The Three Types of Meditation – An Introduction to Meditation

An Introduction to Meditation 

It’s no secret that a growing number of people are suffering from anxiety and depression. As stress builds in response to ever-increasing demands and distractions, more than ever people are turning to meditation to find the inner peace and happiness for which we all long.

In this overview, I explore three types of meditation that are the basic pathways that the religious and spiritual traditions have provided those who seek fulfilment and want to understand the truth of who they are. My hope is that this introduction to meditation will guide you to the lasting peace and happiness that is the nature of your being.

There are three types of meditation, each corresponding to three spiritual paths: the Progressive Path, the Direct Path and the Pathless Path. 

In the first – the Progressive Path – awareness is directed towards an object. In the second – the Direct Path – awareness is directed towards the subject. In the third – the Pathless Path – awareness is undirected.

On the Progressive Path we look outwards; on the Direct Path we look inwards; on the Pathless Path we remain in that placeless place between the outside and the inside. 
 

In the first type of meditation, sometimes referred to as the Progressive Path, awareness, in the form of the mind, directs itself towards an object, such as a mantra or the breath. 

In this approach, we start with the feeling of ourself as an individual – a temporary, finite self. This separate self or ego that we seem to be is given some activity to do. The mind directs or focuses its attention on an object. 

In fact, this is simply a refinement of what everybody is naturally doing most of the time – directing their attention towards an objective experience with the hopes of deriving happiness from it. 

The Progressive Path is a refinement of this process, replacing the normal objects of our attention – thoughts, feelings, substances, activities, relationships and so on – with more refined objects – the breath, a mantra, a flame, an image of God, a teacher and so on. 

In this way, we think of the spiritual path as something we reach for or move towards, progressing along the way. The Progressive Path characterises many, if not most, forms of meditation, in which the origin, the pathway and the goal are different.

In the second type of meditation, sometimes referred to as the Direct Path, awareness, in the form of the mind, is not focused on any particular object. On the contrary, the mind turns around and seeks its own source or origin. This involves not the extroversion of attention towards an object but an introversion of attention towards the self. The attention is relaxed, not focused. There is a sinking or relaxing of the attention into the source of awareness from which it arises. 

The objects of our attention are numerous; the subject of attention is single. Whatever it is that is aware of our current experience is the same one that was aware of breakfast this morning, or the walk we took yesterday afternoon, or the summer holiday we had last year, or whatever we were experiencing ten years ago or when we were ten-year-old children. 

Numerous experiences, one experiencer.

In the Direct Path, we investigate the nature of this self, this experiencer – ‘I’. The tracing back of the mind towards its essence of pure awareness is sometimes initiated by questions such as, ‘Who am I really?’, ‘What is it that cannot be removed from me?’, ‘What element of my experience remains continuously present throughout the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping?’ and so on. This is sometimes referred to as self-enquiry.

In the third type of meditation, sometimes referred to as the Pathless Path, awareness does not assume the form of the mind, and the attention is neither focused outwards on an object, nor does it subside inwards towards its source. It simply remains as it is without doing anything. 

On this Pathless Path, there is really nothing for the mind either to do or to cease doing. There is no need to do anything because it is already itself. It is already that which all other forms of meditation approach. 

This third form of meditation – non-meditation – is the effortless way. Meditation is no longer considered something that we do with the mind; it is understood simply to be what we are. We are what we are. Being what we are is not a practice. It is not something we do. If anything we could say it is simply a recognition of what we essentially are. 

Why do I say the recognition of what we essentially are? Because for many, if not most of us, what we are – our essential being or self – is so thoroughly mixed up with and, as a result, qualified by the content of experience – our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships – that we do not know our self clearly. 

It is this lack of clear self-knowledge that is responsible for the dissatisfaction, the sorrow and the conflict that causes us to undertake a meditation practice in the first place.

For those of us that like analogies and metaphors, let me put this in the context of the actor John Smith, who plays the part of King Lear and, in doing so, seems to forget that he is John Smith, instead believing himself to be the king of England. 

In the first type of meditation – the Progressive Path – John Smith, in the form of King Lear, directs his attention towards an object of experience – a mantra, a flame, the breath and so on. 

In the second type of meditation – the Direct Path or self-enquiry – John Smith, in the form of King Lear, investigates his essential nature and traces his way back to his essential self. 

In the third type of meditation – The Pathless Path or non-meditation – John Smith simply does not assume the form of King Lear. He remains as he is. He does not need to do anything or go anywhere. He does not need to make an effort to be himself or to find himself. He is already himself. 

In the first two types of meditation – the Progressive Path and the Direct Path – King Lear approaches John Smith, indirectly in the first case, directly in the second. They are, as such, pathways that credit King Lear with his own existence, and so give King Lear something to do, a method of practice, a pathway to tread. 

