What if meditation were not about avoiding life, but getting a deeper insight into it?
Dr. David B. Jacobs, in “Meditation: Diamond Bridge Connecting Waking, Dreaming, Deep Sleep, and Beyond,” invites the reader to a comfortable yet deep journey of consciousness. It is not a book where you are told to believe unquestioningly or use high spiritual words. Instead, it extends the invitation to which you are already busy, curious, skeptical, and human: it provides a pragmatic way inward.
Dr. Jacobs intertwines contemporary science and ancient yogic knowledge with personal experience to convey a significant yet straightforward concept: our daily waking consciousness is actually only a slice of a vast spectrum of consciousness. Whenever we dream at night and fall into a deep sleep, we automatically go through other levels of consciousness without necessarily taking notice. He says that meditation is the art of being conscious of this movement and knowing how to move through it with clarity.
In this book, the body is not described as a fixed object, but as a living electrical system, an elaborate system of energy, intelligence, and communication. Basing his arguments on neuroscience, biology, and physics, Dr. Jacobs demonstrates how the same principles by which a simple electric circuit functions also apply in our nervous system, our heart, and even in our thoughts. Yoga and science turn out not to be mutually exclusive, but the two approaches to the same reality.
One of the significant themes of this book is perception. Dr. Jacobs reminds us that we see, touch, and perceive physical phenomenon as the only aspect of reality, but these perceptions are filtered by habit, memory, and conditioning. Meditation helps clear this veil, allowing us to experience life more fully and accurately. This is not just the prerogative of monks or mystics. This book offers the most refreshing thoughts on the meditative science, through the science of minimums, which is a consistent, long-term, three minutes a day practice that will bring enormous changes to one’s awareness.
This awareness also extends to the realm of dreams. Dr. Jacobs examines dreaming and, specifically, the concept of lucid dreaming, where the waking and dreaming mind are intertwied, as a natural gateway into the realm of increased awareness, demonstrating that it can facilitate meditation and self-awareness.
Meditation: Diamond Bridge is written in a warm, conversational style. This guide is a faithful friend to anyone who feels there is something beyond the surface of things. Through a 3-minutes a day practice, you will create a vehicle of action which will progressively dissipate your veil of ignorance and explore the depths of your own consciousness, to experience the wonders within and without us.
This is a book that lingers; should you wonder what is beneath your thoughts, your dreams, and even your deepest sleep. Even when you have finished reading the last page, it silently urges you to get on the Diamond Bridge and see what has been there all along.