Meditation: God's Duty and man's beauty

Part I — What is meditation?

What is meditation?

Meditation means conscious self-expansion. Meditation means one's conscious awareness of the transcendental Reality. Meditation means the recognition or the discovery of one's own true self. It is through meditation that we transcend limitation, bondage and imperfection. First we face limitations, imperfections and bondage, then we transform them, and afterwards we transcend them.

Meditation is the language of God. Now I am speaking English and you are able to understand me. If we want to communicate with God, then meditation is the language. It is the common language of man and God. God uses it and we use it. When we go deep within, into the deepest recesses of our hearts, we commune with God through meditation. It is through meditation that we can know that God is both with form and without form, with attributes and without attributes.

Meditation is dynamism on the inner planes of consciousness. If we want to achieve anything, either in our inner life or our outer life, then the help of meditation is of paramount importance. When we meditate, what we actually do is enter into the deeper part of our being. At that time, we are able to bring to the fore the wealth that we have deep within us. Meditation shows us how we can aspire for something and, at the same time, how we can achieve it. It is through meditation that we can enter into an object, a subject, a person, or into Infinity and Eternity. If we practice meditation daily, then we can rest assured that the problems of our life, inner and outer, are solved.

Why do we meditate? We meditate precisely because this world of ours has disappointed us and because failure looms large in our day-to-day life. We want fulfilment. We want joy, peace, bliss and perfection within and without. Meditation is the answer, the only answer.

True meditation can never be done with the mind. Very often we make a mistake when we say that we are meditating in the mind and utilising the mind. Real meditation is done in the psychic being and in the soul. It goes hand in hand with flaming aspiration, the burning flame that wants to climb up to the Highest.

Each soul is running consciously or unconsciously towards the Goal, but those who are running consciously will reach the Goal sooner than those who are still asleep. All human beings without exception will reach God, but through meditation we reach our Goal sooner. We have to know how fast we want to reach our goal. If I want to come to Puerto Rico from New York, I can come by boat, I can take a direct flight, or I can take a plane that stops at various places on the way. It is entirely up to me whether I take a direct route or an indirect route. There are many roads that lead to the Goal, but one road is sure to be shorter than the others. In the spiritual life, it is when we meditate on the heart that we make the fastest progress. Naturally, if we are wise we will take the shortest route. Each second counts.

Real meditation we get from within or from a spiritual Master. We can never get it from books. From books we can get inspiration or an inner approach to the fulfilment of our outer life. But in order to have true meditation we have to go deep within or follow the guidance of a spiritual Master. Each individual must have a meditation of his own. Each one has to follow a particular path. There is collective meditation and, at the same time, there is a specific meditation for each individual. If you are sitting in a group meditating collectively, that is wonderful, but if you want to realise God, then you have to have your own specific method. This specific way of meditating either your soul will tell you or you will get it from someone who can enter into your soul and see its possibilities, someone who can see how your particular soul wants to manifest the divine Truth here on earth. Some souls want to manifest the Divine on earth through Beauty, while other souls want to manifest the Divine through Power, Light or Bliss. You have to know what your soul wants and how your soul wants to take part in the cosmic Play. Only then will your meditation fulfil the Divine within you and the Divine in the rest of humanity.

There are many seekers whose meditation is not fruitful because they are not doing the meditation that is necessary for them. They are not meditating in the right way. When we meditate properly and soulfully, we can eventually expect a bumper crop of realisation. But if we are constantly knocking at the wrong door and meditating in a wrong way, then we are wasting our time.

Part II — Question and answers

Question: What is the aim of meditation?

In the Upanishads it says that when someone is consciously one with God, he sees that from Delight he came into existence, in Delight he is growing, and at the end of his journey he will enter into Delight again:

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Imani bhutani jayante

Anandam prayantyabhisam visanti

Question: What do we learn from meditation?

What does expansion mean? In our expansion, we cross beyond the finite, and the finite enters into the infinite. We have come from the infinite, but we are playing the game of the finite. Instead, we should play the game of the infinite in the finite body. God is deep inside us. He wants to manifest Himself and we want to be His conscious instruments. The sense of being a conscious instrument we get only in our meditation. Otherwise, we feel, "I am the doer." When the ego comes forward, we immediately feel "I can say this, I can do this; I, I, I," whereas in meditation, when we go deep within, we feel that we have become just an instrument, a channel. If a divine thought comes, we immediately express it in a divine way and become more divine. But we can only become channels when the mind is calm and quiet.

