consciousness. Like the conjurer who summons into existence many strange and unexpected things, the process of meditation invites many absurd and unwanted thoughts. The aspirant must expect and be prepared for all these disturbing thoughts and should exercise inexhaustible patience with unshakable confidence that ultimately all these disturbances will be overcome.
The last but not least important condition for attaining success in meditation is adoption of the right technique for handling disturbing thoughts and mental influences. Technique of dealing with disturbing thoughts It is useless to waste psychic energy by trying directly to combat and repress disturbing thoughts. Any such attempt involves giving further attention to them and they feed upon the very attention given for the purpose of repressing them, thereby being further strengthened and confirmed in consciousness. It is best to ignore them and turn to the object of meditation as early as possible without attaching any undue importance to the disturbing factors. By recognising the irrelevance and worthlessness of disturbing thoughts, and the relative value and importance of the object of meditation, it becomes possible to let the disturbing thoughts die through sheer neglect, thus making the mind permanently steady in the object of meditation.

Part II
THE CHIEF TYPES OF MEDITATION AND THEIR RELATIVE VALUE

MEDITATION is of different types which can be conveniently distinguished from each other on the basis of three distinct principles. Types of meditation classified by three principles They can be classified either on the basis of the function meditation performs in spiritual advancement, or the part of personality that is predominantly brought into play during the process of meditation, or the items of experience it tries to understand. Of these three principles, any one can be adopted for the classification of the different types of meditation. The last principle will be used later while giving a detailed account of the different forms of meditation, as it is most suitable for enumerative purposes. This part will make use of the first two principles, as they are helpful in different ways in explaining the relative value of the various forms of meditation.
With reference to the first principle, meditation has to serve the purpose of associating consciousness with the eternal Truth, and of dissociating consciousness from the false and unimportant things of the phenomenal