Meditation: the bridge across

Meditation is the only method for inner illumination. Meditation is the only bridge to move you from darkness to light. Meditation is the only process to transform your life from mechanicalness to reality. And by meditation I simply mean awareness.

Learn to be more and more aware: aware of your body, aware of your mind, aware of your heart—aware of action, thought and feeling. These are the three dimensions to which awareness has to be brought. And when you are aware of all the three, you will become aware of the fourth—that is awareness itself. The fourth is the transcendence. The fourth leads you to God.

Awareness has two functions: one, it cuts you off from that which you are not, and secondly, it connects you to that which you really are.

Our real being is never born and never dies. Birth and death are only episodes in the eternity of life. Life is not confined between these two episodes. The idea that life means the span between birth and death has created great anxiety in man, because then life seems to be so short and there are so many desires to be fulfilled. It seems impossible that one can manage them. Failure seems to be absolutely inevitable.

Whatsoever you do, you are going to fail, and death is always hanging just in front of you, like a naked sword hanging by a thin thread. Any moment it can happen: just a breeze is enough and the sword will fall on you.

Hence the great hurry and speed and the great worry that ‘I have to do things and live fast. Who knows whether tomorrow comes or not?’ So people are running with such speed that they cannot see anything, they cannot taste anything. They have no time. They cannot enjoy anything; the shadow of death is always over them. They cannot relax, they cannot just sit silently.

And the greatest experiences happen when you relax, when you simply sit doing nothing, when you absolutely disappear in your rest. Then bliss happens, truth happens, God happens. These things have become almost impossible.

Modern man is living in such a hurry that he cannot sit, he cannot rest. He has become incapable of rest. And once you are incapable of rest, you are incapable of all that is valuable. And the reality is that we need not be so worried about anything. Life is eternal. We have always been here and we always will be here; we are immortals. The body is going to change, the mind is going to change, but we are neither; neither the body nor the mind.

It is only in deep meditation that one discovers this simple fact, that we are not the body and the mind; we are awareness, consciousness. We are the witness of the whole game. Once you have known that witness, you have tasted something of the nectar. This is the nectar alchemists were in search of.

Peace is not something that can be cultivated from the outside. Many people cultivate it from the outside, then they have a peaceful outside, but it is only an appearance. Deep down, they are just the opposite; they are sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment.

So, I am not in favour of cultivating peace as a facade. Peace should be an inner worth, not an outer cultivation; only then it is true, only then it is liberating. And the inner peace comes only as a by-product of meditation. You cannot achieve it directly; it is a consequence of meditation. The more meditative you become, the more peaceful. When the meditation is absolute, peace is absolute.

And by meditation, I mean a state of no-mind. Mind is always unpeaceful, it exists in conflict. Mind is a kind of insanity; there is no sane mind as such. The sane person is one who has gone beyond mind, one who had a taste of no-mind, one who lives in no-mind and uses the mind as a servant or as a mechanism.

To live in the mind is to be insane, to go beyond mind is to be sane. And to be sane is to be peaceful. They are the same.

Meditate more and more. Meditation has to become the foundation of sannyas. Whatsoever you are doing, do it meditatively, watchfully, alert, aware. Watch your body, watch your mind, watch your heart. These three watchfulnesses make the whole of meditation.

Actions have to be watched, thoughts have to be watched, feelings have to be watched. Just by watching, slowly, slowly mind evaporates. And the day that mind is not found within you, peace is found. That day is of great benediction.

Wisdom is a by-product of meditation. It does not come in any other way. It does not come through accumulating information. It comes only through the transformation that meditation brings to you. And meditation means a state of no-mind, a consciousness without content.