What is the science behind healing through meditation?
There are a few basic Vedic truths that you need to understand in order to appreciate the science of healing through meditation.
First truth – The human body (pindaanda) is the microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic universe (brahmaanda). Both are made up of the same 5 elements – earth, eater, fire, air and ether. The human body is the most evolved bio-organism on planet earth which is capable of enjoying the best things in both the inner world and outer world.
Second truth – If the Cosmos (brahmaanda) is reflecting as it is in the inner space (pindaanda), this is the state of enlightenment, non-duality (advaita). Then the 3 things – what you want to see, what you need to see and seeing the highest reality become the one reality.
Third truth – Our human body heals when we infuse silence and put the mind in restful awareness. The macrocosm is in a state of eternal silence, if we are able to get back to this original silence of a meditative state without the disturbances of the mind, the body naturally heals by itself.
Unfortunately, as a civilization, we have been taught by society to move away from this meditative state in the process of growing up. No wonder, more and more people are constantly living in confusion and are unconscious. We always look for solutions from outside because we have forgotten that we are the source of everything and we can enjoy outside peace and joy only if we can create peace and joy within us. It is the inner world that determines the outer world. In a fast-paced and materialistic society, peace and joy in life are no longer a luxury; they have become a survival need for us to live in this increasingly complex world. Unless humanity gets back to its original meditative state, we will continue to experience diseases, disorders and suffering.
Now, let us understand the effects of meditation on our brain and behavioural patterns.
Do you know that our brain is so powerful that it can store more information than the world’s largest library?! Each thought is an independent neuron in our brain, recording and making the information available to us whenever we want. When an individual experiences the world, sometimes some parts of his brain label some experiences as pain or suffering, that part then gets dumped into the archive memory by his own decision because he connects that information as suffering. For example, if he puts a great amount of stress on a particular subject in his examination period, he will forget that subject within 6 months because so much suffering he associates with examination and the subject. He just dumps the information to the irretrievable archive due to fear. Same way for greed experiences, if we experience something pleasurable, thinking it was the objects that created the attachment of pleasure instead of the awareness, we start running behind the objects again and again to relive the pleasure.
Through our unconscious mind, we create misrepresentation, manipulation and morphing inside our brain system, this process is called Maya (illusion). The Maya then develops a perceptual gap which leads us to more illusions and suffering. When this delusory illusion happens, the Cosmic reality does not reflect as it is in our system.
To get humanity out of illusion, the ancient masters, sages, rishis and mystics develop different techniques of meditation (Dhyana). In particular, there is a meditation technique called Mahamantra which originated from Tibetan Buddhism tradition using intense humming. After 21 minutes of intense humming, this technique is able to put all neurons in the brain to restful awareness such that the Maya just stopped for a few seconds. Meditation puts us back to our presence and we experience the macrocosm reflection as it is. We experience the healing effect of silence of the Cosmos.
In the philosophical tradition of Vedanta; which uses self enquiry to understand the ultimate nature of reality, before any meditation, one is required to do contemplation (Manana) which involves the process of questioning “What am I? Who am I? What are the memories I dump into archive?” With this self enquiry, the first thing you will notice is that the identity you carry is a mixture of the body-mind. The moment we bring intense awareness to this process of self-enquiry, then whatever knowledge (shastra pramana) from spiritual books will create an understanding in us. If you are fortunate enough to have a living master’s experience (upta pramana), almost 50% of the identity you carry will drop away. If you are able to renounce 100% of your identity, you experience the ultimate silence (Mouna).
The sacred secret in Vedanta tradition is whenever the mind gets tired in the manana (contemplation) process, this is the time to do dhyana (meditation). After that, the manana will be happening itself in our system the whole day! Manana then becomes a habit or lifestyle.
That is the reason why all masters in the Vedic tradition emphasize the importance of being in restful awareness the whole day, this awareness automatically leads one to manana and then dhyana and finally to mouna – the ultimate experience.
Let us revive the science of healing through meditation once again. Namaste 🙂