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Questioner:
All teachers advise to meditate. What is the purpose of meditation?
Maharaj:
We know the outer world of sensations and actions, but of our inner world of
thoughts and feelings we know very little. The primary purpose of meditation is
to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose
is to reach the source of life and consciousness.
Incidentally practice of meditation
affects deeply our character. We are slaves to what we do not know; of what we
know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover and
understand its causes and its workings, we overcome it by the very knowing;
the unconscious dissolves when brought into the conscious. The dissolution of the
unconscious releases energy; the mind feels adequate and become quiet.
Q: What is the use of a quiet mind?
M: When the mind is quiet, we come to know
ourselves as the pure witness. We withdraw from the experience and its
experiencer and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the
two. The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be
something: 'I am this, I am that', continues, but only as a part of the
objective world. Its identification with the witness snaps.
Q: As I can make out, I live on many levels and
life on each level requires energy. The self by its very nature delights in
everything and its energies flow outwards. Is it not the purpose of meditation
to dam up the energies on the higher levels, or to push them back and up, so as
to enable the higher levels to prosper also?
M: It is not so much the matter of levels as of gunas (qualities). Meditation is a sattvic activity and aims at complete
elimination of tamas (inertia) and rajas (motivity). Pure sattva (harmony) is perfect freedom from
sloth and restlessness.
Q: How to strengthen and purify the sattva?
M: The sattva
is pure and strong always. It is like the sun. It may seem obscured by clouds
and dust, but only from the point of view of the perceiver. Deal with the
causes of obscuration, not with the sun.
Q: What is the use of sattva?
M: What is the use of truth, goodness, harmony,
beauty? They are their own goal. They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly,
when things are left to themselves, are not interfered with, not shunned, or
wanted, or conceptualised, but just experienced in full awareness, such
awareness itself is sattva. It does
not make use of things and people -- it fulfils them.
Q: Since I cannot improve sattva, am I to deal with tamas
and rajas only? How can I deal with them?
M: By watching their influence in you and on
you. Be aware of them in operation, watch their expressions in your thoughts,
words and deeds, and gradually their grip on you will lessen and the clear
light of sattva will emerge. It is
neither difficult, nor a protracted process; earnestness is the only condition
of success.
