© 2023 Francisco Javier Santos Castilla
© 2023 Urantia Association of Spain
¶ 1. What does The Urantia Book tell us about meditation?
UB 91:7.1 The contact of the mortal mind with its indwelling Adjuster, although frequently favored by devout meditation, is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted, loving service in the unselfish ministry of one’s fellows.
UB 91:7.2 Jesus frequently took the apostles with him for short periods to engage in meditation and prayer, but generally he kept them in contact with and in service to the multitudes.
UB 100:1.8 The habits that favor religious growth include:
- the cultivated sensitivity towards divine values,
- the recognition of religious life in others,
- reflective meditation on cosmic meanings,
- the problem-loving solution,
- sharing spiritual life with others,
- avoiding selfishness,
- refuse to presume divine mercy,
- living as if in the presence of God.
UB 100:5.10 The healthiest attitude of spiritual meditation is to be found in thoughtful worship and prayer of thanksgiving.
UB 160:3.1 From a human standpoint, it is a matter of meditation and rest combined. Meditation brings the mind into contact with the spirit.
UB 195:6.7 One of the great problems of modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.
¶ 2. The role of meditation
What do we conclude from the above paragraphs? Meditation is seen as a tool for connecting the mind with the spirit, for intimate worship with God, with the Father, and in some way for connecting with the indwelling Adjuster or Mystery Monitor.
According to the book, meditation should be one of the habits that favor religious growth, among others.
But they don’t tell us how to meditate or ways to do it.
If we’re not told, we must let ourselves be guided by our own insight and the knowledge we’ve acquired throughout our experience searching for the truth, and in many cases, we’ve become interested in meditation. This is my case.
¶ 3. Characteristics of meditation
The current meaning of meditation is almost synonymous with contemplation. These terms used to mean more distant things, but now they have converged into similar meanings.
¶ 3.1. According to Wikipedia
Meditation is usually characterized by having some of these features:
- A state of concentration on the reality of the present moment.
- A state experienced when the mind dissolves and is free from its own thoughts.
- A concentration in which attention is freed from its common activity and is focused on God (typical of theistic religions).
- A focusing of the mind on a single object of perception, such as breathing or the constant recitation of a word or a succession of words (an example of constant and rhythmic recitation of words is the recitation of mantras in yoga, the most famous of the mantran or mantras is the one pronounced “Om”).
He also tells us that meditation is part of many religions, from Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. From more elaborate formulas to simple religious worshipful contemplation.
We can conclude that meditation is a mixture of relaxation, concentration and introspection.
There is no fixed or rigid criterion for interpreting what meditation is or how to do it. Many scholars or practitioners of Buddhist or Hindu religions understand meditation as similar to not thinking, emptying the mind. Other schools of thought understand that emptying the mind is a prelude to visualization techniques or mulling over thoughts or mental visualizations.
If we draw a horizontal axis between not thinking, at one end, and turning things over in our heads, at the other end, each researcher, practitioner, or scholar finds their sweet spot on that axis. There is no good or right answer. Each extreme or intermediate point serves a purpose, and each person can evolve from a phase in life where they focus on relaxing and emptying the mind, to others where they build rich, detailed mental worlds with meaning (symbolized) for the person practicing it.
Below we will explore each aspect of meditation to understand them.
¶ 4. Relaxation
As we can see, relaxation is a fundamental part of the meditation process. Why? Because the goal is basically to separate the mind from the everyday material plane to a mental plane free from worldly constraints and distractions.
The first aspect of relaxation is body posture.
The body position should be one in which the body is at rest without forcing any part of it, so that the mind can somehow disconnect from the signals that reach it from the material body, in order to focus on its mental or spiritual self.
According to some authors, body positions can be:
- Walking.
- On a chair.
- In the lotus position with supports.
- In virasana, sitting on a vertical zafu.
- Lying on the floor.
Each person chooses the position they like best, the one that relaxes them the most, and the one that feels most comfortable. And it doesn’t hurt to experiment, try some of the positions listed here, and analyze which one they like best or feels best for them in each moment and situation.
Posture is the first step to relaxation, but we must understand that it is the brain, the mind, that needs to relax, so we must take actions to relax.
¶ 4.1. Breathing
Breathing is the next aspect to take into account in order to achieve a high level of relaxation.
