From: Yogani
Date: Tue Dec 9, 2003 11:12am

New Visitors: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: When I meditate, I feel like I am gone someplace else. It is very pleasant, and it is gradually changing my view of life. Where am I when I meditate? What is being added to me?

A: When we meditate we are allowing the mind to naturally bring our awareness out of the familiar realm of time and space to the realm of unadulterated bliss consciousness. Consciousness is neither time nor space. We could say it is the infinite dimension underlying the world we perceive with our physical senses. Besides having no boundaries, it is eternally "now." Consciousness is another dimension beyond time and space - we could call it the fifth dimension. With meditation, we are gradually marrying the fifth dimension of consciousness with the four dimensions of time and space, so all five dimensions come to coexist together. Our nervous system is gradually cultured to give us the experience of all five dimensions simultaneously.

This has profound implications in our everyday life. Before meditating, everything we did was in time and space. All our action, our problem solving, was limited to the four dimensions. The options we saw before us were always time and space limited. With meditation, we are bringing in an additional dimension, consciousness. It makes a big difference. Now we see situations in ways we could not see before. We are able to influence the course of life in ways we could not before.

Imagine you are trying to solve a puzzle lying on a table. You are looking at it in two dimensions, on the flat surface of the table. Try as you may, the pieces won't fit together. Then a friend walks into the room and says, "Try this." She picks up two edges of the puzzle and curls them together above the table, and they fit together perfectly. By moving into the third dimension, the space above the table, the puzzle has been solved easily. Life is like that. Dealing with it only in time and space, four dimensions, it is often an unsolvable puzzle. We go round and round, never quite getting the pieces to fit together. When we begin to meditate, we are adding a new dimension, a new perspective. Then the pieces start to fit together, and it all begins to make sense.

The guru is in you.