Sri M demystifies meditation in new book

Spiritual teacher Sri M seeks to decode complex meditation methods to make them simple and easy for everyone to practise in their everyday lives.

He has come up with a new book titled "On Meditation: Finding Infinite Bliss and Power Within" in which he answers a bevy of questions on the practice and benefits of meditation.

According to the Satsang Foundation head, meditation is a very wide concept.

Meditation is a state which one enters when he or she is concentrating for a length of time with absolutely no distractions, he says.

"The object you are meditating on, the meditator and the process all become one. Once you experience this, all other definitions simply become techniques towards the goal. There is no reaching out or grasping. Just being. There is a cessation of all movement," he says.

Sri M also advises his followers not to confine meditation to a technique.

"Meditation is to be fully absorbed in something with the exclusion of something else. This is meditation. Choose what appeals to you, but don't say the other is wrong," he writes in the book, published by Penguin Random House India.

The book is in a question-answer format with queries, ranging from what should one wear while meditating to keeping eyes open or closed to why can't someone meditate after alcohol consumption if it relaxes that person.

Sri M provides many of his answers with anecdotes.

He also says that improper food and overeating interfere with meditation.

"Avoid food which has too much fat. Avoid food which takes too much energy to digest, because then all your energy goes into digesting. Even though you get your protein supply, the energy content is less and you will always want to sleep. So, eat light foods," he suggests.

Born as Mumtaz Ali in Thiruvananthapuram, Sri M wrote his memoir "Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master: A Yogi's Autobiography" and a sequel, "The Journey Continues". He has also authored a novel titled "Shunya".