How to Choose a Meditation and a Teacher: What Can You Really Rely On?

AVAlexander Volchek

Am I right that I can enter a meditative state at different times in my life in general? You can enter samadhi while watching television, simply watching a movie.

GAGalya

How are your meditations different from others? When I tell someone I watch meditations or invite them to one, I cannot find the words to explain why they absolutely should come to yours. People are used to meditations for calm or something like that. When they ask, “What happens there?” the word that always comes to me is: “There is truth there.” That is an explanation, but I cannot explain what I mean. How would you answer that question? How are your meditations different from others?

AVAlexander Volchek

First, we should start with what someone means by meditation. I talk about this a lot on the channel, and I want to explain again that people understand the word “meditation” very differently. When you describe meditation to someone, you have one understanding in mind, while they understand something completely different. That is why they ask how the meditations differ or what is special about them. If you ask that question from the standard understanding of meditation—if we look up what it is—it will say that meditation is an activity that brings a person into, say, a calm state, some kind of “spiritual connection with yourself.” There will be abstractions, but the emphasis is mainly on exercises. It is like what happened to yoga. Yoga ended up becoming physical exercise. Meditation, in that understanding, is an exercise to calm yourself. Just yesterday, I think, I recorded a video for the channel—probably this one, perhaps my other one—and said that on bands such as WHOOP, meditation falls under recovery. Essentially, the person is supposed to calm down, enter a calm mode.

That is how society defines it. If we classify meditation only as recovery for the physical body, then what does the person want to compare? What are they comparing? Music they like, the person they listen to, the absence of people, certain images, whether you need to wear headphones, go to the ocean, or sit in a particular position? They are comparing external characteristics, trying to distinguish things by those characteristics. What is the person basing this on? When you talk to them, it is as though you come from different planets. They ask about external factors you never intended to explain. You are not saying that the meditation is led by someone with a particular image or appearance, with a dog of a certain color in the background, children running around, or whether the person has a family. You are saying none of that matters at all. They could lead it in a basement, outdoors, or by the ocean.

What difference does it make? It does not matter at all. Let us call it an additional aspect—an additional aspect that can even get in the way. I am sitting here with a beautiful view and the sounds of nature, for example. Those sounds could even interfere with general recovery. Now let us approach meditation from the other side. It is a state—a state, not an action—in which someone has expanded perception. Or we might call it an action: a person is in expanded perception and strives toward that expansion. Although “strives” is a very relative word. There is nothing worse you can do than come to meditation to get a result. Come for the sake of a result. Yesterday I led a meditation in our group and described certain states that were happening. Not everyone was connected with that state. Someone sent me a private message: “I felt that was me.” That is what wanting to attain a particular state looks like. If you want to attain a particular state, that is it: trouble. If feeling that you did not connect becomes a problem for you, or not seeing what is being described becomes a problem, that is an enormous block.

If we see meditation as a particular state, we are saying that a meditative state should essentially be present throughout your life. It is not a separate, special moment that happens with another person or when you are alone; when you are sitting, standing, lying down, or crawling; in a quiet or noisy place; at work, at home, in a park, in town, or in a coffee shop. Meditation is not tied to those circumstances. A meditative state can arise at absolutely any moment of life, including when you are watching television. I remember a reel in which Sadhguru mentioned a meditative state—or samadhi, I think, was his example. Samadhi is not simply a meditative state; it is a state of quite deep immersion, connection with your spiritual structure or various structures. I do not want to give a precise description now; it would become theoretical. But he said you can enter samadhi while watching television, simply watching a movie. You have entered a certain state of silence, calm, and so on. The question is whether you know how to notice it.

Or do people notice these states only when someone sits them in a chair and they say, “Yes, now I am feeling something. Yes, I have relaxed”? Obviously, if you have been somewhere with lots of snakes and flies, and someone seats you in a dark room and gives you tea, you will relax too. Can we call that meditation? Likewise, if you have worked fourteen- or sixteen-hour days for two years, and then someone takes you away, sits you in a particular space, and plays music that balances the physical body in any case, you relax. Obviously you will relax. Is that meditation? Again, that is what modern society calls meditation. I certainly do not call it that. So the first difference—although “difference” implies comparison. I do not think comparison makes sense here; comparing these ideas of expanded consciousness is meaningless. But here is the difference: here we are talking about oranges, and there we are talking about ants. Completely different, incomparable phenomena. You cannot compare them in essence, because seeking a state of calm and entering it are different from moving into expanded perception.

