I AM THAT: CHAPTER 6: MEDITATION

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6 MEDITATION PG13

 

Q: All teachers advise to meditate. What is the purpose of meditation?

M: We know the outer world of sensations and actions. But of our

inner world of thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary

purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with,

our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life

and consciousness. Incidentally, practice of meditation affects

deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know. Whatever

vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and understand its causes

and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing; the unconscious

dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the

unconscious release energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.

 

Q: What is the use of quiet mind?

M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the Pure

witness. We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer and

stand apart in Pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two.

The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself

to be something: `I am this', I am that " , continues, but only as a

part of the objective world. Its identification with the witness

snaps.

 

Q: As I can make out, I live on many levels and life on each level

requires energy. The self by its very nature delights in everything

and its energies flow outwards. Is not the purpose of meditation to

dam up the energies on the higher levels, or to push them back and

up, so as to enable the higher levels to prosper also?

M: It is not so much the matter of levels as of qualities. Meditation

is a mind activity and aims at complete elimination of inertia and

motivity (activity). Pure harmony is perfect freedom from sloth and

restlessness.

 

Q: How to strengthen and purify the mind?

M: The being is pure and strong always. It is like the sun. It may

seem obscured by clouds and dust, but only from the point of view of

the perceiver. Deal with the causes of obscuration, not with the sun.

 

Q: What is the use of pure harmony, being (pure)?

M: What is the use of truth, goodness, harmony, beauty? They are

their own goal. They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly, when

things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not stunned,

or wanted, or conceptualized, but just experienced in full awareness.

Such awareness itself is pure. It does not make use of things and

people – it fulfills them.

 

Q: Since I cannot improve pure, am I deal with tamas and rajas only?

How do I deal with them?

M: By watching their influence in you and on you. Be aware of them in

operation, watch their expressions in your thoughts, words and deeds,

and gradually their grip on you will lessen and the clear light of

being will emerge. It is neither a difficult, nor a protracted

process; earnestness is the only condition of success.