Our modern world is facing a significant number of problems given the dire economic (unemployment) and environmental crises, unprecedented psychologically stressful conditions, an alarming increase in suicide and divorce cases, depressing corporate target-oriented jobs, loneliness in lives after COVID, incompatible relations, bad habits of alcoholic and drug addiction.
On the social front, the lack of communal harmony, the massive pendency of 2.5 crores of court cases, health hazards, and a high rate of crime have negatively affected the lives of the masses in India and abroad.
In such a bleak scenario, a new phenomenon emerges: SOCIAL MEDITATION. Narender Kumar Malhotra illuminates this new dimension of meditation: social or societal.
He explains: –
What is the literal meaning of the word meditation?
What is Spiritual Meditation
What is the present and the prevalent notion of Social Meditation
What is Social Meditation: The Vision of Narender Kumar Malhotra
Meditation originates from the Latin mediatum, thinking, pondering, or focusing on a thing or idea.
Still, spiritualists have monopolized this word, so the word meditation is used mainly in the sense of spiritual meditation. Malhotra now explains what spiritual meditation is. It is a device for the upliftment of a simple human soul up to divine heights, which enables the practitioner to have a body-mind balance, to have a metaphysical vision, to develop mindfulness to transgress limiting personal, social, and communal beliefs, and to reach a state of mind of pure consciousness, super consciousness and collective consciousness which culminates in universal consciousness. Such a state of mind brings about a complete self-transformation in the meditation practitioner, enabling him to enjoy a life of calmness, relaxation, and blissfulness. He becomes one with God and surrenders completely before the will of the Divinity.
Narender Malhotra explains the present and prevalent notion of social meditation, which means meditating in social groups with like-minded people to bring about better health and well-being and positive changes in their cognitional, emotional, and social behavior. Their main emphasis is on the spiritual upliftment of others through group meditation. Some spiritual-cum-social meditational groups have also worked effectively to remove bad habits such as alcoholism, drug addiction, and smoking.
Narender Malhotra enunciates his concept, perspective, and vision of social and societal meditation. His vision of this dimension of social meditation is far more comprehensive, holistic, all-inclusive, all-encompassing, and all-pervasive.
He describes the plethora of problems with their mammoth size before society and the world, which he wants to correct and remove with his social or societal meditation concept. These sins and problems are as follows: The alarming increase in divorce cases in India and abroad has resulted in disastrous effects on family lives due to their fast disintegration. This has caused problems of drug addiction, smoking, and alcoholism in all sections of society, irrespective of age and nationalities, across the world.
A hazardous problem is a formidable increase in the number of suicide cases among students, unemployed youths, security personnel, homemakers, and corporate employees due to failures and fiascoes in their respective fields due to the incompetencies and unresponsiveness of the administrative and political systems of India and abroad.
Another horrible problem is the pendency of 2.5 crore cases in the Indian judicial system. This has affected almost every family, resulting in frustrations, dejections, and desperation. This has led to an enormous increase in the crime rate in India, again due to the non-functional and ineffective system.
One more horrendous problem is the complete absence of communal harmony in India and abroad. Different communities and nations are at war due to communal, religious, and racial issues.
The massive increase in the number of criminals and jail inmates languishing in jails due to incompetent administrative, judicial, and political regimes, particularly in India. The topic may sound more connected with administration and politics rather than having any spiritual and social meditation connotations.
However, I will establish the relevance of my viewpoint by connecting them all in my forthcoming analysis. Malhotra visualizes social meditation as a panacea to all these social and societal ills and problems eating into society’s vitals. All the personal, administrative, judicial, and political problems stem from a deteriorated society. So, suppose the corrections are made in the social and societal setup. In that case, the results will subsequently be satisfactory for all the wings above administration because the system’s failures originate from the shortcomings of the social setup. From now on, it begins.
In “The Role of Spiritual-cum-social-meditations,” Malhotra deals with this topic in two succinct ways to provide clarity: coherence and cogence.