Now let us move to the next, crucial aspect. We are not talking about simply entering a particular state of perception, but about beginning to perceive your life. When you begin to perceive your life, the very experience of its flow and of the energy within it changes. It is not that life itself changes. Everyone wants to change everything all the time, and for the better. But your sense, knowledge, and understanding of that life change. They change. You begin to know the truth. You begin to know the truth. That is very important. In material terms, knowing the truth means knowing that this person thinks you are bad, that this one stole something from you, that another thanks you every day but you do not hear it. This person has hated you all your life, that one set you up. This one carries kindness toward you in their heart, approaches you with kindness, and brings gifts out of kindness, not ego. This person wants to manipulate you or take advantage of you; that one was unfaithful; another will die sooner than you could even imagine, and you will suffer because of it.

Here you will lose something, there you will gain something, and so on. Expanded perception is not knowledge of the future; it is knowledge of the present moment, of what is happening now. Of course, to some extent it also includes knowledge of the past and future. But the most important thing is understanding the truth now, here and now—a real understanding of now. For example, I feel bad now not because the sun is not shining, but for other reasons. Understanding the real aspects of life, causes and effects. Most importantly, confronting the reality of your own personality: knowing what you actually feel and want, what kind of person you really are, and how you relate to other people.

How I relate to other people. There is a whole range of perception here. If someone really understands what they carry and what they do—truly understands it, and understands it out of love—they will not feel very good. From the perspective of material life as it is usually described, they will not feel very good. That is important. From the perspective of development and knowing the truth, it is a great miracle. But in ordinary life, people do not want to experience or enter these states. So we are not talking simply about expanded perception. We are talking about knowing the truth, and the truth of what is happening now. That is the fundamental level—the fundamental level we can discuss. When we compare, we can ask ourselves: am I right that I can enter meditative states at different times in my life, including in a math class with a professor, watching television, planting a flower in the garden, talking with my manager, or simply looking ahead at a wall? Just looking at a wall.

Yes, you can reach these aspects of expanded consciousness. The question is whether you do, and how much you can direct that expanded consciousness and go deeper into further layers. There is a very important range here. A person perceives many different layers simultaneously. Some are active, some are not. You are sitting here now, and you probably are not feeling your esophagus or larynx at this moment. If I draw your attention to it, you might say, “Oh, there are some sensations there,” or “I ate something that did not agree with me.” You begin to observe it. As we shift our consciousness and develop spiritual sight, entering expanded consciousness and perception, that expansion fundamentally becomes possible through developing spiritual organs of perception. These are not simply the senses of seeing with your eyes, smelling, or touching. You begin to see, hear, and know things that cannot be materially explained in terms of the physical body. Expanded perception is, of course, the development of these organs of perception. That is a very important aspect to understand: developing these organs of perception. Why?

That is the point of expanded perception: to begin seeing areas your ordinary vision fundamentally cannot reach. Cannot reach. It is as though, in ordinary sight, I told you your perception was being expanded and gave you binoculars. But here you are given a new organ of sight, or a new organ of knowing, which is no less important. You might know something because you watched this video, or because you simply came to know it from different worlds. I will not go into exact details now: different ranges of worlds, time, timelessness, different areas of perception. You simply know it, somehow. Just as you sometimes know that someone will die tomorrow, or someone will fall ill, or you are about to see a red or blue car. You know it without understanding where that knowledge came from. Here you begin to see, perceive, and understand more, encountering other ranges of perception. But these are only echoes of what truly happens in expanded consciousness. Fundamentally, the person's task in expanded consciousness is to know what is actually happening and thereby perceive themselves as a whole.

I am not even going further into developing that wholeness in a particular way or along a particular path: connection with solar energy, forming certain spiritual bodies, and everything else. But if you have expanded your perception, you can move along that path more consciously. That is the important point: more consciously. For the most part, you will move along it anyway—through forests, roads, pits, particular worlds, deaths, and new births. So there will be ten extra deaths. What difference does it make? You will move toward it in your own way. Nor is there a concept of “higher.” In certain areas, in the radiance of your spiritual being, there is no concept of right or wrong at all. It is so relative. So relative. Incredibly so. As you move toward expanding, developing organs of perception, and sensing your wholeness, you enter a phase of forming your spiritual bodies. Some things can only be done through perception. Then you move to a level at which your spiritual system, your spiritual being, begins to develop not only on the plane of material incarnation in a physical body, but as a spiritual being in its own right.

