Frawley - Vedantic meditation: lighting the flame of awareness

Also by David Frawley:

Yoga and Ayurveda: Self-Healing and Self-Realization

Ayurveda and the Mind: The Healing of Consciousness

In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
(with Georg Feuerstein and Subhash Kak)

Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses

Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide

The Yoga of Herbs (with Vasant Lad)

Electronic Edition: ISBN 978-1-58394-956-6

Copyright 2000 by David Frawley. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712

Cover art Hari Dev. This type of image is known as yantra art and is used as a meditation device.
Cover and book design Ayelet Maida, A/M Studios.

Vedantic Meditation is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, call 800-733-3000 or visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com.

ISBN-13: 978-1-55643-334-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frawley, David.
Vedantic meditation : lighting the flame of awareness / by David Frawley.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-55643-334-4
1. MeditationHinduism. 2. Vedanta. I. Title

BL1238.34.F73 2000
294.5435dc21 00-020634

v3.1

Contents

Foreword

n India David Frawley is recognized as a Vedacharya, a teacher of the Vedas. He may be the only Westerner to be given such a title. The author of more than twenty books, Dr. Frawley has left me in awe once again. This book imparts the kind of authentic experience that listening to the voice of a master does. In the West, I have for years looked to Dr. Frawley as the authority in the field of Vedic education.

In Vedantic Meditation, Dr. Frawley clarifies that Vedanta and all its branches revolve around one premise: to become Self-realized through the practice of Self-inquiry. Without this understanding the practices of Yoga, Ayurveda and Jyotish are incomplete.

We have all experienced the stillness of a mountaintop, a valley, or a forest. At times this silence or stillness is so pervasive that it fills our bodies and souls with wonder. We seek refuge in the fresh mountain air, relish the stunning views, and cherish our precious wildlife, but it is what we feel in the wilderness that attracts and rejuvenates us. The silence in the stillness of nature is inherent in every human being.

Unfortunately stress, our fast-paced life, and our attraction to external rather than internal reality drowns out silence from the hearts, minds, and cell of our bodies. Frawley describes how the spiritual journey begins by replacing your stress with silence. It finishes with a glimpse of what can become your highest potential, leaving you with a vision of your true nature.

A hurricane, an atom, or a solar system each require a still center to be effective. The bigger the silent center of the eye of a hurricane, the more powerful are its winds. This silence is the key to unlocking our full human potential as human beings. When this silence is combined with dynamic action, our potential is achieved. This is called the co-existence of opposite forces.

Scientists agree that we achieve only ten percent of our human potential. When we establish silence at the core of our activities, our potential is unlimited. In the field of athletics, when athletes perform at their ultimate best, the experience is always effortlessstill, silent, in slow motion, and euphoric, coexisting with a superhuman level of activity.

For thousands of years religions around the world have taught various techniques to help us re-establish this silence at the core of our being. Religious disciplines and codes of conduct have supported these techniques and prepared the way for the direct experience of our own silence and spirituality. This understanding is most intact today in the Vedic texts and through the study of Vedanta. In Vedanta, silence is understood as our own human consciousnesswhich resides in our hearts and pervades everything in the universe.

According to the Vedas, the human heart, not the mind, is the seat of thought, actions, and desires. If the heart is the eye of the hurricane, the source of silence and consciousness, then the mind is like the winds of the hurricane, always restless and thinking. For most of us our mind determines what we think, how we act, and what we say. We are separated from the source of our consciousness, power, and creativity, which resides in our heart. Because we dont have our heart integrated with our thoughts, our mind and senses relentlessly seek satisfaction through the external experience.

According to the Vedas, this disconnection of mind and heart leads to all the suffering that we see in the world today. Scientists blame stress for eighty percent of our diseases, but it is our lack of silence that allows stress to be so dominant in our lives. This is why, Dr. Frawley points out, having a meditation practice in your life is so important.

The health benefits of meditation are enough of an incentive to start a practice. But even more compelling is the change in the quality of life when you start to experience the hurricane effect of meditation. Soon, doing less and accomplishing more becomes a way of life, and the wrath of stress rolls off your body like water off a ducks back. With stress under control, you may be inclined toward further Self-inquiry. This is the beginning of your spiritual journey.

David Frawleys gift is to be able to describe the source, course, and goal of spirituality. The source of our spirituality is our own consciousness. The goal is to experience it in your self, to realize your true nature and access your full potential. The course material to achieve this state is the technique of Vedantic Meditation.

Vedantic Meditation is required reading for anyone on a spiritual path. It is a pure and authentic depiction of Vedanta, the essence of the most ancient scriptures in the world, the Vedas.

John Douillard
Director of Player Development,
New Jersey Nets
June, 2000

Preface