How to Meditate on the Formless?
Meditating on the formless simply means that you are not meditating on form; in other words, you are not meditating on materiality. It does not mean imagining some void or visualizing any particular scene. It simply means that your mind is not entangled in the objects of the senses and the forms of the world.
Look, ordinarily, whatever thoughts arise in your mind have some form as their center. The mind thinks about a person, an object, an event, a desire, or a fear.
In other words, the very nature of the mind is to revolve around forms. That is why it spends most of its time absorbed in worldly subjects.
What Does It Mean to Meditate on the Formless?
Most people meditate only on worldly sense objects. Their minds repeatedly move toward those objects, relationships, desires, and experiences that are obtained through the senses.
Gradually, this tendency becomes the cause of unrest in their lives. We have already discussed this topic in detail in Why Is Meditation Essential for Life? Meditation is essential in life so that peace and spiritual bliss may be attained.
As long as the mind remains entangled in worldly objects, it cannot move toward knowing itself, that is, toward Self-realization.
If you study the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, particularly the twelfth chapter, known as Bhakti Yoga, you will find that Lord Krishna also speaks about those who worship the unmanifest, attributeless, and formless.
There, Lord Krishna also explains that fixing the mind on the unmanifest (formless) is more difficult for those who identify themselves with the body. (B. G. 12.5)
This is because a body-identified person has their consciousness centered on the body, and because of that body, the material world that appears before them becomes the foundation of their life. Their attention remains continuously directed toward that world.
If you wish to understand how this ego-consciousness (Aham Vritti) gives rise to the experience of the material world called Maya, then it is first necessary to understand this identification with the body.
To be able to meditate on the formless, dispassion toward the world is essential. Vairagya (dispassion) does not mean renouncing the world, nor does it mean clinging to it. It means that the mind neither wants to grasp the world nor run away from it. When such equanimity begins to develop, the seeker becomes fit to abide in the attributeless, formless Brahman.
Whenever the subject of meditating on the formless arises, people often assume that the world will disappear for them or that they will no longer see anything.
But that is not so. The world remains exactly where it is. Nothing changes in it. The only change is that the identification of the Self, that is, consciousness, with the world gradually comes to an end. The world continues to exist, but the movement of the mind toward it ceases. Its movement is now directed toward That which is beyond the world.
How Can I Become Worthy of Meditating on the Formless?
Look, as I explained, meditating on the formless simply means that you do not meditate on forms. Forms include everything that is seen through the eyes, heard through the ears, or becomes an object of the senses and the mind. Whether these things are present before you or not, you must not become attached to them.
This becomes possible only when your orientation is toward Truth. However, the mind is so conditioned that it repeatedly gets attracted toward the world because, apart from it, it sees no other alternative.
The mind always contemplates forms because its very basis is attachment. Wherever there is attachment, there is contemplation of forms. Therefore, what is necessary is not that you fight attachment, but that you understand it. Only when attachment is rightly understood can it come to an end.
Awareness is the fire that burns away attachment. This does not mean that you should forcibly destroy attachment or become attached to some imagined idea of the formless. That too would simply be another form of attachment.
You have to turn toward Truth. Truth is that which the mind cannot know, which cannot be confined within imagination, and which cannot be expressed through any form in the world. Moving in that direction alone is the true meaning of meditating on the formless.
