This first step is one of the most difficult stages in the meditation process until that control is achieved where the mind holds steady as intended. The concentration stage requires the meditator to follow several preliminary steps: sit with spine straight and relaxed without slumping or tenseness; breathing should be quiet and regular; visualize the personality aligned with the soul, providing a channel for soul energy. The next step is to use the will by holding the mind on a seed thought, or object, so its meaning is clear in the consciousness. In concentrating on the seed thought you are looking for the truth in the words held in thought. Concentration causes a deliberate turning off of the senses in order to vibrate with the soul and learn what the soul knows. It is finding the quality of the seed thought. The consciousness of an object is found when concentrating on the form through examination; the quality through discrimination; the purpose through inspiration; the cause or soul through identification. Every form of any kind has a soul or conscious principle behind it. Concentration is the work of the aspirant on the probationary path as he perfects it in order to dispel maya.
MEDITATION
Meditation is holding the mind in the light, aware of the Plan for humanity, bringing needed ideas into the consciousness. Meditation is responsible for all expansions of consciousness. The objective of the daily meditation is to train the mind and brain to vibrate in rhythm with the soul as it tries to communicate with its reflection. Meditation will create the following: a connection with soul, mind, and brain; a soul vibration; changes in the personality. Daily meditation produces skill in creating thoughtforms that are caused when the soul and personality meditate in unison and then may be used in service. Esoteric training stresses meditation for its ability to produce: a focused mind; the capacity to visualize; the ability to build thoughtforms; the meaning behind events. The process of meditation is creative work because each thoughtform is a work of creative thought. Meditation is communion with the soul who imposes its ideas upon the mind. During this communion the meditator becomes the soul losing itself in the soul's thoughts not his own. The more efficient one becomes in meditation he can become part of group meditation, a service to humanity, as he works together with other souls, serving as Hierarchy does. Good character and stable living patterns are basic essentials to beginning any form of meditation. Meditation soon becomes a way of life and discipline that makes daily living more worthwhile.
When are you meditating? One is meditating when the meditator or thinker can sense the abstract truth behind the seed thought. Then you seek to bring the truth down to the mental body, which is not easy to grasp. There is a struggle to comprehend what is there but gradually the truth becomes consciously known on the concrete level of the mental plane. When the truth is grasped then a thought-form can be built of the truth received. The disciple seeks to find a way to demonstrate the new truth in daily life. The disciple chooses with discrimination the seed thought or object he will meditate on, because through them he builds a ladder of experience that will enable him to eventually use no seed thought or object. As the mind assumes increasingly the meditative attitude of the soul, the brain becomes also increasingly subjugated to the mind, as the mind is to the soul. Thus is the lower man gradually identified with the spiritual man who is omniscient and omnipresent. The disciple on the path of discipleship perfects meditation in order to dispel glamour.
CONTEMPLATION
The third stage of Raja Yoga is contemplation where the shift in consciousness goes from the personality to the soul. It is willing oneself to express the love aspect and the wisdom aspect of the soul. This allows one to be the soul in its own world contemplating the world of meaning behind outer events. In the beginning this is a brief stage but it lengthens as one progresses. It is that identification of the personality with the knower, the soul within, and the two are one. When the mind is absorbed and unaware of separateness of the personal self, it is contemplating. The East calls this state samadhi. The description of contemplation is difficult to explain without having the experience. The difficulty is in the coordination of the mind to send the brain that which is contemplated that it may be useful to the disciple. Many stories have been told of how yogis in this state of contemplation were wounded yet continued meditating unaware of any physical discomfort. In contemplation there is no registration of time and space.
Centered in the soul aspect all sense of separateness of the lower personal self disappears and there is total identification with the soul of the thought that has been the object of meditation. This brings knowing oneness with all souls, subhuman, human, and superhuman, and that great sense of group consciousness.
Contemplation relates man to the plane of the soul. It is the spiritual man who contemplates on the world of causes that are the "things of God." By using the controlled instrument of mind the contemplation stage uses the sutratma to submit to the brain what the soul knows, sees and understands. The initiate on the path of initiation perfects contemplation in order to dispel illusion. This is the goal of the disciple. (Alice A Bailey)