In our meditation, we always have to know what we are aspiring after. Some people, in the name of meditation, permit all the worst kinds of thoughts and desires to enter them. When distracting thoughts enter into our mind during meditation, we have to ask ourselves what we are going to gain. Nothing, nothing! The best thing in meditation is to have no thoughts, emotions or ideas. No thought, not an iota of thought, should penetrate our mind. The mind is fertile soil. Only the divine seed should grow there, and not any outer, human thought or idea. Then, if we start meditating, and the mind is calm and quiet, say for five minutes, we will see or feel our inner being or psychic being. This being starts speaking in a different language, and through meditation we will be able to learn its language and be able to hear its message. At that time, the psychic being can mould our outer life.

Question: What benefit can we get from meditation?

How can one be eternally happy? By making thousands of dollars a person may become happy for five minutes or for a day or for a few months. Then he becomes an ordinary beggar because his inner life is a barren desert. Eternal happiness is what he wants and needs. This eternal happiness he can get only from meditation.

Meditation is the real soul of God and, at the same time, the real heart of man. The heart here is not the physical organ. It is that part of us which identifies itself with others. The heart means identification, identification with Truth and Light. During meditation, an aspiring heart can identify itself with Truth, Light and Beauty, with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. But this identification is not complete; our inseparable oneness with Divinity is not complete. Identification is one thing and fulfilment is something else. This identification has to be manifested here on earth and that is the purpose of the soul.

Meditation is the soul of God, meditation is the heart of man. Aspiring man becomes the heart; realised man is the soul.

When we meditate, what do we actually do? First we enter into our highest Self. Then the highest Self meets the lowest self for transformation. The highest Self has to be realised; the lowest self has to be transformed. When we meditate we enter into the Highest for the realisation of the Brahman. We then enter into the lowest for the transformation of our nature.

Meditation has two things to offer us: self-mastery and self-transformation. These two go together. When we meditate, immediately we have the beginnings of self-mastery, and when we have self-mastery, we see that we cannot cherish ugly or undivine thoughts; we cannot remain inside ignorance any more. At that time we see that our transformation is taking place. Meditation is constantly giving us the message of self-transformation. Many years ago we were in plant life, then we were in animal life. Now we are in human life and we are bound to be in divine life. This self-transformation has to be done through inner meditation. When we meditate unconsciously, it takes a long, long time to reach the Goal. Only when we are at the human stage do we begin meditating consciously. When we meditate consciously, we make the fastest progress.

Without meditation no human being can have inseparable oneness with God. If we want any real peace, real joy, real love, then we have to meditate. The so-called peace we feel in our day-to-day lives is five minutes of peace after ten hours of anxiety, worry and frustration. But that is no peace at all. We are at the mercy of the monkeys around us — jealousy, fear, doubt, worries, anxiety and despair. The monkeys take rest for a few minutes, and then we say that we are enjoying peace. But no, it is only that monkeys are tired of biting us. The next moment all the negative monkey-forces will attack us again.

Question: Can you go to the spiritual world through meditation?

Question: Does spiritual awareness come only through meditation?

Question: What do you mean by God-realisation?

Question: What is the highest meditation?

Question: What are the stages of meditation?

We start with concentration. When we concentrate, we focus all our attention on a particular object and become totally one with that object. When our concentration is very deep, there can be no thought, not an iota of thought inside us or around us. We and the object of our concentration are one.

Concentration is the mind's dynamic will that operates in us for our immediate acceptance of light and rejection of darkness. It also awakens within us the planes of consciousness that are fast asleep. What concentration can do in our life of aspiration is unimaginable. It can easily separate Heaven from hell, so that we can live in the constant delight of Heaven and not in the perpetual worries, anxieties and tortures of hell while we are here on earth. If we can concentrate well, we will be able to make fast progress. If we can focus all our attention on a particular object, if we can enter into it with our mind, we will be able to discover and reveal the hidden, ultimate Truth inside it. Now we are victims to unlit, obscure, destructive and malignant thoughts, but a day will come when, on the strength of our concentration, we will feel that disturbing thoughts are afraid of us. In concentration we work for an immediate result; but meditation does not care for success in this sense. Meditation only wants to enter into the Vast and swim in the vast sea of Peace, Light and Bliss. When we meditate, we have to feel that we are entering into something vast and infinite: the vast ocean or the infinite blue sky. We are trying to plunge into something boundless and measureless. All around us is the infinite blue sky where Peace is reigning supreme. First we have to feel this, and then we have to become fully one with the Vastness itself. When we are concentrating, we can use our mental will-power to some extent. But in meditation we use our psychic will-power, the soul's will-power. In meditation we have to go far beyond the domain of the mind, because the mental faculty is very limited. When we are in our highest, deepest meditation, we have to stop the functioning of the mind.

