Chapter 6
True Wealth
from the book Breakthrough Consciousness
by Sharon Janis
I do not know what I may appear to the world,
but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding a prettier shell or a smoother pebble than ordinary,
whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-Isaac Newton
Why is it important for us to expand our consciousness? Because without opening to an expanded space of knowledge, without this humility, which gives awareness of our true greatness even as it removes our egocentricity -- without all this, we lose the great wealth that is our birthright.
We often use the word wealth to denote monetary success, but wealth comes in so many different forms. An Indian prayer, the Lakshmi Stotram, entreats the goddess of abundance to shower blessings on us. Different kinds of wealth are listed in the prayer: intelligence, worldly enjoyment, success, worldly position, prosperity, liberation, and most importantly according to the text, freedom from the great enemy known as ego.
People say, "Health is the greatest wealth," "A good mind is paramount," "Having loving relationships is what is really important." However, there is another wealth that only a few attain. You might call them multi-millionaires of higher knowledge, seekers of truth. This wealth is the experience of expanded consciousness, of the inner peace and serenity that comes from a higher awareness. This is the true wealth, the source of all good things in life.
From this ability or talent, all abilities and talents flow. This prosperity cannot be measured or hoarded. It can be pursued but not forced. There are various paths through which one can get there, but all involve stepping back, opening up, and embracing that knowledge, the insights, the heightened awareness as it arises. One way to encourage the development of inner wealth is to focus our attention so completely that the mind becomes like a laser beam, able to cut through the veil that keeps us from our own higher levels of awareness. This is one of the purposes behind the practice of meditation.
While meditating, it is common to use the mind to focus on a mantra or statement of one or a few words, chosen for their meaning as well as the vibrations carried by each sound or syllable of the mantra. This mantra can be spoken silently in the mind once as you breathe in slowly, and again as you breathe out, once as you breathe in, and again as you breathe out. If you don't have a specific mantra, then just focus on the sound and movement of the breath, or repeat the syllable Om along with each inhalation and exhalation.
The benefits of internal mantra repetition are multi-faceted, and often subtle. On a neurophysiological level, we can imagine that creative internal auditory centers of the brain are activated in a new way by this process. Often we have a drone of internal dialogue floating around with us, whether "heard" consciously or not. In this case, we are actively creating a sound with our minds. However, unlike our usual experience of creating sounds, we are not vocalizing anything. We are not listening to any actual external auditory sound. Yet, we can hear this mantra anyway. Perhaps it brings a bit of the dream state into the waking state. In dreams, we are used to hearing and even seeing, smelling, tasting and touching all kinds of things that are not based on external perception.
The practice of repeating a sound, or mantra, also has a strong effect on our mental mechanism. To sit quietly, continuously repeating a phrase takes a great deal of steady mental focus. When we have an intention such as repeating the mantra, and proceed to carry out that intention, especially while quieting the normal static of daily cacophony through meditation, then we assume our rightful place as the driver of this vehicle, the conductor behind the orchestra of experience, the consciousness behind the thought. Practicing this kind of focus on a regular basis undoubtedly strengthens our mental control. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people find their work and other activities improving after they begin the practice of meditation.
Then there are the more subtle vibrational effects of internal mantra repetition. Most of us have discovered how relaxing and energizing the act of singing, or even shouting can be. Especially if the shouting is for your favorite team, and not because you are angry with someone. Sound is so powerful, and it runs through us all the time. Sound is vibration. Vibration is energy. And energy is the force of consciousness that creates inner and outer worlds of experience. Even if our voice does not utter any sound when we repeat the mantra mentally, still the sound is created through our imagination. The subtle sound still triggers all the corresponding vibrations in our subtle and even physical systems.
This focus of repeating the mantra with the breath, also tends to equalize the breath, so that the in-breath is approximately the same length and depth as the out-breath. Automatically the mind begins to put conscious energy and attention toward the normally unconscious practice of breathing. Also, the quality of each breath is improved and deepened. Thus, the body receives more oxygen with each breath.
Along with the physical nutrients, we also inhale subtle energies from the air, and distribute them more completely throughout the physical and subtle body system. This increased flow of oxygen and the increased subtle energy that comes with it create some of the healing effects many people experience from meditation. The entire energy field of the body is increased, often tangibly. More on this later.
While meditating, one sits still, preferably with legs crossed and the thumb and index finger touching. This circulates the energy within the subtle system, like a closed circuit. Much of our subtle energy leaves our system through the feet and hands. The crossed legs help to keep the energy moving back up through the system, and the thumb touching finger position, called a mudra in Sanskrit (meaning that which gives joy), keeps in some of the energy that would normally flow out of our hands -- circulating it back inward and bathing the body system in the light of our own life force.
