Why Meditate?🔗

What is your ultimate aim in life?

To earn more… ? To stay forever young, healthy, beautiful…? To have better, longer-lasting relationships…? To improve your personality…?

We need to think deeply about what exactly we want in life and why. We need to understand a few basic truths of life which can simply transform our whole life.

Whether we are trying to achieve through money, relationships or name and fame, we are all searching for fulfillment. Fulfillment is our very nature. Another important truth is we cannot get this fulfillment through acquiring material things.

We have to seek the fulfillment directly. When we directly seek fulfillment, we immediately attract the material things we want also. Yes, Existence is ‘too good to be true’! Existence is filled with miracles. There are no accidents in life. Every incident is a miracle unfolding.

Each of us is actually searching for bliss, but we search in many different ways. Ninety-nine percent of us are not even aware that bliss is our true goal. Whether we know or we don’t know, we search everywhere in the outside world for this bliss which is actually there within us, just waiting to be discovered!

A small story:

One evening, a man was searching hard for something in the courtyard in his house. His wife asked him what it was. He replied that he had dropped a gold coin. His wife also joined in the search. Soon, others gathered and practically the whole neighborhood was searching for the lost coin.

Suddenly one neighbor asked the man, 'Where exactly did you drop the coin? How come we still haven't found it?' The man replied, 'Oh, I lost the coin inside the house.' Everybody searching became angry and asked him, 'Then why are we searching here?'

The man replied, 'The problem is I have no lights inside my house. So I started searching by the light of this streetlamp here!'

This is exactly what we do in our own lives. We are all experts in searching for answers in the wrong places. We search for bliss everywhere, be it in money, power, relationships or ideologies. But we don't move in the one obvious direction which is inwards.

In life everyone has experienced some moments of great happiness. But it has always been for a reason. And the happiness does not remain permanent. It is there temporarily, and when it changes or goes away, once again you feel pain. Only the happiness you experience for no reason at all, which does not die for any reason, is real and permanent happiness. This is what is called bliss. Such happiness doesn't depend on anything outside of you.

Meditation is just being blissful in the moment. When you are at complete peace in the present moment, you are already in a state of meditation.

Recall any moment in your life when you have experienced extreme beauty. Maybe it was the sun rising suddenly from behind a mountain, or the first time you heard a lovely piece of music. Suddenly you became totally still, wordless. In the presence of that beauty you couldn't think any more. You became totally silent, relaxed, in thoughtless awareness. You were completely dissolved in that beauty. That moment was meditation! After a few moments, your inner chatter started again. Your mind said, ‘What a beautiful sunrise!’ The moment the words appeared, you were out of meditation!

You can either think or you can meditate. You can never do both. Meditation is just being. It is experiencing the present moment without resistance.

There are three states that we constantly experience in our lives – the waking state, dream state and deep sleep state.

In the deep sleep state, you have neither ‘I’ consciousness nor thoughts.

You alternate between these three states in your normal day-to-day life. When you wish to be in deep sleep, you find yourself slipping into a disturbed dream state. When you wish to be awake, you find yourself falling asleep! These three states become more or less of a struggle in your life.

But there is a fourth state that we have not experienced. It is called turīya. In this state the ‘I’ consciousness exists but without thoughts. That is, you are aware, but you have no thoughts. This state is called thoughtless awareness. Very few people experience this in their lives. Some people experience this for a few seconds and then go back to their regular waking state.

If you get a sudden shock or if you are sitting with Nature in a completely relaxed state, in deep silence, it is possible that for a few moments you experience this thoughtless awareness. The identity is alive, the ‘I’ consciousness is alive, but there are no thoughts. This is the fourth state of turiyā.

All our physical and mental illnesses take root in the dream state. The dream state starts penetrating and overlapping the deep sleep and waking states. If our waking state is penetrated by the dream state, it is called daydreaming where we fantasize or imagine endless things that we wish to do. If our deep sleep is penetrated by dreaming, it is called disturbed sleep.

Continuously during the day or night, our dream state disturbs us. When our deep sleep state is disturbed by dreams, it results in problems like chronic fatigue and insomnia. When our waking state is disturbed by dreams, we are daydreaming with less awareness of the world around us.

The more the dream state penetrates the waking state, the more the frequency of our consciousness decreases. We may be living in the human body, but we will not be living a truly human life. When the frequency of consciousness comes down, we will not be fully aware about the decisions we make. We will not be aware of the kind of words we are thinking or using. We will not be aware of what is going on inside of us. It will be as if we are living in a house, but we do not know everything that is happening inside that house.