Why only a spiritual-cum-social-meditationists can help solve the problems mentioned above of gigantic size and stature?
It is again relevant to mention here the state of mind that a spiritual meditation practitioner achieves through his arduous life-long meditational practices, i.e., to have a body-mind balance, to have a metaphysical vision, to develop mindfulness, to transgress limiting personal, social, and communal believes and to reach a state of mind of pure consciousness, super consciousness and collective consciousness, which culminates in universal consciousness and which enables him to have a state of mind full of calmness, relaxation, and blissfulness.
Malhotra stresses the utilization of this state of mind of personal transformation and spiritual meditations for social and societal transformation by the removal of the problems, i.e., stress, drug, and alcoholic addiction, increased divorce cases, suicide cases, and communal disharmony, which have created havoc in the society. All these problems have risen enormously in the number of Neuro and Cardiac patients in the hospitals in India and abroad. So far, all these problems are being dealt with by different medical, spiritual, administrative, judicial, and political organizations and institutes of society, but with a water-tight-compartmental approach that results in nothingness.
How spiritual-cum-social-meditationists can do all that to yield successful and unprecedented results to counter the menaces above. To achieve these ends, spiritual meditation practitioners will have to leave aside the typical ashram-centric approach, which confines them to follow only their spiritual agenda hitherto, without its utilization to remove ills in society and the system.
Spiritual-cum-social-Mediationists must create and activate large social groups, sub-groups, and micro-groups in a pyramidical way with the help of modern tools, i.e., internet, social media, print media, and the mainstream media to increase the feeling of togetherness and emotional and social bondage to multiply social network to the extent that each family can not only be touched but also to be uplifted morally. It is an old saying that “ family is the cradle of the civic virtues,” which must be revived and kept intact, facing disintegration, resulting in societal deterioration.
Each Social group should have a particular task and must be equipped with modern technical tools and instruments, as mentioned above if a group is entitled to ‘awareness against drug abuses’ and another group entitled to ‘awareness for better-married life’ for reducing divorce cases yet another group entitled ‘communal harmony’ be formed for establishing harmony among different communities. Similarly, every social group should have a particular target and goal. All these groups should be headed by spiritual-cum-social-meditationist, who can utilize their understanding of self-transformation for social and societal transformation.
He must include in his groups, on the one hand, the affected section of society, i.e., the divorced seeking couples (if the group is formed for a better-married life), and on the other hand, concerned government officials, experts, i.e., psychiatrists, sexologists, and other famous social and spiritual personalities for their counseling who can help them for their better compatible married lives. Similar mechanisms should be adopted regarding the other affected sections of societies, i.e., the corporate employees, homemakers, students, and security personnel who are more prone to frequent suicides.
The group leaders-cum-social-meditationists should remain in touch with all these sections of society with the help of modern technical devices, i.e., social media, print media, and mainstream media.
Beyond the individualistic perspective, spreading positive messages in social and societal settings will steadily positively affect society’s cognitive, emotional, and social behavior. All these positive influences can lead to social transformation, which will bring about collective responses to the personal, societal, economic, communal, marital, and suicidal challenges the masses face today.
The spiritual-cum-social-meditationists must establish dialogue, discussion, and communication with the teachers and students, bosses and employees, divorced partners, jail authorities and criminals for conflict management and dispute management for an overall establishment of coordination, cooperation, and communal harmony among the different and divergent sections of society and also through the organization of motivational and meditational camps to change their mindsets.
Their approach must have social orientations and be society-centric; their transformational acumen, transcendental and non-judgmental perspective must benefit the society for a pro-social, pro-active, pro-societal compassionate approach for the establishment of a generous, egalitarian, humanitarian, and justice-based utopian society with comprehensible empirical results. They must use Zoom and Google Meet-ups to conduct a broader range of activities and reach out to all sections of society.