This should be intense, diaphragmatic, reaching the lungs, taking large breaths through the nose, and releasing the air little by little, so that the body feels comfortable, without forcing anything.
The goal of all this is to lower the heart rate, and focusing on breathing helps lower the heart rate, lower blood pressure, and focus attention on the inside, rather than the outside.
There are many breathing techniques inherited from other religions or philosophical schools. Some aim to hyperventilate the body, others use noisy breathing to focus the mind’s attention on breathing. Other practitioners prefer to make sounds that aid concentration, such as mantras or phonic chanting.
All of this falls within the relaxation phase, so the techniques or practices can be very diverse.
¶ 4.2. Light ball relaxation or body scan
This technique is designed to deepen the relaxation that has begun with the comfortable posture and focusing on breathing. This technique is used to initiate and train in the next phase, creative visualization.
This technique is based on creating a mental image of the body and imagining a ball of light that extends from the extremities to the head and throughout the space it passes, thus feeling a degree of relaxation beyond that which one feels in the current state. The key is to try to sense this ball of light and how relaxation actually occurs and feels.
If deemed necessary, the person may make small movements to promote relaxation of the muscles on which they are focusing their attention at that moment.
You can imagine a light moving through each limb and then converging on your head. Stop the ball on any areas that feel tight or painful for any reason. The goal is to feel your muscles relax by focusing your attention on each part of your body.
Naturally, many parts of the body do not relax by default unless voluntary attention is focused on that part and mental work is done to relax it appropriately. This is especially true for many injured parts or those suffering from poor posture. These areas concentrate involuntary tension and stiffness, and if we learn to focus on them and work on them, we can achieve effective relaxation of the problematic part. This in itself has many applications in our daily lives, but we won’t go into further detail since we’re getting off topic.
When the ball of light reaches our head, we can revel in that sensation; many people even say they see light in their minds and reach a heightened spiritual state at that moment.
¶ 4.3. Self-hypnosis
In the previous step, you can reach an acceptable level of relaxation, but if we want to penetrate even further into a higher state of relaxation, we have to go further.
Hypnosis is defined by section 30 of the APA (American Psychological Association) as a state of consciousness that involves a concentrated focus of attention and reduction of peripheral awareness, which is characterized by an increase in the capacity to respond to suggestion.
In our case, we don’t want the suggestion to come from outside, from another person, but from within, which is why we use the term self-hypnosis. To simplify things greatly, since there’s a lot to talk about on this subject, what we want is to auto-suggest ourselves to achieve a state of relaxation as high as possible.
The self-hypnosis technique is very simple. It involves relaxing and counting from 10 to 1, feeling as we name each number; this achieves a state of relaxation greater than before. We can mentally imagine touching certain parts of our body during the count for greater relaxation. Many people visualize themselves sinking deeper and deeper into a very soft cushion or sinking deeper and deeper into a state of stillness and tranquility, until they reach 1, the state of relaxation is at its peak.
If it has been combined with the previous body relaxation technique of the light ball or body scanner, the level of relaxation that can be achieved no longer has any limits.
The goal of using self-hypnosis is to program our brain so that as soon as we follow a certain pattern, we reach a state of relaxation very quickly, almost immediately. But to achieve this, you have to convince yourself to do so before using it on demand.
¶ 5. Concentration
Once a state of relaxation has been reached, it is necessary to work the mind so that it becomes more relaxed and increasingly capable of performing mental activities.
My opinion is that this state is similar to the dream state, except that we have the control and awareness necessary to guide it as we wish.
Therefore, the relaxed state of the mind is not its ordinary state: that is, wakefulness, so it is not accustomed to being in a state of relaxation consciously. We have reached this state through sheer willpower, and so we must accustom ourselves to it and develop the mind in a state of maximum relaxation.
What this state allows us is that our imaginative capacity is greatly amplified without the physical limitations of our physical body. In the mind, almost anything is possible, and again, one could talk at length about what can be done in this altered state of consciousness, but we will focus on the theological-spiritual aspect.
We can explore our own imagination, see where it goes on its own if we let it run free. Ultimately, we must train it and experiment.
