When one is in a mood of meditation, one is practising true religion, but by so doing one does not belong to any particular religious cult. We live religion when we are in a state of meditation, because religion is the relation between man and God, between the soul and the Absolute. The affirmation of it in life is religion's aim. Religion is not the act of belonging to a creed, a temple, or a church. It is an inward acceptance of one's conscious relation with the Almighty, who presents Himself as the degrees of Deity in the different religions. When we are in a holy mood, we are really in the temple of God. When we are in a state of meditation, we are in the church of Christ. The temple or the church is this very transcendence which is the spirit of religion that occupies a position superior to the empirical subjects and objects of the world. The church does not belong to the world. It is a divine occupation, lifted above the mundane. The temples are trans-earthly atmospheres which have in their precincts whatever is of value. Anyone seated there does not belong to sides or parties, but to the Divine Whole. This world is nothing but a spatio-temporal complex of subjects and objects. And our endeavour is to overcome this limitation. One becomes truly religious only in meditation. In other activities one sinks back into the bodily individuality. The births and the deaths of the individual are the consequences that follow from the tying up of consciousness to one point only in space and time and getting thereby subjected to the force of evolution which urges everything onward and forward towards a higher integration.

When seated for the purpose of meditation it is usually required that you must be in one posture, Sthirusukham-asanam. Asana, or the posture for meditation, is that fixed pose of the body which is comfortable and not pain-giving. It should not be a torture or a contorted fixing of oneself in a painful way. The purpose of the Asana, or the pose in meditation, is to relax oneself.

In one of the aphorisms, Patanjali tells that it is convenient for the mind to feel the presence of the Infinite in its own way when one is seated in the bodily posture of any Asana, such as Padmasana, Siddhasana, or Sukhasana. There should not be a consciousness of being seated in a posture. If it becomes an object of awareness, it would mean that it is not a natural position. When one is perfectly natural and normal, there is no awareness of oneself. When there is awareness of oneself, there is something also of the not-oneself.

Meditation is the highest form of relaxation, where one is free from tense moods, where one is not even aware that one is concentrating or doing something at all. One is completely released of all vexations of sense. Tension of any kind is traceable to one's occupying an unnatural position in the world. When one is unnatural in some way, one has also tense moods, and there is a peculiar sensation of anguish. Rarely is one released of all tensions in life. Man lives like a soldier in the battlefield ready for an onslaught, and is never free with himself. There is a feeling that one is at war always, and has to come to grips with some situation or the other in life, which is there confronting and facing one with an opposing attitude. In meditation this contending posture is overcome. We become friends of all beings. The Transcendent Presence is the friend of both the subject and the object at once, and, therefore, we, too, are friends of everyone. We become benefactors, well-wishers, philosophers, and guides of all when we are in this non-subjective position, which is the position of meditation. For this purpose is the physical Asana prescribed, tending towards the very same aim. The physical posture is contributory to the mental posture that is to be adopted in meditation. The posture of the mind is more important than the session of the body. If the mind is distorted, even when the body is equally posed, that would not be the required mood of the personality. The mind and the body being related to each other, there is a need to adjust both simultaneously.

One is a little sick or anxious or emotional or disturbed or over-enthusiastic. In a normal position of utter spontaneity, there is no awareness of one's existence at all, as children who do not know that they are, and are buoyant, and run about without being aware that they are busy. That would be a symbol of spontaneous naturalness. But when an old man runs, he lumbers with a heavy body. Children have no consciousness of themselves. Such is the kind of psychological mood that one has to spontaneously adopt by freeing oneself from occupations of a distracting nature. Earthly occupations, all circumstances of bounden duty, as they are usually called in the social sense, put a limitation on man and keep his mind sunk in a state of anxiety. There should be no anxiety when one sits for meditation. If there is worry, it is better to go to the depths of the problem, discover the cause thereof, and remove it. It is better to be healthy first than be unhealthily religious.

