Everybody does it, from Africans to Eskimos. The techniques are enormously varied, and we will make no attempt to survey them. There are other books for that. For the purpose of this volume, we will restrict our discussion to those practices best known to Western audiences and most likely associated with the term meditation. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition we find two overlapping practices called prayer and contemplation.
Prayer is a direct address to some spiritual entity.
Contemplation is a prolonged period of conscious thought about some specific topic, usually a religious ideal or scriptural passage. From the standpoint of mental culture, both of these activities are exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of conscious thought is restricted, and the mind is brought to one conscious area of operation. Out of the Hindu tradition comes Yogic meditation, which is also purely concentrative. Having acquired this basic skill, the Yogi proceeds to expand his practice by taking on the more complex objects of meditation chants, colorful religious images, energy channels in the body and so forth.