Association, Contemplation, Concentration and Meditation?

Thinking… What is thinking?

The only way to partially answer this question is to look at ourselves and analyze our thinking. I will begin with the ordinary thinking. Ordinary everyday thinking is very chaotic. Thoughts are coming randomly without any particular pattern. They have nothing in common; they are only coming on our minds with association. If you really analyze the thoughts you will see that they can only be drawn from our past or they can be imaginative. The imaginative thoughts are the very same thoughts that are coming from the past but they are only colored, slightly changed for the purpose to fit the future events and that is truly impossible.

Ok than, what do I mean by association? Well when you are doing some activity, your mind is thinking something, since the thinking is continuous 24/7 process. From there Descartes have said “Cogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am” But that thinking is with associations.

For example: You are walking on the street, or you are in the classroom and through the window you are seeing some object or subject. Actually you don’t have to see anything. You will remember what you sow previously during the day or the day before. Let say you start to think about some dog that you sow and the association starts.

Than you are reminded of your own dog, how you used to play together. Than you remember or associate how one day your dog got lost and after a wile you found the dog at the neighbor’s house. Than you recall that there lived one beautiful girl. You met her back than. At this point a smile is spreading on your face, but you are not aware of that. You are in some kind of dream-like state. The process continues. You are reminded of the first date with that beautiful girl. Than you recall about some drunken boys that started a fight with you that night and the date turn out to be a disaster.

At this point your face is becoming sad but you are not aware of that. Than you will start to imagine how would life be if the date was perfect back than. After a while you are back with your thoughts about some particular boy from that night. You know that he died recently from cancer and you start to feel regret. At his funeral you met another girl and now she is your wife and on and on…

Remember all that started with the dog on the street. This associative thinking is consuming large part of our daily thought process and basically it is made of thoughts about the past or future. It is some kind of day dreaming and it is very similar to the actual night dreaming when we sleep. This is the simplest form of thinking and most of the people at the most of the time are thinking this way.

The second form of the thinking is contemplation. Contemplation basically is capability one to narrow the thoughts to a particular theme or a problem. Than the associative thinking stops and here the thoughts are aimed to particular object or subject or confided to a small area of concern.

For example you start to think about “Whether saving the endangered species in this world is truly necessary or not” and the thinking process is concerned only with this. You start to draw conclusions from your own understanding in a most possible logical way, trying to prove something or to solve the problem. Contemplation can be about anything: God, weather, some person, scientific matter etc. This form of thinking is not chaotic; it’s linear, going in a straight single line. However thoughts again are drawn from your own experiences from the past, or from books, persons or any other sources. Also you maybe applying skills through the thought process that you acquired in the past, therefore you are yet concerned with what you already know trying to discover something new through contemplation.

The third way is concentration and this way is the way of the Yoga. In this form of thinking you thoughts are concerned with one and only with one spot. Through training you can concentrate your thoughts on a single spot by looking at it or by thinking of it. Yogis are trained to do this. When you are making some asana (posture in Yoga) you are required to focus and think only on some particular part of your body.

For example just to think about your nose and nothing else. Or you can concentrate and focus yourself only on some bodily process, like breathing. Just be aware of how the air is entering and coming out from your nose. This looks very simple but it’s very difficult in practice. Once when you have a glimpse of success than it’s becoming very easy and it looks like it is natural to you. Over time with practice you can easily concentrate your self on the objects or subjects around you or you can focus yourself on to you.

Your awareness will sharpen and you will look the surrounding in a very different way, with a different quality. This practice will become your life and you will change yourself totally, forever. After a while, since this feeling of concentration will become intrinsic for you, without effort you will be able to concentrate or be aware of almost everything around you and now that will bring relaxation and new insight to you. That is why the Yogis are very calmed, relaxed with a stone dead face; and very healthy also.

The final way is meditation. I’m not saying here “the final way of thinking” because the meditation is “not thinking at all”. I think that meditation is the most misunderstood or misinterpreted concept of all from the western societies. All Eastern concepts are misinterpreted in some way by the Westerners because these concepts are pregnant with lots of meanings or with a whole description and they have to be translated with one word. Even they are not properly described because the very eastern mind is totally different from the western one. The Western mind is rooted on logic and the Eastern on meditation. You can not describe meditation with logic.

Anyhow you can not force meditation on to you; you can only become meditative when you are really prepared. Meditation is basically transcending the thoughts or the mind itself. Many people are making mistake when they are saying that you will sit in a posture and meditate by imagining nice places or people that will bring pleasant feelings to you. Or when they say you will sit and force yourself not to think. This is absurd.

I say that to meditate you need not to force yourself on to anything. Meditation can only come to you when you pass, practice and fully realize the previous three ways of thinking. After a certain time (depends on the person) you will sit in a posture that is the most comfortable for you (but not for sleeping) and you will let it go. Do not force any thoughts; do not judge the thoughts that will come on your mind as good or bad, just be witness of them like you are witness of the clouds on the sky. This also sounds very absurd, because how you will witness your thoughts? You can only witness them with another thought.

But don’t worry; if the time is ripe you will witness them as separate from you or your mind and from there the transcending of the mind starts. Than you will start to realize that there are gaps between thoughts and that those gaps are consisted of nothing. Those gaps will become bigger and bigger and you will finally “explode” and find yourself in a “no-thought”, “no-mind” state. You can also call this state “nervous breakdown”. You will realize that you are not mind but vast infinite consciousness. There will be no fear, no death, no ego, no nothing…

After that, of course, you can utilize any thinking you want but you will know something that is grater than you, something that is unique.