Are all types of meditation equally beneficial?

Answer Podcast

So are all types of meditation equally beneficial? Often meditation is equated with deep thinking. And that is fine.
Any kind of deep thought can be called as meditation. But words have general meanings and they also have specific meanings. So for example, if a scientist is doing some research and then they have charged some battery and the battery runs out of power.
And then they say, I have run out of energy. And after a long day’s work, the scientist comes back home. And they tell their family member, I have run out of energy.
The word energy is the same. But they use it in two different contexts. In the laboratory, it is used in the specific context of the particular device and the energy it has.
Here it is used generically in terms of, I am tired now. So like that, in a generic sense, any kind of deep thought can be used to refer to meditation, can be called as meditation. But in a specific, when we come to spiritual circles, meditation refers to the not just deep thinking, but thinking about spiritual reality.
So only when our thoughts rise from the material level to the spiritual level, then actually we are meditating. So now for this meditation, there can be various starting points. So for example, some people may meditate on their breath and try to slow down their breath.
That itself can calm us down. Some people may focus on a candle. Some people may focus on a light.
Some people may just look at nature. And all these can help us to calm down. And that is, so we can say we are meditating, but that is meditation in the sense of deep thought.
It is not meditation in the sense of spiritual thinking. For spiritual thinking, we need a spiritual stimulus. So a spiritual stimulus can come from various sources.
And mantra, when we do mantra meditation, there is, the mantra is actually not just ordinary sound. It is spiritual power encased in sound. So it is spiritual power encased in sound.
So when we focus on the sound of mantras, then we are not just calming our mind so that we can focus on spiritual reality. Rather, spiritual reality is becoming accessible to us. And when you talk about mantras, this mantra, for example, we chanted the Hare Krishna mantra earlier.
This is also a form of addressing the Supreme Consciousness. See, we are finite consciousness and there is infinite consciousness. So when we address the infinite consciousness, that infinite consciousness reciprocates and helps us in elevating ourselves.
So just like if, say, I had to go to a top of a 10-story building, I can go up by the staircase by my own effort. But if there is electric power, I just enter into an elevator. The elevator will help me rise up.
Elevator is the electric power that is there. It is a power outside me, higher than, different from me, that will help me rise up. So normally, when we meditate on different objects in this world, they can all prompt us towards spiritual thinking.
But that is like climbing up a staircase, where we depend primarily on our effort to elevate ourselves. Whereas, when we focus on spiritual sound, when we focus on the sound of mantras, then those mantras are like elevators of consciousness. We just focus on the mantra, and by focusing on the mantra, it’s like entering the elevator, and the elevator rises upwards.
So we’ll find the spiritualization of consciousness happening much faster through mantra meditation than through other forms of meditation. Does this answer your question? Any other questions?