CONTEMPLATION

          " I  die  daily "-----  St. Paul (Corinthians 15/31).
          Our spiritual journey begins with the souls of our feet and ends at the top of our head . This journey had two stages -One up to the eyes and the other above the eyes . The seat of the soul and mind in our body lies behind our two eyes .
          Whenever we have to remember a thing that we have forgotten our hand insantively goes to our forehead ; never to our legs or feet .The point is vitally connected with our thinking . Everybody's attention descends from this point and spreads out into the world through the nine portals of the body .
          We constantly wander away into the world from the Third Eye, and our mind does not remain still even for an instant . So long as it does not cease this wandering, it can never go back to its source-The second spiritual region .
          The nine portals or apertures of the body are the two eyes, two ears, two nastrils, the mouth and the two lower apertures . Our thought-currents flow out into the whole world through these apertures . Even if we were to sit in a dark room and lock the door, our mind would not stay locked up in the room . It would wander away in to the whole world . The mind's constant habit of thinking of worldly affairs, people and things is called repetition by the Master Saints .
          Everybody has this natural habit . When we begin to think of our problems, our minds are filled with thoughts of them . When we think of other pople, their forms come to stand before our eyes . When we think of our beloved or anyone, their forms come before us . This thinking of and visualizing others is called contemplation ( Dhyan ) by the Master Saints .
          Those whom we remember, we begin, as it is said, to see in our mind's eye . As this habit grows, we become attached to those and to love them . In the course of time, the mind develops so much affinity with them then we begin to see them even in our dreams, and at the time of our death their forms will stand vividly before our eyes . If we think at this last moment of some worldly objects, we will never cross the ocean of phenomena, because our love and attachment for it will back in to the world of phenomena .
          Master Saints explain that we should make the best use of this natural habit . Contemplation of transient and the short-lived objects and attachment to them bring us, only the world of tragedy and tears . But if we contemplate the Eternal we will attain the Eternal, of which our soul is a particle and with which it wishes to merge .
          The Lord is permanent and eternal . Those who remember and always think of Him will also become immortal . They will end the world of tragedy and tears . We should, therefore, focus our attention behind the eyes by repetition of the Divine Sound and should keep it there by turning our outward mental tendencies inward .
          This Practice is so simple and easy that a child of five or a man a eighty years old can do it without difficulty . We have a natural habit of doing repetition . We have merely to change it from thinks of the world and its object to think of the Lord-from the transient to the Eternal . When, as a result of this, our thought-currents are reversed and become concentrated at the Third Eye, they will at first not stay there, because they have the habit of dropping down and wandering out into the world through the nine openings . It is difficult to make the mind still in darkness and in emptiness, unless we give it some form upon which to Contemplate .
          The question arises, therefore, on what form it should contemplate ? It is an important matter and needs careful consideration, because one can become strongly attached to whatever form the mind contemplates . Bound by love for that form, the mind will go wherever the form goes . We must do our best, therefore, to determine the object or form that is most worthy of our worship and Contemplate .