Can Meditation Become an Addiction or an Escape from Life?

—There is a particular series of meditations. From time to time, I feel like watching them again, one after another, over two or three days—setting aside time simply to revisit these meditations. When that impulse comes up, what is it? Could it be a search for the states experienced during meditation, as a form of addiction or an escape from external life, from reality?

—If you see reality as the material world and the spiritual world as something else, then it is an escape from reality. But if you see the spiritual world as the source, the foundation, as something broader than the material world, how can you be escaping reality while being at its very foundation?

On the contrary, you are moving into reality. Expanding your perception means moving into reality, not escaping it.

As you expand your perception, you will never come to the conclusion that the material world is unnecessary. You will not conclude that life here is meaningless, that there is no need to live, work, start a family, hammer in a nail, or plant a tree. You will not think that way. You will not stop caring for your physical body. On the contrary, you will understand that it is part of the whole. This is your life. Why would you destroy it? This is reality.

As for the meditations themselves, there are now more than 40. Sitting down and watching them all again over a few days, away from your external surroundings, is a worthwhile practice. It is not the only possible practice, but it is a good one.

Could someone settle into that routine for a month, watching and immersing themselves every day? I think that is unlikely. But if it happens, then that is how it was meant to happen. There is nothing wrong with it. On the contrary, it can be a valuable experience too. The only question is whether the person can do it. If someone can spend, say, 12 hours a day in meditation for a week straight, that is already a serious level of immersion.

I am speaking specifically about the numbered meditations in the series: they carry a particular meaning. There are different meditative practices. These meditations are not aimed simply at calming you down. They are not just ‘listen to music and relax.’

I practice the piano. Whatever state I am in when I sit down to practice, my heart rate immediately drops and my heart rate variability increases. Some time ago, I had a practice session that lasted three hours straight. I did not get up from the chair once. It was only about two hours and forty minutes in that I began to feel tired. My brain started to ‘switch off,’ and a powerful wave of fatigue came over me. It was mental fatigue, though most likely my whole physical system was tired as well. Yet throughout that time, my pulse and heart rate variability indicated recovery. This is very revealing: these are actions that move you into a particular state.

That is not why I study music. But some meditations are aimed specifically at that state—a state of calm. Many people do various things for this purpose: they go swimming, run, or walk. They do something simply to calm their system.

Here is a big question: which is better—swimming in a pool to calm your system, or sitting on the couch and watching a movie? Since I track various measurements, my main focus is on how different states, including states of expanded consciousness, affect those measurements. When I watch a movie, my body rests just as it does when I play the piano. I relax; it does not create tension.

For some people, though, it is the opposite. I have spoken about this before: watching scenes of violence can increase a person's tension and make them feel unwell. Some people cannot watch them. This is largely an individual difference.

Returning to the question of addiction: does being in these states constitute an addiction?

Look how much the world has come to revolve around the mind and society, if we start calling something an addiction when it is actually something people ought to pay a great deal of attention to, but do not.

These days, a person who watches what they eat and avoids sugar may already be called addicted. Someone who looks after their body is called addicted. So is someone who pays attention to their own state.

So the key question is: why are they doing it? Looking after your body can be an addiction if what matters to you is recognition from other people. Or you can look after your body to expand your perception and feel good.

Can you be addicted to meditation?

Yes. If you have created an environment around yourself in which going without certain activities and exercises makes life difficult for you, if you cannot stop talking about it. You can see this in a great many people's blogs, in the way they glorify particular states. It is very easy to pick up on, literally within seconds: what the person is really talking about.

On the other hand, there is professional blogging. People may make videos to get views; that exists too. But if you observe a person more deeply, you begin to see what is an addiction for them and what is not.

• Is travel an expansion of perception or an addiction?
• Is meeting new people freedom or dependence?

Almost any action in the world—not all, but a great many—can be viewed either as an addiction or as an expansion of perception. It all depends on the inner impulse and the inner state.

Exploring yourself is a natural ‘addiction.’ A person's purpose is to know themselves. If the goal is to reach the truth and knowledge of yourself, can you be addicted to that?

You already depend on it, because it is your main task in life, just as a person depends on their physical body and its health. So people say, ‘He is addicted because he looks after his health.’ But this is normal and natural.

It is the same with money. The question is what level you look at it from. In the real world, you need money to live. Without it, you cannot take a flight or get food. Is this a natural dependence, or a dependence on image, on reputation, on feeding particular inner states?

So in meditation, the key question is: what is the impulse directed toward?

If the impulse is directed toward knowing yourself and truly expanding your perception, it does not create an addiction. You can be in that state for years, and it will be natural, good, and normal.

There is another aspect: the physical body, psychophysical programs, heredity, the course of life, and karma. As these intertwine with the search for truth, different states can arise, including addiction. But that happens because of the intertwining, not because of the search itself.

—You always say that meditation means connecting with yourself, with your ‘I.’ But could meditation strengthen the ego rather than dissolve it? Could that connection with your ‘I’ fail to happen?

—That is a very broad question.

Imagine that you are expanding your perception, and you have an ego that is, say, at a level of 300, but you are aware of it only at a level of 30. As your perception expands, you begin to see more, and that ego becomes active. It seems to come alive.

Can that happen? Yes. But you are becoming aware of it. It has not grown larger; it has simply become visible.

Are there meditations that strengthen the ego? Of course.

If you sit down to meditate to gain power, to influence other people, to earn more money, to gain followers, or to prove something, all of that is an expansion of the ego.

If you say that meditation is needed to make money, if you show people, ‘Look, I have made money, and now I will tell you how to develop spiritually,’ that is a typical story. You often see it in entrepreneurial communities: first money, then ‘I need to work on myself,’ ‘I need to find peace.’ All of that is an expansion of the ego.

But again, where does this leave us? Can sports lead to your death? Of course they can. If you start jumping from six meters instead of ten centimeters every second, if you immediately attempt parkour at a professional level, you will get injured and could die. You will be taking actions you should not take, actions that lead to negative development.

It is the same here. In today's material world, meditation is seen as something overwhelmingly positive, like a church or a religion. A person says, ‘My religion is right, and someone else's is not.’ It is seen as an absolute good. But can you harm yourself simply by sitting with your eyes closed and your back straight for 20 minutes a day? No. There is no mechanism for that.

There is another aspect: while in that state, you may come to believe that power is a stronger force for you. You may receive an impulse that you interpret as something ‘higher’—let us provisionally call it ‘dark forces,’ although I do not particularly like that distinction, because there are levels at which it does not exist. But an impulse like that may come: that you are a holy person, that you need to take certain actions. And this can strengthen the ego.

Can you arrive at that by expanding your perception? It is exactly the same question as with power.

The difference is that when perception is expanded, what is called karmic return accelerates. The response comes sooner. Any action is reflected back more quickly. We should not forget that this process exists. In most cases, a person's actions are still transformed through karma—not always, but in most cases.

There are other cases in which a person descends into complete degradation. There are people on Earth who wield great power and will no longer move on to further incarnations. They have been spiritually destroyed; what remains is a robot, a machine. This is not a human being: there can be no question of freedom or pure human energy.

These subjects become relevant when a person develops a real impulse to seek the truth. Why not watch more than 40 meditations again over a few days?

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