7.2.8 How do you practice the world-healing meditation?

The world-healing meditation is a straightforward visualisation exercise. Simply focus your awareness on the image, as undistractedly as you can manage. The instructions for the meditation, and the inner processes which determine your experience during the meditation, vary at each stage according to how far you have progressed in your spiritual development.

Visualise clear, pure, white light. Visualise the light located at the crown, the very top, of your head. The more you are able to focus your attention only on this image of pure clear white light, and the less attention you pay to distracting thoughts, the greater will be the benefits of this meditation.

Accept with unwavering faith that this meditative activity immerses you in mind in its purest of conditioned states. If you are religious by nature, you should understand this white light as the manifestation of God’s love. The greater your ability to concentrate on this visualization, the greater will be your immersion in the healing powers of mind in its natural state.

The clear, pure, white light is mind in its simplest conditioned form, transcending all accumulations of positive and negative karmic influences. As you meditate, you realise mind in its original nature, according to your effort and level of consciousness. Bathed in this light, your psycho-physiological system is cleansed of negative karma; bathed in the love of God, you are cleansed of your sins.

Stage 1: Visualise clear, pure, white light located at the crown of your head. Simply be aware of this image located just on the top surface of your head. If you have attained the first stage of enlightenment, you will be able to maintain this degree of concentration effectively and for an adequate period of time.

Stage 2: With each deep, slow in-breath, the body’s inherent sexual energy rises to flow into the purifying light. With each deep, slow out-breath, the body’s implicate energy flows downwards, cleansing as it moves. You will be able to maintain this degree of concentration effectively, for at least fifteen minutes, if you have successfully practised the yoga of sexual energy taught in chapter 5 of Beyond the personality: the beginner’s guide to enlightenment.

Stage 3: Focusing one-pointedly on the pure, clear, white light, the mind’s surface activity in response to stimuli fades away and the mind becomes absorbed in the experience of focusing one-pointedly. The focus of awareness moves from the mind’s activities to the stillness of mind in its natural state. You will be able to perform this meditation successfully if you have attained the second stage of enlightenment.

Stage 4: Focusing the mind one-pointedly on the clear, pure, white light, the mind becomes absorbed in still, serene contemplation. Witnessing this in tranquillity, observe mind pervading and manifesting everywhere, and experience this as that. You will be able to perform this meditation successfully if you have attained the third stage of enlightenment.

According to your ability, heal yourself and heal the world.