But in the third type of meditation – non-meditation, the Pathless Path – there is nothing for King Lear to do because, in this approach, King Lear doesn’t even exist. It is just between John Smith and himself. 

There is no pathway from John Smith to John Smith. No distance, no method, nothing he needs to do to become or find himself. Any effort that John Smith made would be an effort away from himself. He needs to make no effort to be himself. 

It's exactly the same for us. The first two types of meditation, the Progressive Path and the Direct Path, credit the separate self, the person we seem to be, with an existence of its own and give that self something to do to approach its true nature, indirectly in the Progressive Path, directly in the Direct Path. 

In the third type of meditation – non-meditation, the Pathless Path, the effortless way – we do not start with the presumption of separation. We do not credit the separate self with an existence of its own. We start with the one that we truly are – aware being, being aware, awareness itself – and we simply abide as that.

Meditation is simply being, not doing. This non-practice is what Ramana Maharshi referred to when he said, ‘Don’t meditate, just be’, by which he meant that just being is the culmination of all meditation practices. 

Simply being is the essence of meditation. It is the highest form of meditation or the ultimate prayer. It is the meditation or prayer for which all other meditations and prayers are preparations. 

Having understood this, we allow any residual effort to do anything to subside in this understanding. What remains when all doing subsides? Simply being. That is the essence of meditation and the ultimate prayer. 

For devotees and mystics, it is the ultimate surrender to God. When our being is divested of all the qualities that it borrows from the content of experience, our being is revealed as infinite being, God’s being. Thus, to simply be is to surrender oneself utterly to God’s presence. 

Simply be.

In simply being, the mind comes to a natural, spontaneous, effortless rest, because there is nowhere that the mind could go, and nothing that the mind could experience, that would make simply being more or less present than it is now.

Simply being is the experience to which we refer, when we say ‘I am’. As long as the ‘I am’ remains unqualified, it refers directly to the fact of simply being, to infinite being, God’s being. It is for this reason, in the Old Testament, that ‘I am’ is said to be God’s name. 

However, as soon as the ‘I am’ is qualified, it ceases to refer to infinite being and instead refers to a personal, finite being, a separate self or ego. As soon as we add anything to the ‘I am’ – I am a woman, I am a man, I am old, I am young, I am happy, I am sad and so on – what we essentially are, infinite being, becomes qualified and therefore limited. Infinite being seems to become a finite being.

All that is necessary is to discern the ‘I am’ in the midst of all experience. When we say, ‘I am walking down the street’, the ‘I am’ is present there, albeit qualified by the activity of walking down the street. When we say, ‘I am a mother’ or ‘I am a father’, the ‘I am’ is present there, albeit qualified by a particular relationship. When we say, ‘I am lonely, sad or agitated’, the ‘I am’ is present there, albeit qualified by an emotion.

It’s not necessary to touch experience, to change it in any way. Just discern the ‘I am’ that shines brightly in its midst. Even when we say, ‘I am deeply depressed’, the ‘I am’ is shining there. All that is necessary is to magnify being, to emphasise the ‘I am’ in all experience.

See in this way that meditation is neither something that we do, nor is it something that we cease doing. It is simply what we are. Meditation is simply to see that and to be that, knowingly. 

There is nothing to do, nothing to achieve, nothing to understand, nothing to become. Doing, achieving, understanding, becoming, are all based on the presumption that we are a separate self, a finite being. Such a being does, indeed, have to do, to achieve, to understand, to become and so on. But for the one that we truly are, the only one that truly is, no such activities are necessary. 

We, awareness, are a field of pure sensitivity, minutely registering everything, indiscriminately open to all experience but never modified, hurt or harmed by any particular experience. Utterly vulnerable and yet indestructible. 

Simply abide, as that. 

We, awareness, are equally available in the midst of all experience, so no turning away from or manipulation of any experience is necessary. 

Simply abide, as that.

We, awareness, seek nothing, resist nothing, hold on to nothing and know nothing. 

Simply abide, as that.

All meditation practices begin and end. They require an activity or the cessation of the activity of the mind. But non-meditation – the highest meditation – has nothing to do with what is or is not taking place in the mind. It is simply aware being, being aware, awareness itself. 

Simply abide, as that.

We, awareness, know nothing of the desire for happiness or the search for enlightenment. We, awareness, have never been endarkened by experience and, therefore, do not require enlightening. We, awareness, are simply the light of the self shining equally brightly in all experience. 

Being and shining. 

Simply abide, as that.

If you would like to join hundreds of people around the world to explore the highest meditation, Rupert's next Online Weekend Retreat is called 'The Essence of Meditation', which takes place from 30 June - 2 July. We look forward to seeing some of you there.