Beshara News
Prayer and Meditation
Written for a six-month intensive course at the Beshara School. From Addresses I, Beshara Publications
Extracts:
... It is not of prayer in the sense that it is a request, a plea, like that of the faithful housewife who rushes into the church half-dripping with laundry water down her arms quickly dried on her apron, that I am talking, though it has great merit. Nor am I talking of the ritual prayer, executed according to set precepts, half-understood but duly followed through faith mixed with fear, so that what is prescribed to God be given to God, and have done, exactly as rendering to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, though there is faith and fortitude involved in it.
What I would like to speak of is prayer offered to God for His grace and for gratification, both of the one who prays and the one who is prayed to, since all gratitude belongs finally to Him.
... One must understand ‘causing to exist’ as the sequel to the man standing before God in prayer, in the state of Theophany with and before God, who is present and revealing Himself by and to the form of the one who prays. Henri Corbin says: ‘this view of prayer takes the ground from under the feet of those utterly ignorant of the nature of the Theophanic Imagination as creation...’
Thus viewed in its reality, prayer becomes the highest and the purest form, the ultimate act, of the Divine Service or the Theophanic Vision.
There is a situation which all religions prescribe, though set aside for the select and not for the masses. This is meditation.
Many forms of meditation exist and some are not even called meditation and pass unnoticed. There may be as many kinds of meditation as there are people perhaps, since each can, and probably does, give it a personal twist. It is to avoid such happenings which may sometimes be inappropriate or even dangerous that those who ‘lead’ meditation prefer, quite rightly, certain rules and regulations which they impose, always allowing some elasticity of course, to be able, in case the need arises, to control the trend, if not the contents, of the meditation under way.
We have mentioned contents. By this we mean the focal thought or thoughts the meditators are given, or give themselves, as the point of concentration of the thought.
... This main condition of all meditation, this concentration, cannot be overstressed. Without it all kinds of thoughts, noises or even half-caught glimpses of things that interplay into the vision of even tightly shut eyes interfere with the successful progress of meditation. It is with deliberate intent that we use the word ‘progress’ with respect to meditation. Because, though in time a more immediate location can be achieved for the poise of this concentration, it is usually through a progression based on intensification of the process of concentration that one achieves the perfect poise. Otherwise, the Zen Buddhist meditation Master would have no need to give the helpful, though painful, whack on the shoulders of the novice.
No matter how the meditation progresses or how adroit the meditator grows with practice towards reaching the necessary concentration, whether the meditation takes a focal thought, is ‘led’ or is an open meditation, in short, whichever kind of meditation it is, or how adept the meditators are, there is one rule which must always be complied with. This is the direction or the dedication of the meditation. The direction taken or given is what in the ultimate will lead to the aim of the meditation.
As I have mentioned above, sometimes the meditator’s aim, the direction he will dedicate his meditation to, is the elimination of everything so as to leave him in the presence of that supreme quiet centre, that still-point which is the epicentre of all movement, of action or thought; the perfect void wherein resides the essential relationship of immanence and transcendence.
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Nothing really happens. The meditator has not moved or changed; the Essential Being has not reached down or moved or extended Itself anywhere. In that still-point they have ‘re-met’ without ever having separated from each other, they have re-cognised their unity.