A: There is not one answer to that question; there are two answers.
One is that if it is a true meditation, those physical experiences are entirely normal for a while, and eventually they will subside. But there may be physical reaction in the body to true meditation for many, many months, or just many, many weeks. The reason is that when true meditation has been accomplished, and the Spirit really is flowing in consciousness, it begins a purification of the body, and pretty soon all of the impurities of the body that may have been there, and which are present in all humans, dissolve and are eliminated.
Let me explain that. No one ever becomes sick in a moment. Sickness is always something that is growing in a person for a long, long time. In other words, a person may become aware of heart trouble today, but it didn’t start today. It began a long, long time ago. A person may become aware of cancers or tumors today, but that doesn’t mean that it happened today. It has been in the body and growing in the body for a long, long time. Therefore, it is safe to say that no one in the human world is entirely healthy. As a matter of fact, no one is, because there is always a process of ageing and deterioration going on after the age of thirty. So therefore, no human body is completely healthy or free.
Now, when the activity of meditation takes place, and a contact has been established with our source, a purification of consciousness takes place, which translates itself into a purification of mind, and our thoughts become purer, more spiritual, more hopeful, more gracious. And the body in turn begins to lose its impurities, diseases, if there are any forming there. And afterward, when these physical experiences stop, we find that we are really enjoying health, even though we may never know what it is we were healed of. In my early days of meditation, I went through the experience of having physical reactions in the body. But I have learned since that there was a good reason for it, and that there were things there that disappeared and that no longer exist.
Now the other answer is this, that if the meditation is not a true meditation, and one is still engaging in mental activities, that it is nothing more nor less than the result of those mental activities, and the safe thing to do will be disregard those physical manifestations and meditate. Never meditate more than two or three minutes under those circumstances, because if you do, you are just engaging again in mental action, because it would not be possible for you to be really in the spirit and hold it for more than two or three minutes, or even as much as that, until you are far, far advanced into the art of meditation.
I recommend to our students that their meditation periods never be more than two or three minutes, but rather have them twenty times a day, or ten, or eight. Then, as time goes on, they will discover that the two or three minutes have become five without their knowing it. Rarely should any student meditate more than five minutes until they have gone so far on the path that they are really consciously embodied in God. Now the main reason that I say this is that once the mind becomes active, it is not meditation. It is a mental activity, and there’s no use of it. Get back to meditation, even if it is only for thirty seconds, even if you feel no effect from it, and do it ten, twenty, thirty times in a day until you do find yourself settling down into peace.
Now we are going to have a meditation in which we will use words and thoughts through which to enter the meditation, but then the meditation itself will last only a half a minute or a minute. Actually, when I am conducting a meditation for you, I can hold you for three or four or five minutes in it, and as you are advanced, I can hold you for eight hours. But you cannot do it for yourself until you reach that elevation of consciousness.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording Recording 269B: 1959 San Diego Special Class, “Questions and Answers.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
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