Description
New Age. Nonfiction. HTML:Lawrence LeShan's classic guide to meditation introduced mindfulness to an entire generation. Now it's back in a special ebook edition. Since its initial publication nearly 50 years ago, this simple yet powerful guide has helped more than a million readers reap the profound and limitless rewards of meditation. Now, in a special new edition, How to Meditate is back, singing the virtues of a quiet mind in the overstimulating bustle of the modern world. Outlining a realistic and no-nonsense approach that will enable you to bring meditation effortlessly into your life, no matter how thinly stretched you are, How to Meditate is unrivaled as a source of inspiration and practical instruction for anyone seeking inner peace, relief from stress, and increased self-knowledge.… (more)
Library's review
With his simple, straightforward approach, Lawrence LeShan de-mystifies meditation. No matter what you do or how busy you are, his brief, realistic guide lets you explore the
Lawrence LeShan, a pioneer in exploring therapeutic and ethical implications of meditation, is a practicing psychotherapist. The author of The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal, he conducts training seminars in meditation.
'If you have started your journey (or even if you're just considering it), How to Meditate is recommended equipment for the first steps.'-Hank Basayne, Association for Humanistic Psychology.
Contents
Why we meditate
How a meditation feels
The psychological effects of meditation
The physiological effects of meditation
The basic types of meditation
Structured and unstructured meditations
Mysticism, meditation and the paranormal
The 'How' of meditation
Alluring traps in meditation and mysticism
Is a teacher necessary for meditation? Choosing your own meditational path
The integration of psychotherapy and meditation: A set of guidelines for psychotherapists
The social significance of meditation
Afterword by Edgar N. Jackson
Notes
User reviews
The actual instructions for meditative practice in chapter 8 are adequate, and cover a respectably diverse set of techniques. Chapter 9 consists entirely of negative advice, i.e. traps to avoid, and much of it is useful. I especially liked the passage warning against "'Vibrations,' 'Energy,' and Other Cheap Explanations of Things." (83-88) But in the subsequent section, LeShan cavalierly dismisses all theories of occult correspondence, appreciating neither their value as conventions in communicating ideas, nor the ways in which they reflect systems of congruence. (A better instruction reads, "...so also is the triad Osiris, Isis, Horus like that of a horse, mare, foal, and of red, blue, purple. And this is the foundation of Correspondences. But it were false to say 'Horus is a foal' or 'Horus is purple'. One may say: 'Horus resembles a foal in this respect, that he is the offspring of two complementary beings'."--Liber 175, point 32)
A repeated refrain throughout the book is the author's contempt and derision for those who would presume to acquire mystical experience by psychopharmaceutical means. He presents drugs and meditation as exclusive alternatives, never considering the possibility--indeed the likelihood suggested by traditions around the world and throughout history--that the two may complement and assist one another: psychedelic drugs being enhanced by the mental discipline of meditation, and meditation being potentiated by the breakthrough experiences of "heroic" drug use (to use the terminology of Terrence McKenna, a theorist with a much better handle on this conundrum). In a typical piece of anti-drug rhetoric, LeShan insists that "meditation (as opposed to ... drugs) does not produce bad trips" (25); but later he concedes that meditation has its own hazards, including "depressions and bad trips." (64)
The basic typology offered here corresponds to the yogas: jnana yoga ("The Path Through the Intellect"), bhakti yoga ("The Path Through the Emotions"), hatha yoga ("The Path Through the Body") and karma yoga ("The Path Through Action"). But there are a good range of examples from other cultures and traditions, rather than a fixation on the Indian forms. Curiously, given the set selected, there is no type equivalent to raja yoga. This omission is all the more surprising in light of the goofy definition and etymology that he provides for "mystic" as "training in closing off all those artificial factors which ordinarily keep us from this knowledge, this birthright we have lost." (7)
Since the author is a psychologist, the overall approach is predictably secularist, and although he does go to some lengths to discuss various religious contexts for meditation, he does so on the basis of universalist assumptions. In fact, he goes beyond religious universalism to a metaphysical universalism that comprehends traditional mysticisms, parapsychology, and modern physics, in what would shortly after his writing of this book become a staple of the New Age worldview. An afterword praising LeShan is provided by a clergyman-psychologist.
LeShan is ideologically opposed to initiatory secrecy--which has little enough to do with meditation per se, but is often found in traditional contexts that facilitate or encourage meditation. LeShan does not see the value of such secrecy, only its potential for abuse. He writes, "Can you imagine a Socrates, a Jesus, a Buddha, telling his disciples that his wisdom was to be kept secret?" (102) Not only can I imagine it, I don't have to. Mark 4:10-12 is a perfectly canonical instance.
As someone with some background and experience in the topic of this primer, I may not be the best judge of its appeal for those to whom it was directed. Reading it was good for me, though, inspiring me to revisit some practices that have served me well in the past, but have become a little dusty in my recent work.
Why do we meditate?
Finally, the afterword by Edgar N. Jackson provides a summing up and places LeShan's book in the context of the history of spiritual thought. With the inclusion of referential footnotes this text is an impressive short presentation of meditation for the the thoughtful reader.