Concentration is like an arrow that hits the target. When we concentrate, we aim at something with a dynamic attitude. But meditation is calm, divine, soulful and elevating. When we meditate, we make the mind calm, quiet and still — without thoughts. At that time, we have to be fully aware of the arrival of thoughts and allow no idle thoughts to enter into the mind. The mind is vacant and tranquil, with neither good nor bad thoughts; nothing at all. Our whole existence becomes an empty vessel. When this vessel is absolutely empty, with our whole inner being we invoke infinite Peace, Light and Bliss so it will enter into the vessel and fill it. This is meditation.

Then comes contemplation, which is the last stage before we realise God. With contemplation we enter into samadhi and the transcendental Consciousness. Contemplation is something extremely difficult for beginners in the spiritual life, but eventually the beginner becomes advanced and he, too, learns how to contemplate, for without contemplation one can never realise the Highest. In contemplation we are at once in our deepest concentration and our highest meditation. We lose our so-called outer existence, the existence that binds. At that time there is no mind; it is as though the physical mind did not exist. In contemplation we become totally one with God's universal Will, the transcendental Will, which plays the part of both the doer and the action. The doer and the action become totally one when we are in contemplation. The knower, the knowing and the known become one.

During contemplation we become merged into the inner stream; it is all one stream of consciousness. From the soles of our feet to the crown of our head, consciousness is flowing. We feel the flow of consciousness all over our body, and feel that we are nothing but the consciousness itself. We become part and parcel of the infinite Consciousness, the eternal Consciousness, the immortal Consciousness. We become totally one with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality in the highest state of contemplation.

There are two types of consciousness. One is earth-bound consciousness, the other is boundless Consciousness, infinite Consciousness. When we are limited, we become one with the earth-bound consciousness. Here we see 'me' and 'mine'. But the unlimited Consciousness that is flowing inside our being is one with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. When we are contemplating, we feel that we are dealing with Infinity, not around us but inside us.

You may say, "My body is only five feet, eight inches tall, so how can I house Infinity inside me? How can I house Eternity and Immortality? It is all absurd." But no, you have to feel that you are not the body; you are the soul. Our Indian scriptures say that the soul has neither birth nor death, neither beginning nor end. It is something which is constantly moving — moving, flowing, manifesting the infinite Truth. In contemplation we become totally identified with our soul and go to the highest and spread our wings. From the finite we enter into the infinite; we enter into the world of Peace, Light and Bliss, where there is direct oneness with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.

Infinity. The word will seem to come from your imagination. What is Infinity? Try to feel it is something that is going to make you free from ignorance. Now we are wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance, but Infinity is something that is freeing us from the meshes of ignorance.

Eternity. What is it? We have two lives — an ordinary human life, where we stay on earth for fifty, sixty or seventy years, and eternal Life. The eternal Life existed before our birth; it exists during this short span of our life; it passes through the dark tunnel of death. Then again it enters into its own Source. When you think of Eternity, feel that it is something which precedes everything and, at the same time, will succeed everything.

Immortality. Nothing remains permanent on earth. Today somebody is a great beauty; tomorrow her beauty pales into insignificance. Today somebody is very prominent in the world; tomorrow his prominence is forgotten. No matter how great or how sublime we are, the jaws of death devour us sooner or later. What can we do? We have to feel the Immortality of Consciousness. The finite consciousness, when it becomes one with the infinite, becomes immortal. When the finite consciousness becomes immortal, then God's divine Play can take place here on earth and God can be really fulfilled.

Question: Do we see God in contemplation?

Question: Could you please discuss how contemplation differs from meditation?

Question: After we have finished meditating, how do we go about contemplating?

Question: Could you explain the difference between meditation and thinking?

Question: What is Light?

This experience we get only when we meditate. When we meditate, we get inner peace, peace of mind. Delight is visible, palpable, tangible only when we have peace of mind. Unfortunately the modern, intellectual mind, the doubting mind, the sophisticated mind, does not care for this kind of Delight, which is nothing other than Light. The mind cries for outer information or it cries to achieve some partial truth. Again, while achieving the Truth, it negates the Truth. It doubts the Truth. The mind sees the Truth for five seconds, but just when it is about to achieve the Truth, it doubts the possibility, the reality of Truth. Then who is the loser? The Truth or the mind? Undoubtedly the mind.

