Group Meditation

Dorothy E. Johnson

 

One aspect of group meditation is our attempt to express the eternal in terms of the temporal, or rather, perhaps, to help the eternal break through into the temporal. When we are together how far, if at all, is this dependent on the communication of the spoken thought?

In any group there may be some in whose personal life private meditation has been increasingly an integral part, so that, especially in the environment that group worship gives, the spirit is in its familiar home, and they can leave behind the outside world including, eve, their fellow-worshipers. When someone speaks they may, or may not, hear the spoken words. Is then their group meditation any different from their private meditation except that the group has kindly provided them with an easy approach? If any were able to hear what was said, would there be any difference in the content and quality of their experience of group worship from what it is now? Can we analyze our experiences sufficiently to find out what we give and get in group meditation?

What difference does that spiritual experience which crystallizes out in words in that particular time, place, and circumstances, make to the “group” experience? This, I take it, may be considered the breaking through of the eternal into the temporal within the limitations of the time, of the place, of the personality giving and on the personalities receiving. Is it important? Is it an objective we constantly reach? Is it an ideal even, to be achieved? What is the relationship of these two aspects, the one dependent, and the other independent of speech? Is one more to be desired than the other? Can we really experience group worship or group meditation with only the first? Again, what does an individual do, or how does he react when the light which reaches to speech in the meeting is from that part of the spectrum not even complementary to the colour band across his own consciousness?

Theoretically, the light would not break through—God’s voice would not be heard—speech would not come, until the centering down process of each member of the group had taken place and all were actively listening. But suppose all were “centred down”, in what way can the inner light of the group expressed in speech by one, break through to those who do not hear the spoken words? And is the foregoing, if shared by all, often or seldom, a description of what happens in practice? How do we know when it does happen? Would be destroy it by trying to find it?