CWTVKS Volume 2

4) Meditation

If one cultivates the habit of meditating in a concentrated manner even for ten minutes before going to bed, the response begins to continue throughout the night whatever the dreams etc., on the surface layer. And in the morning on getting up, one finds the same movement continuing. A fresh sitting at that time is necessary to stabilise and increase what has been received.

26 October 1949

The morning time is the most precious for meditation. But to make the best use of it it is necessary that before you retire at night you must be quiet, aspire for and get a measure of serenity, calm and go to bed in the consciousness that you have delivered yourself into the hands of the Power that is at work in you. In sleep in spite of the dreams etc., which cover mainly the surface layer of the consciousness, the Power goes on working in the depths and you will wake up with a feeling of repose, quiet and cheerfulness. That gives the proper setting for a conscious and fruitful meditation. When you sit for meditation if sleep threatens to overpower you, you must be vigilant. There is a particular point at which if the sleep is rejected by vigilance, or by physical means, it goes away and does not bother you further.

By steady practice a natural mode of concentration gets formed during these periods of meditation.

25 April 1949

An hour of quiet, deep, concentrated meditation should be enough for a day provided there is a conscious endeavour during the rest of the time to educate the feelings, attitude and activities in the mould and rhythm that is demanded of a yogin. The attitude of the God-seeker should be active not merely during the meditation, but all the time, influencing and directing one's activities.

It is not advisable to sit for meditation for long hours at a stretch—at any rate in the beginning. Thoughts begin to crowd in after some time and if allowed to continue, a habit gets formed. That is why brief snatches of undisturbed meditation are better. In between these periods of meditation, an attitude that is most consonant with an aspiration and seeking for God-life must be cultivated and made increasingly living. In the long run there ceases to be any real difference between periods of meditation and non-meditation; each prepares for the other and both fuse into one uninterrupted line of sadhana.

14 October 1949

It happens, frequently, during meditation that just when a deeper movement is about to begin there is a strong tendency to lapse into sleep. If one manages somehow to get over that movement, the gain is striking; the movement increases; the spread of the light is wider.

August 1951

If the fire of aspiration is burning, sleep will not creep in during meditation. Try to ignite that flame before which everything else pales and falls from you.

Feel the calm and Peace within and stick to it; that will lead and land you there which you cannot even anticipate.

18 January 1951

When you meditate and try to plunge deep into the heart, you may get sleep. But the sleep is not the usual kind of sleep. When you come out of that sleep some passage has been worked out which will help you in getting deeper next time. Each time you go a level deeper.

21 September 1950

During meditation, particularly in the mornings, when there is a downward rush of Power from the higher altitudes into the being, at times the inflow of the Force strikes certain centres e.g. the vital, and one feels a tremendous increase in the vital energy, a thousandfold capacity etc. But such things have their own reactions later unless carefully handled.

27 April 1949

Q: When one sits for meditation at times the tendency to go in is strong, at other times to expand upwards. Should the stronger tendency be allowed to prevail or should one force what one wants?

A: Whichever is the stronger tendency and is more natural at the moment must be given free scope. Only one must be vigilant. For when the tendency is to go within or deep, the mind tends to sink into the subconscient. When one expands upwards, the mind gets busy with waves of surface thoughts. Of course the vigilance is neccssary up to a certain stage when the push inwards or the pull upwards is so strong that the mind is simply swept away in the movement.

11 December 1949

Meditation is no end. It is after all a means. Your immediate aim must be a radical change of outlook, conversion of consciousness. Everything should proceed from a changed centre, a centre bathed in the surging waves of the antah samudra, inner ocean.

21 October 1948