The closed eyes have a steady, unchanging field -- either a dark field if one is in a dark room, or a bright one if one is in a bright place. This helps to shift the brain into what is called a hypnogogic state. Years ago I coordinated an experiment in Remote Viewing, at the University of Michigan. As a part of our research on whether latent psychic abilities could be documented in "regular people," we decided to put some of the subjects into a hypnogogic, trance-like state, to see if that would open them up to being more psychically perceptive.
To create a hypnogogic state in our subjects, we used the Ganzfeld technique. Ping pong balls were cut in half and placed over each eye, with a steady light source aimed toward the eyes. In this way, the subjects' eyes, whether open or closed, are unable to escape the steady, unchanging input of the visual receptors. Our visual systems are made for movement, so when the same few neurons are firing repeatedly to represent this blank visual field, our internal, image-making neurons behind the visual receptors can begin to fire. This completely constant field of vision can create a unique situation in the brain and mind, called the hypnogogic state.
This hypnogogic state is the threshold of the subconscious mind, the same state we experience right at the transition between waking and sleep states. Images that are expressed by the subconscious mind during this state can vary from non-descript fancies to an ability to see a situation through a more objective point of view, to new understandings and translations of movements or tendencies of the patterns of your life, to amazing spiritual visions and awareness. In many ways, the experiences that take place in this hypnogogic space can bring growth and healing to one's life.
While inducing the hypnogogic state during our experiments, we would also have a whirring fan in the room to generate a constant non-descript hum of white noise. This creates a similar situation to the steady, unchanging visual field created by the ping-pong balls over the eyes. In the case of sitting quietly for meditation, silence itself provides the steady, non-descript input.
In the meditative or hypnogogic state, our tendency toward movement and activity, along with the senses of sound and vision are all kept silent. We are saving ourselves a whole lot of energy here right off the bat. Remember how many steps must happen for the process of vision to take place -- from the image's projection on our retina, through a series of translations and re-translations of the pattern of retinal firing generated by the image, into the meaning behind and stored information about the particular image, as well as historical memories, feelings, or past impressions that may relate to the image. Such processes go on all day long, no matter what we do or where we go.
These sensory functions take up a lot of our mental, physical and subtle energies. Therefore, when we use the dim switch of meditation to turn them down to a minimum, without falling into the sleep state, we have a great deal of extra energy at our disposal. Because our focus is inward, that energy is directed in a synchronized way into our own soul, our own essence, our inner self.
By turning our energies within, we have created a fertile field for inner knowledge. By minimizing the outward flow of energy through our senses, actions, and mind, all that saved energy can move in new directions, can carry us deeper into the inner universe, the universe of which the outer world is a mere reflection.
We find ourselves carried in blissful waves of knowledge and insight, each more fascinating than the next. We are raised high above our petty concerns and desires. We become the great wise being we have always searched for.
Of course, every meditation session eventually ends. Sometimes we come out of this symphony of universal fullness that was playing through us, without even remembering the depth and profundity of the journey. Our energies return to their usual outward flow, and there can be quite a letdown as we find ourselves unable to grasp the knowledge we were just floating in moments ago. We know this space was more real than the illusory experience of this world, but we cannot quite get it back. However, when this practice of turning within is practiced regularly, when the inner spaces are touched more often, it is possible to integrate more of that reality we experience inside with the "realistic" experience of the world through our senses and mind.
Each new experience we have creates microscopic neuronal growth in the brain. Most of our experiences from adulthood on fall more or less within the basic structure of neuronal circuitry that has been developed in the first 15 or so years of life. But when we come along and start bursting all this energy forth into all these uncharted inner spaces of holistic understanding, we create within our brain systems a new spurt of neuronal growth. Just as a person does a specific exercise to develop a previously unused muscle group in the body, we start to develop our previously unused brain potential through meditation. The blood flow increases to new areas of the brain. Electrical impulses flash across dormant synaptic connections. New pathways are formed. We undergo a new awakening, a rebirth, if you will, as our worldview becomes dramatically elevated and transformed. This is conscious evolution.
Therefore, although we do come out of this elevated space and return to the daily grind, we have tilled the field of inner awareness. We have made it a little bit easier to return there. Along with that, we have begun to build little bridges between our normal daily consciousness and this higher consciousness. As our practice goes on, we can flow back and forth between our various states of consciousness more easily. Our wealth of subconscious knowledge can enter our daily lives and guide our actions with intuition, clarity, insight, and faith.
That higher space was always there -- is always there. You can think of it in religious terms, or you can think of it in scientific terms. Even if you do not think of it at all, yet it is there, not thinking of itself through you.
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