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TULSĪPRAJNA
not creative due to unstability but are creative inspite of that. Rather creativity in their case works like a Psycho-therapy to overcome their psychological disturbance. Van Gagh, for example, danced on the razoredge of sanity and insanity all his life. Whenever the urge to paint arose, in him the insanity subsided. Meditation may discourage profane and desecrated type of creativity which takes place at a very low psychic level of person's complexes, mostly sexual in nature. Meditation should encourage higher order creativity. At least Orme-Johnson et al (1977) and MacCallum (1974) do say, as a result of experimentation with meditation, that meditation increases creativity.
Nothing but dangerous mediumistic psychism or neurotic dissociation of personality can result from the practice of meditation without proper qualifications. Forcible opening of a bud will not produce a blossom and it is only when the disciple is "Yogarudh", is firmly established in Path, that the serenity of meditation can be a means of further advance. Literature is replete with warnings that those who seek after strange experiences or psychic powers and other cheap things had for better leave the whole thing alone or they will wreck their lives, and perhaps those of other as well.
F
Practice of Meditation-Preliminaries
Gita gives some teachings about the technique to be pursued. Essentially the method consists of gaining such control over the mind-processes that they can be stilled at will, thus enabling the consciousness to perceive the Truth like a calm lake reflecting the eternal stars above.
The process varies with each disciple and must be learned from the Guru. It is true that there are books which apparently give full instructions about the practice, but their apparent fullness is misleading. It is easier to become an artist by the study of a manual of oil-paining than to become a Yogi by the study of books on meditation whether those books were written yesterday or whether they were written five thousand years ago. (Sri Krishan Prem)
The few notes which are given below are intended merely to help the reader and by no means as a sufficient guide to practise.
The first necessity is a quiet place in which he may practise meditation undisturbed by friends and visitors, whose presence would be apt to agitate, the disciple's mind with thoughts of what so-and-so is thinking of him. The place should be pure, that is to say that, it should be free from any features likely to give rise to aesthetic irritation or distraction. Certain natural surroundings exert a calming influence on the mind.
January-March 1993
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