We thirst for the infinite, and happiness is growth. Why "as you think, so you become," and why meditation teaches the mind to think in an elevated way.
A human being carries within a thirst for the infinite; it is both our blessing and our curse. Thanks to this thirst a person can reach and come to know ever new levels of happiness, or, staying on one level for a long time, become disillusioned with life and lose all sense of meaning.
Ask yourself: "How much do I want?" And when you have answered, ask: "What next?" Following this chain, you will find that you cannot stay long on any level until you reach the infinite.
Human consciousness is not satisfied with anything limited. And so a person can feel happiness only if they have reached the infinite, or have set out on the path toward the infinite, that is, are constantly winning small local victories in which they truly grow.
The physical sphere is limited, and material goods on their own can satisfy a person only for a while. In career growth, in becoming a professional, in getting rich and so on, at a later stage of development the psychic element becomes far more attractive than the physical. What matters are the inner victories, not the fruits of those victories. The psychic sphere is much wider, and so it can give a person more happiness than the physical world. For a true scientist or artist, a prize, recognition or a cash reward is worth incomparably less than the discovery itself, the process that took place within the mind, the knowing.
The spiritual sphere has no limits at all; it lies beyond mind, time and space. That is why a person values most of all the victories won on this level, and experiences them subjectively as the most meaningful and happy flashes of life. And so happiness is the result of satisfying our need for growth. Growth is movement from imperfection to perfection, from crudeness to subtlety, from bondage to freedom.
Impermanence is the only permanent thing in the world
Everything is in motion and everything changes; no object can keep the status quo. At every moment every object is either declining or developing. The force of chaos is always fighting evolution. Life is the force that leads objects from imperfection to perfection. Life is a particular kind of effort, a struggle to maintain order, a striving to evolve and rise to a new level.
If no effort is made, chaos wins and decline sets in. This happens, for example, in metal structures, in concrete, in rocks, in the human body, and the same happens in the mind. We can safely conclude that effort is needed even to keep the level already reached. Without such effort the psychic sphere falls into decline. You can see this in people who are aging inwardly: in their case the inner sense of happiness quickly dwindles. Meditation is a special effort in the psychic and spiritual spheres.
Our whole psyche (intellect, emotions, intuition), together with its physical component (the endocrine glands, the brain, the nervous system), is plastic. These changes follow a very simple law: "As you think, so you become."
In the psychic sphere this is an unshakable law, just like gravity or thermodynamics in physics. The mind takes on the characteristics of the object of its thought. When we think, we create images in our imagination; these images are created within our own mind, stored in memory, leave an emotional imprint, affect our mood, form new patterns in the brain, influence the release of hormones, and tune the body in a very particular way. Think of a lemon, and at once your mouth begins to water. This means that a thought sets off a cascade of changes in the physical body.
As a result of these changes the human body becomes either a machine of happiness or a machine of suffering, and the same changes take place in the psyche.
It often happens that doctors come to resemble their patients, spouses each other, actors the roles they live their way into. You only have to look around to find a great many examples of this fundamental law of the mind: "As you think, so you become." Clearly, we need to learn to choose the object of our thought so that the changes it brings about add to our happiness. And that means weaning the mind from thinking about crude objects, which push us back down to earlier steps of evolution, and teaching it to think in an elevated way.
Meditation is the practice of concentrated thinking; in it we try to teach the mind to think in an elevated way. The object of meditation is something psycho-spiritual or even purely spiritual. Having learned to think this way in meditation, the mind goes on thinking this way in everyday life too. Once you have realized absolute beauty while sitting in meditation, you begin to notice it in daily life, and that fills life with real happiness.
The spiritual sphere is beyond the reach of the mind; it cannot be described. Any attempt to describe the spiritual sphere is meaningless; no description can convey the truth. That is why, when Gautama Buddha was asked whether God exists, he was silent, and when the questioner rephrased it and asked whether the Buddha's silence meant that God does NOT exist, the Buddha was silent again.
The psycho-spiritual sphere is where spiritual reality is reflected in our mind. Peace, infinite love, joy: all these belong to the psycho-spiritual level. But without such an experience it is very hard for a person to understand and feel these things. They lie beyond our physical and psychic life, and so they cannot be created in the mind at will. To touch spiritual reality, to make the inner movement from imperfection to perfection, a very special spiritual method is needed, and that method is meditation. And meditation needs a special instrument that lets the mind be filled with spiritual experience. That instrument is the A sound or set of sounds that, repeated with its meaning in mind, carries the mind toward the Infinite., but that is for another article, in which we will talk about why mantra meditation is preferable.