Here is the paradox, Galya. Take the people you talk to, those who ask these questions. The modern person asking about meditation is not interested in two factors at all. First, they live in the material world and do not ground themselves in the spiritual world as primary. They do not. However much they ground themselves in it, however much they believe themselves, however much people talk about meditating, in most cases the physical world is what matters to them. It matters. You can ask simple questions or difficult ones. Are you prepared, for the sake of truth, for your child to die right now? You could ask about giving your own life, dying right now, but there are more wrenching questions. It is a stupid question. A stupid question. Yet through that stupid question, at least if it is asked from truth, you can look honestly at yourself and say, “Listen, for now I want to wait. For now I do not understand what is meant. I would be ready for someone else to die, but not my own child.”

Does the person have a foundation in the spiritual world? I am not saying this so that anyone should die, but so you can understand where you really are and what you live for. You can live for your child, your wife or husband, a tree in the street, a flower, or simply ordinary work. There is no problem with that. No problem at all. It is a true, normal, natural intention. Add to that a pure, loving, compassionate, heartfelt attitude toward other people, forgetting your personal interests, and that is more than enough. Here, though, we are talking about a slightly different level. First, paradoxically, if someone grounds themselves in the physical world rather than the spiritual world, seeing the spiritual as some possible illusion off to the side, they do not have the same clarity about it that I have about having two eyes. There is no clarity. Then discussing reality with that person is pointless. It is like discussing the variety of colors and color ranges with someone who cannot see, and arguing over whether this tree is green, orange, or gold.

It is pointless. Simply pointless. Why? Why start that discussion at all? Someone who does not perceive colors, who has no eyes, may insist, “I hear a sound; I see ten cars ahead.” You say, “Those are not cars; that is the wind.” It is pointless, an absolutely meaningless discussion. You are relying on different points of perception. The second important area concerns people who do at least partly ground themselves in the spiritual world, or live in its perception. What matters more to you: your spiritual life as a whole, or your current thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred years—your present incarnation? If you cannot ground yourself in the wholeness of your spiritual life and perceive your true path—within which your present life is fleeting—that does not mean this life is unimportant or meaningless. At this moment, in this video, it has complete, one-hundred-percent meaning: for recording this video and for our conversation. But on your personal path as a spiritual being, or mine, it is one part of the journey.

It is not meaningless or useless, of course not. It is one part. If someone does not carry that understanding within them, how can they compare? How can they compare meditations? In many of my meditations—I have a numbered series—I often say that this develops your spiritual system and your spiritual being. But why would a person need to develop their spiritual being? Why develop the spiritual system? Why develop things that do not relate to their present life? I have taken many spiritual trips, things called retreats or something like retreats. Some involved a deliberate effort to acquire spiritual knowledge. In that setting, the teacher or organizer would say, cautiously, “Well, the main group—

Well, the main group, of course, will not experience anything. They need this for future lives. For future lives.” There is a big question about whether comparison makes any sense. What does a particular energy “for this life” or “for the next life” mean? What is it? Saying “for future lives” is a kind of embellishment of the fact that someone else received something for their present life. I do not think I am picking on anyone, but overall, it is an embellishment. So I received some energy here and now. What of it? It is like another tree being planted on my property. All right, it was planted. It made no difference to me. Another tree. Just another tree. What difference has it made? Or suppose I had another car. Fine: I could drive a different car on another day. Does that have an effect or change anything? In a very abstract way. On one hand, it might make a substantial difference if you crashed that car. On the other, it might be another tree in the garden. This also relates to why people keep practicing particular methods or meditations intensively, or stop continuing with them.

It is like your ability to perceive different trees every day in the same way, to see life in them every time. To see life in them every time. It is simply life's movement, and you contemplate it, including from the perspective of the spiritual world. So comparison is very relative here. What would I compare, Galya? I would ask the people leading meditations, “Why do you do this?” That is all. Or ask the person attending, “Why do you go?” When they tell you why, I would ask what the person leading it says about that: why do they do it? What do you receive? Then I would compare. Here is what I say I receive; here is what the other person says. Comparison is very relative, especially with meditative practices, when we are saying consciousness can expand while watching a movie. It can happen—not that it does, but that it can. Or while talking with different people. Still, if you are comparing things in order to choose, compare what the person wants to bring you. Hear them. Try to hear them a little more fully, without limiting yourself.