Question: Our path is the path of love, devotion, and surrender. Can there be oneness with each of these qualities, or does real oneness come only in surrender?

Then you have to imagine for a couple of minutes that you have a tree inside you. This tree has only three branches. The name of these three branches are love, devotion and surrender. You will sit on the branch that is called love, and there you will try to feel that you and God are absolutely one.

Then you will sit on the branch called devotion. While sitting on the devotion branch you have to feel not only that God and you are one, but that there is a tremendous intimate concern and feeling of inseparable oneness between you and God. God devotes His infinite Light to the fulfilment of the aspirant and the aspirant devotes his utmost capacity, whatever capacity he has, to the fulfilment of God's Will. On the branch of devotion your oneness is thickened and intensified.

Next comes the branch of surrender. When you sit on the branch of surrender, you have to feel that the oneness that was on the love branch, and the intimacy that you felt on the branch of devotion came to you only on the strength of your implicit surrender to God's Will. You had aspiration to become one with God, but it was not your aspiration that made you one with Him. Inside your aspiration you had surrendering light. Your aspiration was not to get something by hook or by crook, by foul means. Inside your aspiration was surrendering light: "God, I am aspiring, but I have surrendered to You and it is up to You to fulfil my aspiration or leave me where I am." This was your prayer. When you sit on the branch of surrender, you have to feel that your oneness on the love branch and your intimate oneness on the devotion branch came because of the implicit, unconditional surrender that you had inside your flaming, climbing aspiration.

Question: Is dynamic silence really divine action, that is, doing the Will of God by serving man?

Question: Is inner silence equated with prayer and meditation?

Question: When you meditate for people can you see their souls and can you lift them to a higher level of consciousness?

Question: It seems that beauty and meditation always go together. Could you say a few words about beauty and meditation?

Question: Does meditation include healing?

There is a difference between healing that is done by an ordinary healer and healing done by a realised soul. The ordinary healer has learned some techniques for removing an illness from someone, but after some time he himself may become the victim of the diseases he heals in others. Why? Because he doesn't know where to throw the diseases after he has taken them away. If we take healing as a profession, if we just pray and think good thoughts for a few minutes and then go and cure someone, then we are acting against the divine Force, the divine Law. It is in our deepest meditation that we come to know what we should do and what we should not do. If the Supreme asks us to heal someone, at that time He gives us the power, and when He gives us the power, we are not responsible. The result immediately belongs to Him. But if we are responsible, we may be caught by the result of our own action. This is the difference between acting with the help of our meditation and acting out of our own so-called human compassion.

Question: Through meditation is one able to create or master psychic powers?

Question: If we have an experience which we feel may be coming from God, how do we know whether we are experiencing God, the Devil, or something from our own imagination?

Question: How can you tell the difference between true intuition and imagination?

Question: How do I know that while meditating I am entering into a higher plane and that it is not just my imagination?

Question: How do we know what plane of consciousness we are in during meditation? Is there a limit to the planes that we can reach?

There are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds. A spiritual Master can easily be in all these fourteen worlds at the same time and see things that are happening in all the worlds.

An aspirant can also be in two, three, four or five worlds at a time, but he will not be able to know which worlds they are. Only someone who is advanced in the spiritual life, someone who is about to step onto the highest rung of the spiritual ladder, will be able to see easily in which plane of consciousness he stays during his meditation. For realised souls it is very easy.

Question: When does a person know that he has control of the vital plane?

Question: How can I tell if my inner experiences are genuine or fake?

If you do not have a Master, you can still solve this problem. If you are in doubt when you have an inner experience, then concentrate on the heart. If the experience is genuine then you will feel a subtle tingling sensation. If you feel as though an ant were climbing or crawling in your heart, then you will know that your experience is genuine.

When you have an inner experience, try to breathe as slowly and quietly as possible and feel that you are bringing purity into your system. Feel that purity is entering into you like a thread and it is revolving around your navel. If you feel that your spiritual heart is not willing to enter into your navel, then your experience is a mere hallucination. But if the heart gladly enters into the navel, then you can rest assured that your experience is not a hallucination at all; it is absolutely true and genuine.

Again, when you have an experience and you want to know its worth, try to feel for a couple of minutes whether you can grow into that experience or not. If you feel that you can grow into that experience, sooner or later, in an hour or two hours or a day or six months, then your experience is genuine. But if you feel that reality is something else and you can never grow into the experience, then that experience is not genuine.

