Breath Meditation.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
Dear Deepak Sir,
what you explained "The mantra doesn’t actually take you deeper into your self, it just sets up the initial conditions so that the natural tendency of the mind to know itself can take over." is very useful (this whole response was very useful to whoever asked this question). That is why your teachings work so well for me because only when I understand things as clearly and deeply as explained by you here, I progress. My question is, how is mantra meditation better than breath meditation? Years ago I had tried mantra meditation but breath meditation worked better for me and after 9 years of breath meditation, I have progressed very well – I can slip in the gap between breath at will. I can resolve whatever thought is bothering me in no time and get centred very quickly and more importantly. Recently I have started experiencing witness very deeply (like that quote of Upanishad about 2 birds), and therefore to my students, I teach breath meditation only (not mantra meditation). However, I have read in your books that mantra meditation takes one in the silence more deeply than breath meditation. Could you please explain? and what does this getting more deeply in silence mean anyway? Does this mean mind gets outbound less frequently or something else?
Response:
As long as you are getting good results from your breath meditation, that’s what really matters. I don’t recall writing that mantra meditation takes you more deeply into silence. When the mind is ready to transcend thought, it will go as deeply as the body and past conditioning will allow at that moment, regardless of whether you are doing mantra meditation or breath awareness meditation. What mantra meditation offers is a vehice for a smooth ride into silence. The enlightened Vedic seers of the past cognized the primordial sounds of Nature that are most conducive to let the quieting mind slip into the gap gradually with the more refined and abstract sound forms of the mantra.
Love,
Deepak
Om
At its most basic level, everything in the universe is sound or vibration. -Deepak