Meditation: A Flight Beyond The Mind
Meditation is simply an understanding.
Meditation transforms. It takes you to higher levels of consciousness and changes your whole lifestyle. It changes your reactions into responses to such an extent that it is unbelievable that the person who would have reacted in the same situation in anger is now acting in deep compassion, with love – in the same situation.
Meditation is a state of being, arrived at through understanding.
It needs intelligence, it does not need techniques.
There is no technique that can give you intelligence. Otherwise, we would have changed all the idiots into geniuses; There is no way to change your intelligence from the outside, to sharpen it, to make it more penetrating, to give it more insight. It is simply a question of understanding, and nobody else can do it for you – no machine, no man.
Meditation is the flight beyond the mind.
In every situation where mind starts any kind of desire, greed, lust, ambition, possessiveness, the meditator has to be just a mirror. And what is that going to do? To be just a mirror means you are simply aware.
In pure awareness the mind cannot drag you down into the mud, into the gutter. In anger, in hatred, in jealousy, the mind is absolutely impotent in the face of awareness. And because the mind is absolutely impotent, your whole being is in a profound silence – the peace that passeth understanding.
Meditation is not concentration. A man of concentration may not reach to love; in fact, he will not. A man of concentration may become more violent because concentration is a training to remain tense, concentration is an effort to narrow down the mind. It is a deep violence with your consciousness. And when you are violent with your consciousness you cannot be non-violent with others. Whatsoever you are with yourself, you are going to be with others.
Let this be a fundamental rule of life, one of the most fundamental: whatsoever you are towards yourself, you will be towards others. If you love yourself, you will love others. If you are flowing within your being, you will be flowing in relationships also. If you are frozen inside, you will be frozen outside also. The inner tends to become the outer; the inner goes on manifesting itself in the outer.
Concentration is not meditation; concentration is the method of science. It is a scientific methodology. A man of science needs the deep discipline of concentration, but a man of science is not expected to be compassionate.
Then what is meditation? Meditation is just being delighted in your own presence; meditation is a delight in your own being. It is very simple – a totally relaxed state of consciousness where you are not doing anything. The moment doing enters, you become tense; anxiety enters immediately. How to do? What to do? How to succeed? How not to fail? You have already moved into the future.
Meditation is just to be, not doing anything – no action, no thought, no emotion. You just are. And it is a sheer delight. From where does this delight come when you are not doing anything? It comes from nowhere, or, it comes from everywhere. It is uncased, because the existence is made of the stuff called joy. Hindus call it satchitanand, ananda, joy. That’s why no reason, no cause is needed. If you can just be with yourself, not doing anything, just enjoying yourself, just being with yourself; just being happy that you are, just being happy that you are breathing, just being happy that you are listening to these cuckoos – for no reason then you are in meditation. Meditation is being here now. And when one is happy for no reason, that happiness cannot be contained within yourself. It goes on spreading to others, it becomes a sharing. You cannot hold it, it is so much, it is so infinite. You cannot hold it in your hands, you have to allow it to spread.
