How to Install “I Am Conscious Energy” in Meditation: The First Step

Question

Didi, may I ask a question? — Yes.
When I meditate, I feel “I am the conscious energy, the soul.” But no matter how long I meditate, afterward that idea of God still comes back in. So how should this be done?

Answer

You mean: while meditating, how do we take “I am the conscious energy, the soul” and really install it within—take it inside?
Look, whatever work we do, the very first requirement is understanding. In any kind of meditation, whatever has been said—understand it again and again, many times. By “understand” I don’t mean memorizing; without understanding, no practice will happen properly.

So first we must understand what we mean when we say during meditation, “I am the conscious energy, the soul.”
What does that mean?

It means this: up to now—who knows for a thousand years, for who knows how long—we’ve been taking ourselves to be the body: “I am this body.” Now, if something is repeated even ten times, it goes into the subconscious and becomes a saṃskār (imprint). The thought “I am the body”—we haven’t repeated it ten times, we’ve repeated it ten million, a hundred million times. We repeat it daily. In every action our memory holds, “I am the body.” So this has become a deep imprint in the subconscious: “I am the body.” It’s become very deep.

Suppose you take a pen and draw a line on a page. If I now think, “I’ll erase it,” that’s easy because I drew it only once—I can rub it out. But if, on that same line, with the same refill and any color, I go over it fifty times, a hundred times, a hundred thousand times, then that “line” is no longer a line; it becomes a groove. And now if I try to erase that groove with a rubber, or scrape it out with a blade—it won’t erase. It’s become so deep it won’t easily go. I’ll need a special method.

In the same way, this line in my subconscious—“I am the body”—has become very deep. And now, if I quickly sit to meditate, close my eyes (or half-close, or even keep them open) and say, “I am a soul, not a body. I am a soul, not a body…” this process is not going to bring quick results.

So first we must understand: when I say “I am the conscious energy, the soul,” what is this “soul” I’m talking about?

That must be understood first. We keep saying “I am the soul, I am the soul”—but what is this soul? The word “soul” has become just a remembered word in our memory. You’ll have to set aside the word “soul,” and take up what it means. The meaning of “soul” is conscious energy (chaitanya shakti). So first, drop the word soul completely, and say: “I am conscious energy. I am conscious energy.”

Which conscious energy? The one by whose presence any body—whether an ant’s, a tree’s, an insect’s, or a human’s—becomes conscious. From plants and trees to humans—any body is enlivened only by this conscious energy.

So I should focus my meditation on conscious energy. For that, first look at the body: from head to toe, observe each limb. Say to the head, “Am I the conscious energy? Am I the head? Is conscious energy the head?” When you observe each outer limb—and then also observe the inner organs—you will discover for the first time: all the words I spoke—stomach, intestines, legs, lungs—everything I know inside my body, I named them one by one and saw that none of these is the conscious energy. What is conscious energy? That which animates matter, that which drives it.

So, having examined the whole body—each thing—I set them aside: “This is not me.” Then think: “If the whole body is not me, not conscious energy, then where is that conscious energy, and what is it like?”

For “where” and “what,” we’ll need a bit of support from the śāstras (scriptures). The scriptures say: from the middle of the brain, draw a vertical line downward; and from the bhūmadhya (the midpoint between the eyebrows), draw a horizontal line inward. Where these two lines meet is called the hṛd-guha—the “heart-cave,” or hṛdaya. There is one “heart” in the center of the chest that we call the physical heart, but here “hṛdaya” does not mean that heart. The place where the two lines meet is what the scriptures call hṛdaya; the Bhagavad Gita also uses the word hṛdaya for this.

Now, with meditation—by the power of attention, with the eyes of mind and intellect—we must repeatedly try to locate that point where the two lines meet. At first, we don’t find it. We keep trying again and again to take our attention there, to take the mind’s eye there, but we don’t get the point. It takes quite some time to find it. The day it is found, a good degree of grip begins. Why? Because once that point is found, whenever we take the mind’s eye there, we begin to feel a vibration—like when an eyelid sometimes twitches. (Since we aren’t face to face, I can’t show it by hand.) You’ll feel a vibration at that point—that’s the point. The scriptures say it is a point of light—a luminous point. That is what we have called conscious energy.

So: that point is conscious energy. Understand it like this: the conscious energy, present there, runs this whole 5–6 foot body. Sitting there—at the spot I described—it connects to the pituitary gland. The pituitary is a chemical gland. It picks up the conscious energy, and then transmits it through the whole body as consciousness. If my finger is moving, why is it moving? Because from that point of light there is a connection with the pituitary, and that consciousness reaches all the way to the tip of my finger—or to the lowest point of my foot—into every sheath, every cell of the body.

Now that I have found the place from which consciousness is transmitted, this much practice is what we must do in one go. Only then can we understand the next things—the next step of meditation comes after this. This must be done practically—not just in words. I can say the words; you might memorize them and repeat them—but it has to be done in practice.

Hmm.
Yes—this will be the first step.
Hmm.
When this happens—when it comes within your grip—we can talk about the second step. Not yet.
Alright?
It’s a small thing, but took this long to explain. It can get even longer. But since you’ve been practicing, you’ll need to do just this much, practically.