The benefits of meditation and yoga practice have been well established not only by the example of the masters of yoga and the testimony of students worldwide, but, in recent decades, by the findings of western, medical research. One such benefit is an increase in one’s ability to concentrate. In fact, the primary purpose of the basic meditation technique that we teach at Ananda (based upon awareness of the breath) is to develop interiorized concentration.

Success of all kinds – financial as well as spiritual – depends largely upon calm, intuitive concentration. The one quality perhaps most lacking in American society today is precisely the ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Memory loss, often the result of inability to concentrate, is virtually an epidemic among people of all ages. Here is a brief list of the influences which undermine our calm, focused concentration: barrage of emails and advertisements, choice of hundreds of TV channels and thousands of internet sites, media intensity on negativity, violence, and fear, toxicity of water, air, soil, and food, and the power of entertainment and graphic images which play upon subconscious desires for pleasure, possessions, and ego affirmation.

Why were so few people in this country aware of the impending financial storms? Did not those with “eyes (of calmness) to see” foretell this calamity? In fact, yes! Aware and intuitive financial counselors have been warning readers for years of the disastrous consequences of the highly leveraged financial mortgage-backed securities trade, growing trade deficit, consumer debt, and lax supervision. Swami Kriyananda has been telling audiences for decades that Paramhansa Yogananda, who lived in America during the Great Depression, warned the public over fifty years ago that a financial cataclysm greater than that of the 1930′s was coming. He encouraged students to buy land in the country with friends of like-mind, adopting sustainable lifestyles of simple living and high ideals.

Why do some have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear” while others seem blind and deaf? It’s simple, really: the art of listening (or the art of “seeing”, if you prefer!). Put another way: intuition! Intuition is one of the most important benefits of meditation. But it takes self-discipline to learn to concentrate one-pointedly even as one adopts the quiet, interiorized attitude of listening, of peering through the veil of seeming darkness that one might learn to “pierce the darkness of maya,” and become a “see-er.”

In the Hong Sau meditation technique taught at Ananda, we learn to see and hear with the sixth sense of intuition. Gazing inwardly, steadily, calmly at and through the “spiritual eye” (the point between the eyebrows) while feeling the flow of breath, we learn to concentrate calmly at the door of the “third eye” which opens to the realm of universal and intuitive knowing. After practicing this technique, we sit silently with heightened calm interiorized awareness, receptive and communing inwardly with the divine Presence, the silent Witness, wherein all things can be known.

One of the many benefits that result from “watching the breath” in meditation is to develop the inner awareness of our soul’s ever-conscious state as silent Witness. We become increasingly aware and intuitive in our everyday activities. We begin to “see and hear” things and people differently. We hear what is meant, rather than what is said. We learn to feel the thoughts or consciousness behind words, and cognize the intention behind appearances. We increasingly use our sixth sense (intuition) rather than only our lower faculties such as the five senses (with their limited range of perception); our plodding, logical intellect; our unreliable  reactive emotional responses; and the invisible filter of our past conditioning.

If ever there were a highly desirable survival skill, this has to be it! Who would you want to be with in a crises: someone whose responses are calm, quick, and creative, or one who panics and flees, more likely to fall, babbling, into a ditch than to help others race to high ground?

While devotion to God and the goal of soul-liberation are the real purpose of meditation, intuition is the doorway to the Truth that can make us free. As Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God.” The practical benefits of meditation are valuable examples of how “all these things are added unto” those who seek God first.

Blessings, Hriman and Padma