Public Talk, 22nd February 1948 | Mumbai, India
So, meditation is self-knowledge, and without self-knowledge there is no meditation. If you are not aware of all your responses all the time, if you are not fully conscious, fully cognizant of your daily activities, merely to lock yourself in a room and sit down in front of a picture of your guru, of your Master, to do puja, to meditate, is an escape. Because, without self-knowledge there is no right thinking, and without right thinking, what you do has no meaning, however noble your intentions are. So, prayer has no significance without self-knowledge; but when there is self-knowledge, there is right thinking, and hence right action. When there is right action, there is no confusion, and therefore there is no supplication to someone else to lead you out of it. A man who is fully aware, is meditating; he does not pray, because he does not want anything. Through prayer, through regimentation, through repetition, through japam and all the rest of it, you can bring about a certain stillness; but that is mere dullness, reducing the mind and the heart to a state of weariness. It is drugging the mind; and exclusion, which you call concentration, does not lead to reality, no exclusion ever can. What brings about understanding is self-knowledge, and it is not very difficult to be aware if there is right intention. If you are interested to discover the whole process of yourself - not merely the superficial part, but the total process of your whole being - , then it is comparatively easy. If you really want to know yourself, you will search out your heart and your mind to know their full content; and when there is the intention to know, you will know. Then you can follow, without condemnation or justification, every movement, of thought and feeling; and by following every thought and every feeling as it arises, you bring about tranquillity which is not compelled, not regimented, but which is the outcome of having no problem, no contradiction. It is like the pool that becomes peaceful, quiet, any evening when there is no wind; and when the mind is still, then that which is immeasurable comes into being.
Tags: meditation, self-knowledge
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