ONE MINUTE MEDITATION

At a time when pace is at a premium, here is a computer program which tells you just how evolved you are and how much further you have to go; all in a minute's time Did you think meditation is a luxury of the leisure class or meant for anchorites draped in sackcloth? Wrong. One of the virtues of the consumer age is its inability to discriminate. If it can dole out slickly tetrapacked fruit juices, it can deliver instant meditation too. Spare a moment; walk into a Brahma Kumaris' center, and try their One Minute Meditation if you are curious about where you stand in the hierarchy of spiritual evolution. You are likely to meet a grim instructor who will first advise you on what to think in that precious minute. Think: "I am a soul, distinct from my body. I am emanating into the body. My basic characteristic is peace but I am unable to discover it." These suggestions are supposed to aid the difficult job of evicting all impish thoughts which crowd your mind. Next, you will be seated in front of a computer and sensors wired to your wrists. Close your eyes and meditate for a minute. While your mind slows down, the sensors will translate the mechanical beat of your pulsation into electromagnetic signals which will be visible on the screen in the form of waves and visual. Suddenly your spiritual elevation, or the lack of it, will be on display. Depending on the frequency of the waves, notwithstanding your calm exterior, you may discover yourself to be as spiritual as Genghis Khan. Or, perhaps in spite of your pugnacious appearance, you may well be hovering around a state of near-Buddhahood, about to be catapulted out of the vicious circle of rebirth. Designed by the Spiritual Application Research Center (SPARC), a branch of the Prajapita Brahma Kumaris Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya, this program demonstrates the mind-body connection. SAPPER was set up because the institution believes that only if science and spirituality work together is it possible to resolve the current global crises and make this world a better place to live in. The Brahma Kumaris sect was founded by Dada Lekh Raj, later known as Prajapita Brahma, in the late 1930s. Born in Sind, now in Pakistan, he established himself as a jewel merchant in Calcutta in later life. But even as a merchant he was spiritually inquisitive. Today the sect, with its headquarters in the picturesque Mount Abu, has 3,000 center in India and 66 other countries, where training is imparted in meditation, values, positive thinking and human resource development. The institution is affiliated as an NGO to Unicef and the Economic and Social Council of the UN.

Meanwhile, the seconds are ticking in your one-minute meditation session. The monitor is displaying changing waves and visual analogies. The best visual is that of a fish, which, with progressive relaxation, metamorphoses into a mermaid, then a beautiful maiden, then an angel which finally dissolves into a star, frontally suggesting the astral abode of a becalmed soul. But if you are racked with tensions and anxiety—as the average person tends to be—you are unlikely to emerge from the watery abode of the fish. The nature of the graph reflects how relaxed you are or how much in control of your mind. Explains Arun Kumar of SPARC: "From the quality of the waves you can make out how stable the person is. The waves which have the least variance reflect stability, though the cycle may repeat itself in a higher or lower frequency." A state where there is no variance at all is called the delta level, where the person is in full control of his mind—a sign of enlightenment. I But, cautions Kanhaiya Lall, another SPARC member: "Meditation is not instantaneous, the One Minute Meditation program is really for beginners, who cannot be slotted in any of the four higher stages of alpha, beta, gamma and delta." So next time you sit under the big banyan tree, braced for enlightenment, you know what to achieve.