In life, growing up means growing deep within our self —that's where our roots are. And meditation is the way. Meditation means going into our immortality, our eternity, and our godliness. One becomes unburdened by knowledge, by religion, by education. One reaches the state of CHILD LIKE innocence. Sages down the ages have said that they become children again, that they are reborn... Drop your knowledge, scriptures, religions, theologies and philosophies. Be born again, become innocent. Once again be simple, once again be a child. 

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts us away from all that is not ours and saves only that which is our authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves us standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. We know nothing. We discover everything. We have to be a seeker. Life must be a seeking — not a desire, search to find out "Who am I?" It is very strange that people who don't know who they are trying to become somebody. Becoming is the disease of the soul. Being is us, and to discover our being is the beginning of life. Then each moment is a new discovery, each moment brings a new joy; a new mystery opens its doors, a new love starts growing in us, a new compassion that we have never felt before, a new sensitivity about beauty, about goodness. 

As we become more sensitive, life becomes bigger. This whole existence becomes our family because no man is an island, we are all connected. Meditation brings sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it and heart of it. Meditation also brings a great silence ... an immense silence. This silence is the only music there is. All music is an effort to bring this silence somehow into manifestation. The seers of the ancient East have been very emphatic about the point that all the great arts — music, poetry, dance, painting, sculpture — are all born out of meditation. They are an effort to in some way bring the unknowable into the world of the known. A certain secret science has been used for centuries not through books, not through words, but through something which goes deeper — through silence, through meditation, through peace. As silence grows, life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration... True celebration should come from our life, in our life. We find our true self in nothingness, in the void, in the silence. 

Meditation is rising above thoughts, above the mind, above the ego, above our present self, it is leaving the present external world behind, as well as everything it says, and above all of these, we find our true self. Meditation is the doorway to Truth, Freedom, Love, Peace and Infinite Highness - our true and intrinsic Nature - by cleaning and purifying the windows of perception. 

Meditation is looking inward, it is getting to know ourselves, and beyond. It is peeking at the Infinite. From meditation, we rise above thoughts, and reach our Self, in all his Magnificence. Without meditation, we stay ignorant and blind to the Infinite Light and Might that We naturally all are. 

Meditation is simply finding the Peace, and more importantly, the Love. There is a center of our being, hidden within us, where Existence is known, where we get a glimpse of truth and where we relate with the primordial energy of life. It is this center from where the celestial music is heard, a music that is created without the help of any instruments, and from where such fragrance becomes available which is not of this earth. It is again this very center which knows no bondage whatsoever and which is the door to freedom, absolute freedom. And it is this center that leads us to the beyond which has no frontiers, which is a limitless and infinite expanse, which knows no sorrow and which is nothing but bliss and more bliss; nothing but abounding bliss. But our life force does not reach that center, it is impeded somewhere on its way to it, somewhere quite close to it. 

Meditation is the only way to reach the life force to that center where the flower can bloom, the lamp can be lighted, the eye, the third eye can open and the super sense can be availed. It is this center from where a few have seen truth and from where all have a right to see it. It is not necessary for a seed, just because it is a seed, to become a tree. Every seed is entitled to be a tree, but they don’t become. Although the seed has the potential to be a tree, it is also necessary to sow it and to fertilize it. It is necessary for the seed to break up, to disintegrate and to die as a seed so that it can become a tree. Only that seed is transformed into a tree which is ready to disintegrate and disappear into the soil. And if we look at the tree and the seed together, placed side by side, it is difficult to believe, how a tiny seed could turn into a large tree. 

It seems impossible. We have always had this feeling whenever we looked at men like Krishna or Buddha or Christ or Mohammed. Standing near Krishna we felt that it was impossible to be like him. So we said ”You are God, and we are just ordinary persons; we cannot be like you. You are an avatar, an incarnation, and we are just petty people who can only crawl anyhow. It is not in our power to be like you.” Whenever a Buddha or a Mahavira has crossed our path, we touched their feet and said” You are an incarnation, a son of God, and we are very ordinary people.” If a seed could speak it would say the same thing to the tree” You are God and I am an ordinary seed; how can I be like you?” How can a seed believe that a large tree is hidden in it? But it is a fact that what is a large tree today was once a tiny seed, and the tiny seed of today will turn into a large tree tomorrow. 

Infinite possibilities lie hidden within each of us. But so long as we are not aware of them, no scriptures however loudly they say it, can prove their existence. And it is as it should be, because it is sheer deception to believe what we don’t know. It is better for us to say that we don’t know that God is. But it is equally true that a few persons have known God. And a few others have known them, and their whole lives have been transformed through it; they have seen celestial flowers blooming all around them. But we cannot have it just by worshipping them. Unfortunately, religions have stopped with worshipping. But how can a seed become a tree by worshipping it? And a river cannot become an ocean however much it worships the ocean. And however much an egg worships the bird it cannot spread its wings in the sky. The egg will have to crack its shell; it will have to disappear as an egg. Seeing birds on the wing it cannot believe that it too can fly. Even as its mother flies, even as the mother urges it on to fly, it lacks confidence, it feels shaky. It sits on the edges of the bough and gathers courage. 

How can one who has never known flying believe that it can fly and go on a long journey in the vast sky? One has to jump, leap and fly. One has to believe that flying is possible. How can the birds that have never been on the wing believe that flying is possible? There is no way but to take a jump. For once one has to leap without knowing what it is. It has to be a leap in the dark, to begin with. If we want to learn swimming we have to step into the river. Those who know GOD say that the experience of God is a remembering. It is not something which we are going to learn today. The center within all of us is hidden in our brain. If we ask the brain specialists they will say that only a very small portion of the brain is active; a major part remains inactive, and it is difficult to say what is hidden in that major part. Even a genius uses a very small part of his brain – the rest remains dormant and unused. The brain is the abode of what we call the super sense, or the sixth sense, or the third eye. This center is closed and dormant, and once it is opened we shall see life in many new dimensions. 

Matter will disappear and God will appear; form will be lost and the formless will be revealed; the figure will vanish and the figureless will be known; death will cease to be and the door to the deathless will open. But the center from where it is seen is closed. A light bulb remains inactive so long as the electric current does not reach it. We reach the current and the bulb will be alive. The bulb is always waiting for the current to reach it. But the electric current cannot appear on its own, even if it is racing through the wire; it needs the bulb too. Both the current and the bulb are equally needed for the light to become manifest. The life-force is within us, but it cannot manifest itself unless it reaches that center which can make manifestation possible. We are alive only in name. Do we think that just breathing is life? Do we think that digesting food is life? Does life only consist of going to bed in the night and leaving it in the morning? Is it life that a child grows into youth and old age and then dies? Does life comprise only birth and death?   

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