EVERYBODY who takes to reading of books -- on any subjects, fiction or non-fiction -- knows how beautiful the process is and what kind of meditative opportunity it offers to the one pursuing the activity of reading with a serious interest. In his or her own way, every reader of books describes the process and enjoys doing so. But what counts the most is the meditative value that gets automatically attached to reading. The beauty of that process, its depth, its range is something that words fail to capture on most occasions. There is something beyond words that happens when a book is being read. Of course, nobody proceeds in a racy, straight-forward manner while reading a book.

 

One’s eyes return invariably to the text one has already read. Sometimes, this process gets repeated many times over and turning of one page takes a pretty long time -- depending, of course, on the nature of subject and the language used by the author. Naturally, when one ponders over the subject in such a manner, the going forward into the book is a rather slow business -- even laborious at times. No matter that, there still is a magnetic attraction in the business of reading and serious readers feel fascinated by it, all right. There do come moments while reading when one is almost forced to go slow -- enjoying the words and their feel and their meaning (in dictionary and in mind). A word halts your reading, a phrase holds you down, the sound of a sentence also has a special attraction. ...! And, very occasionally, certain words emit a fragrance that is felt to one’s inner being beyond senses. True, books mean words. But in many books, words are used to state a meaning beyond and behind words. And when such a process is underway, the book flows in the labyrinthine space of the mind like a river does on the plains -- steady, easy, patient. Contemplation is the mood of the moment. Every word halts your progress into the sentence.

 

Those pauses offer spaces for deep thinking, opportunities to delve into the deepest possible to understand the unstated purpose of the author and his tools of language. Countless people, thus, report a sense of calmness that they enjoy while reading certain books. They describe reading as an activity that creates sort of a temple of thought around the reader in which the connect is between only the deity and the devotee. The quality of a connect of this nature and texture is never missed, but the reader often fails to pick up right words to describe the nature of the reading experience. This is a universal experience, one must say. Such experiences are enjoyed by people around the world. The beauty of those experiences, the meditative value of reading, the calmness that the reader feels around him or her are the actual benefits of reading -- for learning and not just for information-gathering, so to say. If somebody gets into such a state of mind while reading, then one gets possessed with that feel and does not ever want to abandon it for anything, any price and any prize.