You may ask, ‘Why should I meditate?’ Meditation is needed to infuse deep awareness into both your waking state and the deep sleep state. Instead of the dream state penetrating the waking and deep sleep states, with meditation the turiyā or blissful state will start penetrating the waking and deep sleep states!

The purpose of meditation is to experience this fourth state at least once. Once we experience this fourth state, we can bring the influence of it more and more into our waking and deep sleep states. If our waking and deep sleep states are completely influenced by the fourth state, turiyā, that is what we call jīvan mukti or ‘living enlightenment’.

Meditation has the power to transform you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

What exactly is health? Physical health means digesting whatever you eat and having that food become part of your body. Mental health means digesting all the ideas and problems that you encounter and forming a clear solution. In other words, it is living without conflict. Spiritual health means receiving all the great teachings and energy, digesting them and living a liberated life. Having all three is total health.

Meditation is a complement to medication. Through meditation, you can regulate your blood pressure and blood sugar and you can increase your body's resistance to disease. Through meditation, it is possible to heal even chronic problems like skin allergies, asthma and arthritis. No disease can escape the power of meditation.

flowering of intuition

On the mental level, meditation enhances clarity of thought. Meditation is also a proven way to improve concentration and memory power. Above all, meditation leads you from intellect to intelligence to intuition.

With meditation, you go beyond the mind, into the being. In the being no rules exist. You become free to explore your full potential. That is why with meditation you will suddenly find yourself at ease with your surroundings, easily able to cope with new situations. You rediscover your spontaneity.

You may have a medically fit body. That does not mean you are completely healthy. Of course, I can say from my experience of having seen millions of people, ninety nine percent of those who do not have the 'self-healing clarity' in their system are never able to maintain even physical health. When I say 'self-healing clarity', I mean the clarity and understanding to bring yourself out of depression whenever it tries to grip your consciousness. I did a research study on a group of people who had been through some meditation programs and spiritual study. I asked them to write whatever came into their mind without editing for just twenty minutes. Then I asked another group of people who had never been exposed to spirituality to also write down whatever came into their minds without editing for the same twenty minutes. The results of the study were shocking.

In the case of those people who were not exposed to spirituality, if they had written one hundred thoughts, more than eighty of them were directing them more and more towards depression. Only twenty thoughts were self-healing that could bring them out of depression. But in the case of those who were exposed to spirituality and meditation, I saw that more than sixty percent of their thoughts were self-healing! Only forty percent were taking them towards depression. This is the impact of meditation. It keeps you healthy holistically.

Meditation is realizing and living the truth. The knowledge of the Truth is what I call 'knowledge-weapons' or śāstra śastrā. Śāstra means Truth, knowledge. Śastrā means weapons. Knowledge-weapons are the weapons of Truth that can destroy the depression of your being. The more knowledge-weapons you have, the more depression will be afraid of you! If you have a huge army, naturally the enemy country will be afraid of attacking you. Just by seeing your pile of weapons, the other country will think twice before attacking you. In the same way, the more you accumulate self-healing thoughts inside your being, the more depression will fear to come near you.

With meditation, you can live your life in a much better way, with greater clarity and greater intensity. You will be more aware, more creative. Internally, you will experience a deep and undisturbed silence.

You will no longer be doing, you will only be watching the doer. This is the whole secret of meditation – to become the watcher, to become the witness of your own actions and emotions. Once you become aware that the real you is not the one who acts, that the real you is not the one who feels angry or hurt or depressed, then you experience a tremendous sense of freedom.

Whether we realize it or not, every single one of us is searching for freedom. All our life we are searching for freedom. We think our freedom is dependent on others. Now you know that the other person is in no way connected to your freedom.

With meditation, for the first time, you will understand what it means to love for no reason. For the first time you will not be giving something in order to receive. You will give love simply because you have so much to give! You will shower love upon the world in the same way that a rain cloud showers upon the earth or a flower spontaneously spreads its fragrance all around. You will love because you are so full and overflowing!

Just try this: whatever you do, do it with awareness. If you are eating, eat with awareness. No extra time is needed to do this. In fact, it will take less time to eat because when you eat with awareness, you will eat just the amount your body needs rather than stuffing food down your throat thoughtlessly.

Awareness has tremendous intelligence. Awareness can do better miracles than all your planning. Awareness doesn't contradict, it complements your plans. It will add to your potentiality.

When you are aware, you are absent. When awareness is present, your ego can't exist. When your ego exists, awareness can't be present. 'Your absence' will make you live enlightenment.

When you are aware, you will work optimally and use your energy efficiently. So at the end of the day you are just as fresh as in the morning. You see, it is not the work that exhausts you; it is your mind, your attitude. The whole game of meditation is to get out of the work-oriented mind and look at every moment of life as a beautiful divine play of Existence.