The Way of the White Lotus: The Divine Yoga of Streamline Meditation

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MALCOLM FLETCHER, the founder of Streamline Meditation, maintains meditation is a naturally occurring state. It's not a technique or method or something we have to achieve. It's something that already exists in our lives. The only problem is we don't recognise its delicate doorway, and so we are constantly disturbing it and miss its tremendous significance.

With over fifty years of dedicated practice in the field of meditation, Malcolm has accumulated a specialised wealth of knowledge and insights. Throughout his spiritual journey, he has had the great honour of receiving guidance from renowned enlightened masters such as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Tat Wale Baba, Swami Muktananda, and the celebrated author of J. Krishnamurti and the Nameless Experience, Mr. Rohit Mehta.

Malcolm's profound understanding of meditation has led him to discover a unique approach that transcends the limitations of conventional wisdom. A way he simply calls Streamline Meditation.

Unlike all the techniques and methods available today, it immediately reconnects us with a state that is already present within each of us.

By embracing this state on a daily basis, individuals get to tap the extraordinary power they need to transform their daily lives.

This original teaching resonates well with people from all walks of life because it emphasises self-discovery and spiritual growth as the most important keys to living our lives in fulfilment.

We perceive the universe in our consciousness through the mirror of the mind. But the mind is distracted and has been likened to a monkey who, lost in the multiplicity of objects it wishes to possess, goes from one un-happiness state to another.

But if mind is the cause of suffering, it is also the only instrument that we have to end suffering. The mind is like a pool with eddies that cloud the reflection. To be one with consciousness requires a meditation practice to help one still the mind.

In The Way of the White Lotus, Malcolm Fletcher felicitously presents his fascinating personal journey that finally brings him to the practice of Streamline Meditation, a method of finding the locus of being with ease.

The difference between the mind and consciousness is rather subtle. The mind is the cognitions associated with judgement, language and memory, which are mutually intertwined and underpinned by ego, whereas consciousness is pure awareness.

The mind is the instrument that, energised by the ego, assumes that it is the real individual. In truth, there are many minds that show up in different situations, and each one of them is a secondary presence, just like the moon that reflects the light of the sun and waxes and wanes. If consciousness is the inner sun (gold), the mind is the moon (silver). The dialogue of the Bhagavad Gita is between Krishna as the sun and the witness and Arjuna (the name means silver) who represents every person's mind.

A tension based on fundamental paradoxes of experience becomes the driver in reaching an understanding of oneself. Life is a dance between two ever-changing poles, where one needs to find the sweet line in the middle to step on, which is narrow as a razor's edge. Beneath the larger declared objective is its opposite hidden in a corner of one's mind. Thus, beneath life lurks death, and it is an experience of the latter that often becomes the doorway to deeper perception, as is shown in the book.

Consciousness is not a property of the physical universe but its very nature. As analogy, consider the sunlight reaching inside a room, which is conditioned by the walls and the windows, but when the walls are removed the light within becomes one with the light outside.

Knowledge is only direct or indirect. Direct knowledge arises simultaneously with perception. Indirect knowledge is inference. The human unconsciously knows this, which is ap-parent in statements such as 'my body' and 'my intellect. Thus, the 'T' in a person is distinct and different from the body, mind, and intellect. Effective meditation practice should facilitate direct experience.

Without self-reflection, humans are in the animal state, bound to the causal or karmic chain, with little free will. The waking consciousness is conscious only of what is outside of the body and the mind outward-looking for it is out-directed. It becomes aware of the changing content of the mind, and pain or discomfort associated with the general sense of the body.

The book has much wisdom on how to deal with life and how to let go and have the universe guide you towards the resolution of your problems. It is a meditation practice that will help you live in the moment, which is all there is and which paradoxically opens the doorway to eternity.

The most important question we will ever ask ourselves is, 'Are we happy?'

Apart from all the things in our lives - the job, the house, the partner, the money, the kids, and even the dog - are we happy within ourselves?

When Gautama Buddha asked himself this same question, he renounced an entire kingdom and spent the rest of his days as a wandering sadhu, looking for the answer. For most of us, however, our journey is the exact opposite. We start out poor and spend the rest of our lives trying to create wealth, only to find out somewhere along the way that true happiness isn't created by external things. It's a separate thing in its own right. In fact, it's the most important thing of all.

Our happiness, or lack of it, is what influences all the different things in our lives as they orbit around us, so ultimately, they all reflect our inner state in some way. They are like mirrors of the soul, and how we interact with them reveals our inner nature. We all know that if we are miserable, we can turn a great opportunity into a complete disaster, but when we are happy, we can turn a complete disaster into a life-changing event. The power we have to change things is amazing, but if we want to change the quality of our lives into something extraordinary, the first thing we have to do is reconnect with our deepest level of happiness. We have to dive deep within and connect with it at its source.

The sole purpose of this book is to rediscover that limitless resource, to learn the simple way to tap its inner reserve and enrich our lives. Not in the future but in the now. Once we know how to do that, it empowers us because our happiness is no longer held to ransom by our outer circumstances. It rises above them, and it changes them and the way we view the world. We no longer see it as just a means to an end. We start to see an incredible beauty in it, when our happiness is reflected through it, instead of being extracted from it.

In pure meditation, we discover this amazing truth. Our inner essence is already happy. In fact, it's blissfully happy. So anything that doesn't allow our happiness to thrive in this present moment is suppressing our real nature. It's not allowing our true self to shine through. It's denying what we already are and driving us to search for it elsewhere.

Our inner nature is already happy, but we do need proof, and not just in the form of dry scientific studies that have proven it objectively. We need to tap into that inner ecstasy for ourselves and allow it to wash over all the different areas of our daily life. That's what Streamline Meditation is all about. The location of happiness, the way to tap into it, and the expansion of it.

I don't place a lot of importance on experiences in meditation. It's the one who witnesses them that really matters. However, this book begins with an unusual experience that occurred in Los Angeles many years ago. I had been going through a phase where I was having a lot of experiences in meditation that all seemed connected to that which is sacred. All the different names and forms that have manifested from it appeared to present themselves in some way. However, on this particular night, I stood before a massive peak of that mountain and realised, that which is sacred is actually beyond all form.