You can be in meditation while driving if you understand it as expanded perception rather than “switching off from the world.”
Can you meditate while driving?
Imagine you have asked yourself: can you meditate while driving at all? If you understand meditation as an exercise, the answer is very simple: no, of course not. Because a person supposedly has to close their eyes, sit in a particular position, switch off from the world and go off somewhere, or even concentrate on something, enter some additional, separate state.
But if we look at meditation as expanded perception, the question becomes completely different. Can you drive and be in expanded perception? Can you drive a car and at the same time perceive the road, the space around you, your own state, spiritual processes, the people nearby, your own speech, the movement of thought, spiritual worlds, various processes, business and professional development, your family?
You can. But here is the crucial point: when you’re driving, you must not lose touch with the road. We must remember that we are behind the wheel.
Not “I am meditating, so the road doesn’t matter,” but the opposite: I am so fully engaged that I perceive the road even more clearly.
I had a case when I was coming back from San Francisco. The car was driving on autopilot and suddenly started indicating that I was supposedly inattentive. Apparently, the face or eye sensors read my state as a loss of attention. But inside, I remember very distinctly that I was in complete attention and perception of everything that was happening, especially the fact that I was driving.
I was simultaneously perceiving the road, in a fairly strong spiritual immersion, an immersion in worlds, seeing different spaces, speaking and forming thoughts. And the very fact that I could see where a thought broke off, where words had to be searched for, where the flow wasn’t whole — that is the meditative state, because I am aware of what is actually happening.
Where else perception switches on besides silence
People often think that meditation should happen only in silence, but the state of perception can switch on anywhere: in a meeting, in a conversation with your husband or wife, at work, when you are watching a movie, when you are driving.
There is only one question: are you perceiving what is happening, or have you dropped out? If you have dropped out, it isn’t meditation — you have simply left the meditative state. If you have drifted into sleep, fantasy, some kind of psychophysical coma, into some incomprehensible state — that is not it at all. If you have started perceiving reality more broadly while remaining engaged in what is happening — that is a completely different level.
Meditation is not switching off from life. Meditation is entering life more deeply.
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