When you hear a little more, you will immediately see what matters to the other person. Why are they doing it? Notice that people can do it simply for money: organizing a space. Yesterday, in the video about retreats and the word “retreat,” I read the definition. It is an internationally accepted name for an organized event. An organized event, mainly aimed at some kind of spiritual trip, a search for oneself, a gathering. An organized event. That means absolutely anyone can organize one without deceiving anyone. The question is what they then exaggerate, what they bring through it, what they are trying to show, what aspects and meanings they present. If you really want to compare, imagine someone who cannot see, Galya. You tell them, “We need to go into the green room.” Someone else says, “We need to go into the blue room,” or the yellow one. How can someone who cannot see compare them? They need to attend, and more than once. How else can they compare or truly come to understand?

Going once, sitting there, and feeling light and good afterward says nothing at all. Nothing. Tell most people in the world to sit in a chair for thirty minutes with their backs straight and their eyes closed, and most will calm down. Retreats were described mainly as taking place in forests, fields, natural spaces. Obviously, if you leave the city, the noise, and everything else for nature, you will feel a little better. But how will you feel, and what energy will you enter? What kind of energy will it be? Then people start inventing explanations: “That is becoming a hermit; you should not do it. People lose energy. If they do not keep doing this, they need to remain in those energies. It is better not to lose the energy of business. If you lose it…” Meaningless cause-and-effect conclusions based entirely on illusion. The same applies to someone's ability to become a hermit. Someone thinks they made that decision. Really? Then make it. I often give this example: some people can give up their jobs and stop working.

Others cannot. They simply cannot. They can say whatever they like, but they cannot do it. Just as some people cannot start working. They do not have the energy. No energy. Someone says they do not like playing the piano, so they have never learned it. Or they do not like swimming, running, sports, or public speaking. For the most part, you do not have the energy for it. The energy is absent; it simply is not there. There is no impulse and no energy. No energy to feel calm with your children. You sit calmly for four hours while they go wild and wreck things, and you are calm. Simply calm. Someone else watches for thirty seconds and cannot bear to stay. One person can lead a meeting for four hours as cool as a cucumber. Another lasts two minutes and is done for. It eats away at them for the rest of their life; they are psychologically traumatized. So when we talk about entering a particular state, we need to understand that doing so also requires the impulse and the energy.

Galya, you attend my meditations for reasons unknown to you, or only partly known. Even though you have spent hundreds—probably not hundreds anymore, but thousands—of hours exploring why you are there. Hundreds of hours investigating that. And still, the reasons are unknown to you. You know only part of why you are there.

You know yourself that the impulse, the inner desire to take certain actions, read certain books, travel somewhere, or spend time with certain people arises and automatically draws a person there. It is not that they sit down and mentally compare parameters in ChatGPT—who is better at what, who is worse—and then go. Well, run a comparison of meditations in ChatGPT. Suggest it to people: compare them there. But today, you could tell ChatGPT, “Compare these meditations across fifty parameters. Derive those parameters from the meanings people convey through them. Study all these people's materials about meditation, and study the meditations themselves. Compare what they talk about. Do not base it on the generally accepted Wikipedia definition or on how meditation is described in a particular city or country. Expand your consciousness to include ancient texts from India, Egypt, Greece, and any other religious traditions. Expand it to include new movements, future ones, old ones. Compare all kinds of teachers, from modern figures such as Steiner and Krishnamurti to ancient yogis and initiates, from the Bible and various mysteries to absolutely any books and everything else. Establish at least fifty comparison parameters, based not only on these people but on other sources.

And compare forty people and their meditations. Include this person, the person you watch, and everyone else.” Then, Galya, perhaps ChatGPT would produce a particular result. There is your prompt. Your comparison prompt. It would produce a result without being biased. But what do people want to compare? What do they want to hear from you? “This person spent fifty-six years in a cave. The Dalai Lama personally received him, and so did the Pope. Everyone received him, all the presidents too.” People like that. “And he talked with trillionaires,” and so on. What do people like? They can say as much as they want that they simply like spiritual leaders. But give a trillionaire or billionaire—billionaires, or future trillionaires; there are no trillionaires yet, but there will be—a few more spiritual attributes. Say they have been meditating for fifty years and traveling everywhere, and that is it. That is it! Every so often I see people promoting events by saying someone was in the group that traveled to India with Steve Jobs, that they were meditating together. What does Steve Jobs have to do with it? What does being there with him have to do with it?

What kind of comparison is that? Do you see? What even is that? Those are bad energies. Bad. They immediately begin destroying everything, every space, every consciousness. The very act of comparison begins to destroy.