Tim Boyd –India, USA
International President Tim Boyd
Meditation is a foundational element of esoteric teachings for anyone consciously engaged in the spiritual life. I feel fortunate to have stumbled into it untrained. Fortunate because I was not carrying the baggage of ideas of others to shape my experience. My introduction to meditation took place over an extended experience of weeks. Only later did I come to know it as meditation. Much like some of the great teachers have tried to communicate, the actual state of meditation is not dependent on posture, whether the body is moving or still, the place, or the level of activity. Certainly at an early stage all of these conditions have their effect, but they seem to be unrelated to the actual experience. If Krishna’s advice to Arjuna is true, then even in the midst of a war, while fighting for one’s life, the meditative state is possible.
In my early acquaintance with it I found it was more easily experienced sitting or walking, but it could also be maintained riding a bus, or having a conversation. I tried to test it, and see if I could maintain the state while playing basketball. Engaged in such a high level of physical exertion, I could not do it. Although I am certain that there are those for whom the still mind remains unaffected in all conditions, at that time I was not one of them.
One of the things about the experience of meditation that becomes clear is that, however we describe it, it involves stilling the waves of thought; quieting our involvement in generating and interacting with thoughts.
During his life Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK) made many comments about what meditation is and is not. One of the things he said was that to understand the immeasurable requires an extraordinary mind, quiet, and still. So, the idea of meditation as a movement into the immeasurable, which then leads to understanding, requires stillness and quiet. He also spoke very strongly against meditation as a method or practice. He was opposed to the idea that regimentation and conditioning are effective in the process of freeing the mind. To him practicing meditation makes us mechanical. It is not engaged in out of freedom, but out of discipline.
JK was an absolutist, in the sense that he was uncompromising in speaking from the level of consciousness that he inhabited. From that perspective, practice may not be necessary, but still it is not irrelevant. Though practice itself is not the state of meditation or being free, it does allow for those moments of insight that are freeing. Practicing music does not make us a musician. Whether it is music or meditation, it is only at the point where we transition from mere practice and fully commit that we experience its depths.
Advice on meditation tends to fall into two categories: (1) a positive, affirmative approach, and (2) a negative approach. In the “Diagram of Meditation” attributed to H. P. Blavatsky (HPB) she presents these two poles of meditative practice and combines them into one. In that diagram she outlines the two categories as Acquisitions — the positive activity of acquiring states of consciousness, and Deprivations — the negation of limiting conditions of consciousness. The fulfillment of the Acquisitions results in a consciousness that acknowledges “I am all space and time”. There are no confinements or limitations.
The Deprivations involve the refusal to think of the reality of meetings and separations, possessions, personality, the distinction of friend and foe, and sensation.. The fulfillment of this stage results in the realization that “I am without attributes” — the total negation of everything that we think of as a self. “No thing”, nothing remains to define one’s identity.
In Buddhism there is focus on two meditative activities. One activates the mind. The other quiets the mind. There is “analytical” meditation in which we engage the mind in the analysis of high ideas about the divine, the nature of ourselves, or the path that leads toward freedom. This is the activity of jñana yoga, or yoga of knowledge. As the mind becomes active in this process, moments occur when we reach the pinnacle of a line of thought and can go no further. The mind has led us to a height where the analytical function no longer applies. It is at this point that concentrated meditation becomes our tool.
As such experiences arise during this analytical phase, something like a void appears. In those moments the mind becomes quiet, because at that point we have done all that we can do. There is nothing more our thinking can add. It has led us to a space that can only be filled by a sustained absence of activity — concentrated meditation.
Oftentimes the bhakti practice of yoga has been described as self-emptying through devotion, love, and regard for the divine. As everything is poured out in love and devotion toward the divine, it empties one of one’s self. In that space, what Krishnamurti described as the immeasurable finds root in our consciousness. In the Bible there is a description of a way to meditate or pray. It advises that when you meditate “go into your private (or inner) room, close the door and turn to your Father who is in secret”. We enter the inner room of our consciousness, described in some traditions as the “cave of the heart”, and turn to the Father, what Krishna describes as the “Inner ruler immortal”. H. P. Blavatsky describes the Father in this way, “The ‘Father in heaven’, that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us, in our heart and spiritual consciousness”. In the “private room” of our consciousness, with the door of the senses closed to the outer world we link ourselves with the “Father”.
There was an advice given by HPB. In response to the question, “What is meditation?” She responded that meditation is “The inexpressible longing of the inner man for the infinite”. As an advice it is not something on which one could build a practice, but it is something spoken by someone who had the profound experience of what meditation is. It is an indication of both what meditation is and is not. The longing that fuels the process cannot be expressed in any way. The inexpressible longing is also directed toward another negation, the Infinite.
Longing is the deep desire to remove a sense of separation. We cannot long for something we know nothing about. In stories like the Ramayana and Mahabharata we find symbolic stories of kings in exile. Great beings who have ruled over kingdoms, who now, find themselves separated from their home, and engaged in the journey and struggle to return. The Inner Self longs for the return to its original state of wholeness, and all that might mean. Meditation is one of the roads homeward.
In Sufi poetry they speak about the separation between the lover and the beloved and the intensely felt need to reunite. The inexpressible longing of the inner Self, does not refer to the desires of the personality. It is not that we want better times and nicer things. We all know what longing is, but this is the longing of the inner Self. The core consciousness, the higher Self of each of us finds itself separated from its highest, truest expression, in a state of confinement within all the limitations the personality places on its expression. It longs for the return of its inherent kingship, free from confinement and limitation. Even though in our normal day-to-day living, it tends to be covered over, subdued, even denied. This is the longing that moves us toward a spiritual path, that moves us to try to experience states of quiet. It moves us to create conditions where the mind no longer disrupts our connection with our source.
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This article was also published in The Theosophist, VOL. 146 NO. 7 APRIL 2025
The Theosophist is the official organ of the International President, founded by H. P. Blavatsky on 1 Oct. 1879.
To read the APRIL 2025 issue click HERE