When you have an experience, try to separate your outer life from your inner life. The outer life is a life of necessity and demands and requirements. The inner life is also a life of necessity, but it is God's necessity, not your necessity; God's requirements, not your demands or your requirements. Try to feel whether it is God's necessity that is operating in and through your experience and whether God needs you and wants to fulfil Himself in and through you. If you can grow into that kind of feeling or realisation, then your experience is genuine. But if you identify yourself consciously with your demands, then the experience is not true; it is just a hallucination.

Question: When I have an experience, how do I know that my soul is working through the experience?

Question: Then in my case I am living in my unconscious mind?

Question: Something positive is happening because I definitely feel an inner joy. I have not seen anything; all I know is that I have this feeling inside.

Question: How can I tell if I really want God? And how do I know whether I am hearing God's Voice or the voice of the devil?

Question: If a person does not believe in God, can he practise meditation?

Question: How can I really know what God wants me to do?

Question: When you have a personal problem which you wish to solve through your meditation, how can you resolve it and know that the answer you get comes directly from the soul and not from the emotional vital?

When you get a voice, immediately try to see which type of runner this voice represents. Is this the runner who will stop only when the goal is reached, or is this the runner who runs thirty metres and then loses all his energy? The soul knows its capacity and will go to the goal with utmost confidence. If it comes from the emotional vital, you will feel that the answer you get will not take you to your goal. But if it comes from the soul, you will feel confident that it will take you to the goal. If this is the case, then rest assured that it is your soul speaking.

Here is another way. When you have a voice which is offering you a solution to your problem, imagine that a vessel is being filled. If this voice gives you the feeling of a vessel being filled drop by drop, slowly and steadily with utmost inner security, then you will know that it is the soul's voice. Otherwise, you will feel that the vessel is being filled with a tumbler or a glass in a hurried manner. It will fill up quickly, but very soon it will begin to spill over the top. The other way, with utmost confidence and inner poise, the soul will fill the vessel. If you have had that kind of patient feeling, then it is the soul's voice.

Question: Can we answer our own questions through our daily meditation?

Question: If we, your disciples, have questions about a course of action and we don't know what your will is, how can we decide what to do? Do we meditate on your picture asking that question?

Question: How can we be sincere with ourselves so we can see more clearly how we are progressing?

Don't be disappointed or disheartened or discouraged when you see the bad qualities. After they are transformed, they will become one with the good qualities. If you have a good meditation on a certain day, then on that day your good qualities will come forward. Then bad qualities will come forward to let you know that these are the things that you still have to transform and how much farther you have to go before you get to the Goal.

When you have the highest meditation, on the one hand you will feel that you are very near to God. On the other hand you will feel that still you have so much to transform that God knows how many years it will take. There are only two inches between you and God, but these two inches you may see as an endless road.

Sincerity comes from the heart, not from the mind. The mind is tricky; the mind will confuse you. Also, the vital and the heart are unfortunately very close to each other. The vital is near the navel region. From there, vital energy can enter into the heart. So if you feel that you are getting many messages from the heart, then you are probably getting messages from the vital.

The best way to know if you are sincere is to see how much you have surrendered to your inner being. You can know how much you have surrendered by how much cheerfulness you have. But this cannot be false cheerfulness.

When some disciples look at me with sad faces, I tell them, "Please, please, don't be depressed. Smile at me, smile at me." Then they smile at me but I know it is an absolutely false smile. But I feel, "All right, start with false happiness. Instead of showing me a face of low depression, arrogance and other undivine qualities, at least start with a false smile; then one day you will give me a sincere, soulful smile."

If you don't have sincerity, then enter into the spiritual life with curiosity. In a few months time, your curiosity will be transformed into sincerity. How will you recognise sincerity's arrival? You will recognise it very easily if you do not have preconceived ideas of how your life will take shape or form. But if you cherish preconceptions, then automatically many thoughts will come into your mind and you may adopt many foul means to fulfil them. You may even try to fulfil them by devious or hostile means. But when you are fully surrendered, you will not cherish any ideas. You will feel that you can let the Inner Pilot make all your choices for you.

We sometimes become insincere when we try to do something or accomplish something and do not know where the ideas to do these things are coming from. Since we do not know, the best thing is just to wait, wait, wait. Let the ideas come from within. But you will wait for centuries if you feel that you can get the right answer from the mind. The mind has to surrender to the heart. There is no other way.