From Dharana to Dhyana

In yoga, meditation — Dhyana — is the seventh step, not the first. Just as you begin school in the first grade and gradually move up from grade to grade, yoga must be approached the same way. You have to start in the first grade, not jump straight to the seventh and skip all the stages in between. Yet many people are so eager to practice meditation that they jump straight to the seventh grade. They practice a technique of concentration or meditation, and although their practice feels satisfying, they remain entangled in the same conflicting mental patterns as before. And they go on treating Dhyana as a yogic bypass to spirituality.

From the yogic point of view, meditation cannot be taught or practiced. It is simply a state of experience, a state of mind. When you lie down to sleep at night, you are not aware of yourself, nor of the fact that you are sleeping. A complete disconnection occurs between you, time, space, and object. When you wake up, you are once again aware of yourself, your personality, your surroundings, and your world. Just as sleep or waking is a state of mind, meditation too is a state of mind. Meditation, therefore, cannot be practiced. The process of developing the meditative state begins with awareness and passes through the domain of concentration — Dharana.

When concentration becomes intense, when there are no distractions in the mind, and the object of concentration becomes integrated with you, then your concentration (Dharana) turns into Dhyana — meditation. Attaining concentration is the beginning of Dhyana.

Ultimately, dhyana is the identification with one's inner, transcendental nature — a nature that is not limited but expansive. Once concentration on the object of meditation has been attained, identification with that object follows naturally. If the object of meditation is a flower, in the state of dhyana you will become the flower. If the object of meditation is the sun, you will become the sun. If the object is a star, you will become the star.

This deep identification, in which one becomes that object, is meditation. This is why Vedanta philosophy teaches that when you meditate, you should believe that you are the higher Self — Aham Brahmasmi. If you hold this thought continuously and without break, the mind will suddenly turn over, and you will begin to experience that higher nature. Vedanta does not begin with the preparatory stages of meditation; it moves straight into meditation, identifying directly with the higher Self. People try to practice this, but they cannot sustain it, because they have not yet mastered the restless mind. This is why yoga says that meditation is a state of mind attained only after Dharana has been perfected.

When a single idea is held, it is called Ekagrata, one-pointedness. When more than one idea arises in the mind from time to time, it is called Vikshipta, distraction. When your mind does not hold onto a single idea at all, but keeps jumping from one idea to another and never returns to the first idea, that is called Kshipta. This will be the disease of your century. To heal a sick mind, and to improve the quality of one's thinking, feeling, intelligence, and memory, you will need to choose one object for yourself and practice concentration on it every day for at least ten minutes.

If you find it hard to concentrate your mind on a single object, do not fight yourself — take one more step back and practice Pranayama instead. The mind wanders like a wild dog or a monkey; you cannot control it. If you try to force control over it, you get a headache, and you become depressed or full of tension. At such times, you must try practicing Pranayama. Pranayama is a method by which, through breathing, you create specific effects in the brain.

Pranayama is a breathing technique that appears to have something to do with the lungs and the heart, but has more to do with the brain. The breath you take through the left nostril and the breath you take through the right nostril, on inhalation and exhalation, produce specific movements and vibrations in the brain. Breathing exercises are a kind of exercise you do for your brain, the same way you exercise your biceps and triceps. The muscles of the brain must be trained through pranayama.

In Dharana, at the outset, there are three things: the meditator, the object of meditation, and the method of meditation. At first you are aware of all three: I am, I am practicing a method, I have a goal. Slowly, as absorption in the method and the object of meditation intensifies, the meditator falls away. After a while, the method too is abandoned, and you are aware only of the goal, the object of meditation. You move from a trinity to a duality to a unity. Once the state of unity is reached, the object of meditation becomes the guiding truth of life, and eventually the state of samadhi is attained.

Meditation is experienced only during identification, when the object of meditation and the meditator become one. At first this stage lasts only a moment — perhaps five seconds, or five minutes. Then the mind returns to its normal pattern and behavior. On the next attempt, identification is sustained for a few more seconds or minutes. Then the mind again returns to its normal pattern. So in meditation, identification and separation continue to occur. When there is separation, there is pain. When there is identification, there is joy. At this point, meditation also becomes Bhakti, as you begin to feel the pain of separation and the joy of union.

– Piyush Mittal, Nirmala Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda

Based on the lectures and books of Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati, and on my own practice