¶ 5.1. Creative Visualization
Visualization, creative visualization, or guided visualization is a psychological technique in which the subject creates a mental picture of what either the person themselves wishes to visualize, or what an external person wants them to visualize. As we’ve said, as a psychological therapeutic technique, it has many applications.
We call it visualization, but you can feel it through images, smells, tactile sensations, sounds, etc.
In fact, what you should work on in this state is becoming more comfortable managing all your senses in this state of deep relaxation. You can construct basic geometric shapes, visualize them, give them color, movement, move on to tactile sensations, and beyond.
As we become more comfortable creating richer and more complex worlds in our minds, we will be more capable of giving form to what is formless.
¶ 5.2. Meaningful mental constructions
When you master creative visualization, you become more comfortable using multiple senses in your mind, and you can create meaningful constructs. That is, mental constructs in which we symbolize things that correspond to something real and physical within the user.
Mental symbols can be used, corresponding to things that are “real” to the user. For example, if a person generically symbolizes all the negative things in their life with a heavy, uncomfortable shirt that bothers them when moving around in the mental world, which they feel is ugly, uncomfortable, even smelly, and visualizes taking it off, the relief of that burden seems to be left behind. Furthermore, if they visualize putting on a clean, comfortable, pretty, and fragrant shirt and feel well when putting it on, the person truly feels a mental improvement. Similar things can be symbolized on injured areas and visualize that removing this negative thing brings relief; perhaps natural healing can be accelerated and even the use of palliative medications can be reduced. There are many potential applications.
Many researchers of this technique construct mental buildings similar to libraries in which they can access past memories that we wouldn’t ordinarily recall. With training and practice, it’s possible to access long-term memory banks in the brain and relive them. If you’ve had past traumas, it’s a way to surface them and confront them with willpower. I speculate that through this technique we could access the base of significant memories that we’ll ultimately take with us to the other side. We don’t (normally) remember what we ate, what clothes we wore—things that truly marked us in some way (positive or negative) in our lives. So I speculate that we’re accessing the base of memories that will become part of our morontial body.
Other seekers construct buildings in which each floor corresponds to body parts and organs. You can take an elevator to each floor and experience the association of mind and body in a different way. You can imagine the machinery that controls each of your life processes, and with practice, you may even be able to control them in some way.
There is much scope for research in this facet of internal mental development.
¶ 6. Introspection
This state is perfect for dialogue with God or our Adjuster. We can and should thank Him for our life and the gifts given, tell Him that we are at His free and unconditional service, and ultimately, enter into intimate communion with our Creator without external distractions that bring us back to everyday life with its problems and issues.
While you’re in your mental world, all your higher channels are alert and free from interference. It’s just you and your Creator. It’s the perfect place for a conversation between the two of you. In my case, I have real conversations, but others may not use words (in their minds), but rather thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
When you have the ability to feel sounds in your mind, or feel like you hear things, it’s possible that this dialogue is actually words in your mind. There’s no manual that explains what this is and isn’t, at least not that I know of, so it’s a good idea to explore the meditative state, with the heightened knowledge that The Urantia Book makes available to us.
¶ 7. Meditation According to The Urantia Book and the Urantian Movement
It’s time to return to the beginning of this document and recall what the revelators told us:
UB 91:7.1 The contact of the mortal mind with its indwelling Adjuster, although frequently favored by devout meditation, is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted, loving service in the unselfish ministry of one’s fellows.
That is, the revelators say that in a state of devotional meditation, contact of the mortal mind with the indwelling Adjuster is favored. That is, meditation is a way of contacting the Adjuster that we all have within us. Furthermore, in UB 100:1.8, it says that “one of the habits that favor religious growth is thoughtful meditation on cosmic meanings.”
UB 91:7.2 Jesus frequently took the apostles with him for short periods to engage in meditation and prayer, but generally he kept them in contact with and in service to the multitudes.
As we see, the book gives us clues that this activity is very beneficial, as it improves communication between the mortal mind and the divine part that dwells within us. Furthermore, it is one of the habits that promote personal religious growth. We also see that it was a common and habitual practice of Jesus, which he instilled in his apostles. Therefore, there is no doubt that this activity can be considered at every gathering of readers and believers of the book, as it puts into practice part of what the book itself communicates to us.
Faith is belief put into practice. Meditation, both group and guided, should be considered for giving thanks or for finding cosmic meaning.