What does meditation achieve

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

When you are in love you forget everything, become lost. But knowledge is awareness. Be alert whatever you are doing. If you are 100 percent alert that is also meditation. But that shouldn’t become an excuse not to meditate. Meditation brings deep relaxation, and that brings creativity.

The necessity of meditation: Have you observed there’s a rhythm in nature? Fall, followed by spring... Have you observed there’s a rhythm in your body? A bio-rhythm—at a particular time you answer nature’s call, you feel hungry, you feel sleepy. Have you observed there’s a rhythm in your breath, in your thought pattern, in your emotional pattern? The same kinds of doubts come around the same kinds of periods, times of year. When the rhythm of your body is in tune with the rhythm of the environment you become harmonious with nature. Our rhythms are haywire, they are not in harmony. AIIMS has done a research which shows your resistance levels go up three times by doing Sudarshan Kriya. People stopped taking medicines for cold, cough, fever. Many people haven’t touched medicines for 8-10 years whereas they were taking them regularly before. There are many other such benefits but it is for scientists to talk about them. Twenty-five years ago I took a 10-day silence—maun—then I started talking to people, and that was when Sudarshan Kriya was born.

What does meditation achieve: Violence-free environment, disease-free body, quiver-free breath, confusion-free mind, inhibition-free intellect, trauma-free memory, and sorrow-free soul: that is what meditation achieves. It is conscious relaxation. Sleep doesn’t give sufficient rest to the body. Concentration and meditation are two opposite things. When you do any work you need concentration. When you meditate, you don’t need concentration. You de-concentrate, in fact. You can’t learn meditation through books. You need an instructor. Afterwards you can do it yourself.