Meditation, just the word makes many people think it is an art known only by the sages who are in the snowy, chilly outskirts of himalayas, atleast I did.Sure, there are many programs and gurus in India who are adept it and teach how to meditate. This is my experience and it happened when I was just in my 6th grade, not that my parents wanted me to turn into a Dalai Lama or an Indian version of Buddha but just that my family knew a spiritual teacher and my whole family planned to take a meditation course, I was not considered because I was too young to understand complex concepts like meditation, I was told. But I didn't want to be left out and called up our guru  and told her I really wanted to learn it badly, she accepted my request without any hesitation.

The real reason why I was so excited to learn it was because I thought meditation could make me superhuman and I could float in air, walk in water probably if I mastered it. This above reasoning of mine was due to the fact that  I had read lots of Mahabaratha and Ramayana stories where Arjuna and  Rama  gained boons and weapons and superhuman powers by meditating in the forest. Absolutely funny and dumb when I think about my ideaology now.I was too young and saw many movies, which is my only defense. I went to the meditation class and was told how to meditate, but poor me I understood not even one word of it.I really didnt understand the science behind it or why it works, I was told that part was unnecessary,but I knew the method. So, I meditated everyday in the hope suddenly one day i will wake up and then I can move things without touching it and probably get my revenge on my class teacher who asked me to kneel down the whole day in the hot sun for not finishing my EVS assignment with my superhuman powers.

I gave up meditation as I was in too much doubt  whether I was doing it right or wrong and I didn't understand why I always fell asleep most of the time I tried meditating, I was just in too much confusion to take it any further. Fast forward a few years I had just finished my 12th boards and had six months of holiday and I was bored to death. And that is when I felt the sudden urge to learn about the science behind meditation, the real theory and  the understanding behind it. I was told how to do it and understood that completely, but doing meditation without knowing why it works according to me is like playing tennis with the net down.No point. So i started reading and read as if there was a bee in my pants. I read a lot  and after a point I felt I knew sufficiently enough and it was time to try again and was confident it would work this time and I would get the ultimate meditation experience. I thought I will try meditating for 21 days and then draw my inference about it, as 21 days is the scientifically proven amount of time for your brain to get used to a particular practise

The first few days were hard, I constantly fell asleep while doing it, this was really irritating as it is one of the biggest mistakes of meditation, and all beginners are known to make, but this time I knew why I was sleeping. I increased my meditating session time from 15 minutes to 30 minutes  and the results were better. It was nearly a month since I started and I didn't turn  into a batman or superman nor was I able to turn invisible and pull my cats tail when it was sleeping as I had planned, but there was a deep change within me, I felt so much at peace with myself and spoke only when it was necessary which is so unlike me and surprisingly  liked my own company for once in my life. It really felt good, and turned out to be one of my best holiday

So what did I really learn, that made meditation tick this time? The knowledge about why meditation really works helped me a long way. And this was my conclusion.There are many different meditation methods, starting from the 100-0 SILVA method, buddhist meditation and to mention the now famous transcendental meditation. I knew all the above mentioned 3 methods and there are tonnes more, but  personally I liked the 100-0 method where u count back  numbers starting from 100.

I found there are 4 levels of brain, namely

1-BETA (14-20 cycles per second) - Conscious living state where we do activities like eat,drive, play to name a few

2-ALPHA (13-20 cycles) - Meditative level

3-THETA(3.5-7cycles) - A state of sleeep

4-DELTA(0.5-3.5 cycles) - Deep sleep and a deep level of mind

IN MEDITATION LESS IS MORE:

The sole aim of meditation I found out  was to reduce the   brain level activity  from the higher levels of BETA to lower brain  activity  levels of ALPHA,where there are lesser brain cycles. To put it in simple words, reach alpha level of brain.

LESSER BRAIN CYCLES = LESSER BRAIN ACTIVITY = LESSER THOUGHTS.

The logic behind this was, LESSER THE NUMBER OF BRAIN CYCLES equals LESSER THE NUMBER OF THOUGHTS and so  smaller the chances of your brain shouting on your skull top to set your house rats on fire. I understood it was gonna be a very unique experience if I did it right. So when I started counting  down from 100 I felt the number of thoughts reducing with each number, with every number I counted down I felt myself going deeper and deeper . First there is this initial rush of thoughts when I closed my eyes and start meditating, its the storm before the calm, I evaded past it and the amount of thoughts and the power of it started to reduce and  when I reached 0 I had literally run out of thoughts, there was a void, and that was what I had been searching, where you are no longer worried about  your material life problems or bombarded by our human emotions like anger,envy n ego.A great, elusive experience. The trick here in meditation is the need to  to remain in between the 7-13 cycles of brain activity(alpha), Everytime I went down any  deeper(3.5-7 cycles) I would fall asleep(theta), this I did not understand in the beginning and with practise I overcame this problem.

This is the philosophy behind what our elders defined in such simple words -MEDITATION IS NOTHING BUT ABSENCE OF A SINGLE THOUGHT. But it took a half dumb sloth like me nearly 2 years to understand the real meaning behind this one line

My favorite quote on Meditation by Bruce Lee

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.