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Guruji's Column

Blessings from the Parampara. Of late, during the programmes, many people ask me as to why one should take to meditation? What’s wrong with the present life style? With so many advancements, especially, in communication and medicine, does meditation stand a chance at all? It is an interesting question which I would like to address.

Man needs both medication and meditation because both come from the root ‘medi’ which means ‘to attend’. Medication attends to our physical problems and meditation to the emotional, psychological and mental problems. Medication has a very, very limited role to playing our lives. I am not ignoring its importance, its utility and its widespread use. What I mean to say is that it can diagnose and treat only the symptoms and not the cause. So long as the cause remains in us, the problems (effects) cannot be suppressed for long; it is common sense. So one has to deal directly with the cause and not with the effects only. If you learn to get hold of the cause, you can influence and control the effects. Wisdom lies here.

One many wonder how come meditation has any relevance in the conduct of our day-to-day affairs and to our problems and physical ailments. Take it from me, it has. It works like this. Many of our physical ailments are psycho-somatic in nature. So if you want to come out of them, you have to treat the cause, viz., the mind. If the mind is disciplined through the techniques of Pranayama, Japa and meditation, one can experience significant change in the quality of life. It is the abstract things that are within us-such as our feelings, emotions, attitudes etc. –that cause problem to us. Medication is useless here. It is only MEDITATION that plays a significant role here. If we see carefully, its meditation alone that makes life complete. If you want to be rich in life, to enjoy life, to understand life, then take to meditation and see for yourself the results.

Also medication will not be effective without meditation. Why so? Because it is so. That’s why. You ask any physician that if he advocates the same medicine, for the same problem, with equal amount of potency to two person, whose body constituents are exactly the same, will the recovery also be the same? The answer will be a definite “NO”. This means that our physical body has a direct relation with the mind. Now the question comes as to what we actually do in mediation and how it is different and higher as compared to medication. A compassionate nurse attends to the patient without any partiality whether he is a Muslim, Hindu or Christian. A nurse’s entire focus will be only on treating the disease and nothing else. In the same manner, during meditation, we start nursing all our feelings, sentiments, attitudes etc., with a view to refine them and bring the best out of ourselves and share the completeness that is within us with our near and dear ones. If you vow to do meditations regularly with this insight, let me assure that you regain your purity, innocence and wisdom. Meditation guarantees your communication with the Centre within you.

I would like to reiterate the assurance given to me by my Parampara: You do your meditation regularly; we’ll organize your entire life. Till today, I’m fulfilling my promise to the Parampara and so do they. Hope you will also continue in the same way as we do.

In the service of Parampara,
Sri Pattabhiram