The student on the path has to disentangle himself in a wise way from the tangles of social involvement and psycho-physical tension by the practice of what Patanjali calls Yamas. They are supreme norms prescribed by the sage for relieving oneself of obligations and debts, fears and anxieties in life. Each one is to be a judge of oneself here, and, perhaps, at a certain stage, one would realise that oneself is one's own best guide, because there are subtle adjustments that are required to be made in life, which call for different types of adaptation of oneself from moment to moment, which cannot always be foreseen. Here, one cannot go on consulting books or even run to teachers. One has to use a little bit of discretion and commonsense in the light of the purpose for which one is practising this attitude of adjustment. The most important thing to remember is the purpose set before oneself, the ideal or the goal ahead, which conditions one's general attitude to life. Whether this is right or that is right, this is good or that is good, how would one find out? By reading a book? Such crucial questions cannot be answered by the printed line, nor can one resort to teachers and masters every day. The nature of the goal that one has chosen for oneself will, to some extent, indicate what is right and what is wrong in any particular context in which one may be placed in life. This has been broadly outlined in the principles of Yamas, or rules of self-restraint.

Every day one may have to check up one's personality by maintaining a spiritual diary. Like an auditor striking a balance sheet to find out the assets and liabilities of an occupation, one closes one's day with a balance sheet of what has happened to oneself from the morning till the evening, to find out if there is any liability on the part of oneself. The liability is the due that one owes to something in the world. This should not be there at the close of day. One should not owe something to somebody when retiring at night. If something is due, it must be paid then and there. It must also be seen that there is no further due. Any kind of debt that one owes to anyone or anything in the world, in any manner whatsoever, physically, socially or psychologically, will distract one's attention. To that extent, in that percentage, the mind will go in that direction, and to that extent and in that proportion the meditative consciousness will be debilitated. It will not have the strength that is required for the purpose. There must be no subtle sorrow inside. All dues to the society have to be discharged, if there be any. To the extent man is independent of human society, to that extent also he is free from dues to society. Each one has to find out to what extent one is indebted to society and to what extent one is free from debts to society.

In the same way as one has to think carefully about one's relationship to human society, lest one should be in some bondage of debt or due, one has also to assess the requirements of one's body and mind. We owe some debt to the body, and also to the mind and emotions. The limitations with which man is born and through which he lives are creditors demanding their dues. The hunger of the stomach, the cold and the heat, the emotions that heave up within are all conditions which require some attention. An emotional frustration, or defeatist attitude, would have to be taken care of in a proper manner, as a medical man would examine a patient. Let there not be too much enthusiasm about God, religion and spirituality when there is still a downward pull by the gravitation of these little calls, which will not leave one in peace even till eternity, if one does not clear their accounts. As Christ said somewhere, before man tries to make friendship with God, he has to see that he has no enemies in the world. Make peace with your neighbour first, before you try to make peace with God. These are small things, but very important check posts on the journey. Both socially and personally, one has to be free. A bonded slave of human society or a slave of one's own emotions and affections may be debarred entry from above. If there are strong instincts and cravings, they have to be attended to in a proper manner. If one cannot understand what to do, the Guru must be approached: 'I have a problem, emotional, instinctive, social, whatever it is. I am not able to solve this situation. I am here before you, seeking a solution.' One's superior will be able to show a path out of this impasse. Everyone has some understanding in calmer moments, and discriminative powers well exercised would provide necessary guidance. Under any circumstance, freedom from entanglements which are empirical in nature - social, physical, psychological, emotional - is necessary before one attempts to enter into this noble, sublime state of meditation, which is the holiest of endeavours in which one can engage oneself, and which is the final act that one performs as the culmination of human evolution.

The meditations in spiritual life are of different types according to the way in which the individual reacts to the concept of reality. These reactions of the soul to the truths of the universe are the Yogas. The different names with which the practice is associated are the different ways in which the soul feels its relationship with the cosmic environment and affirms it in its practical life. The manner in which the spirit contemplates God is conditioned by the predominant faculty which principally operates in the outlook of life envisaged by the individual.

Man has, among many other things, the ratiocinating capacity, the philosophical attitude (Jnana), together with the occult sense which directs him to investigate into the phenomena that transcend the visible panorama of Nature (Dhyana). He is also emotional, with which sense he reacts to God in the manner of a finite individual which feels rather than understands the transcendent (Bhakti). And there are other ways by which these reactions of soul to reality are manifest, such as the recognition of an omnipresence in the multitudinous variety of creative activity (Karma). These constitute the well-known paths of Yoga, all which converge, in the end, as a central occupation of the consciousness awakened to the eternal values that reign supreme in all life.