Meditation

It has become an established yet erroneous belief around the world and most particularly in the West that meditation is  synonymous with hypnotism. Ironical as it may seem, the science of Yoga on its side asserts that man is already under the spell of hypnotism and compares our actual state to that of a sleepwalker whose actions are performed in the absence of consciousness or whose deeds are motivated by unconscious energy and impressions of the mind. While in normal hypnotism one has to be hypnotised by an expert on this matter, the hypnotism to which Yoga refers, is very subtle and hardly discernible, and the expert hypnotist is the world itself and all that it withholds. Some of us are mesmerised by power and wealth while others brood over beauty and fame; still some are dazzled by the possession of material objects. In one way or another, we are all in a hypnotic state.