Can you tell us about meditation?
What is meditation? It is not what this world
teaches you. It is not the absence of external sound. It is not a focus on an
object. It is not the listening to music, it is not the burning of incense, it
is not the idol, it is not a picture. Meditation is you, the incense that you
burn and the beautiful sweet smell that is emitted, must teach you to emit that
sweetness to the world. But is done when the incense stick is burnt. The smell
is not emitted without the burning. Permit yourself to be burnt, knowing that in
this burning you emit your sweetness to the world. The shutting of eyes is not
at all essential, unless it points to you that illusion must be blinded to you.
Illusion is glamorous, it disguises itself as beauty, yet it is illusion. When
you are meditation you blind yourself to all that is illusion. When you are
meditation you make yourself deaf to all that which is illusory. When you are
meditation you become the idol, you become the picture, you become that energy
which to you symbolises divinity. When you sit in silence that silence is not
the absence of noise. That silence is the stilling of the ‘ego’. When every
sound that you hear externally means nothing, because the ears are deaf to
illusion. When the world around you is bewildered and agitated and means nothing
to you because you are blind to illusion. When you are meditation the flame that
you light is your attempt to reach and illuminate your inner core. To let that
flame burn so bright that all around will be illuminated. The oil that you put
in your small diya has to burn. It must heat and it must evaporate. If the oil
is selfish and says, ‘I will not burn, because in this burning I will
disappear’, there is no flame. Make yourself the oil that burns, without any
thought of your own disappearance. Because you know, that the burning itself is
only an illusion. That is meditation. When you are meditation the flowers that
you offer are not mere flowers. They represent that which is in you; Soft and
tender, gentle and beautiful, spreading sweetness. And yet the flower knows that
‘in my very beauty lies my death’. The more beautiful the flower, the quicker
will someone pluck it and kill it. And the flower is joyous, because it knows
that in its death it has spread the sweetness of life to another. That is
meditation!