Why You Meditate

This world is crowded with name and form. What else do you see? When there is name and form, the substance is concealed. You don’t see the substance. For instance, now this glass is in front of us. What do you see in this glass? Name is glass, cup, tumbler or whatever it is. And the form, that’s all. What else do you see? Can anyone tell what it is? Name is cup, tumbler or glass. Form is this. Name and form. Can anyone see what it is so far.

This world is covered with the names and forms. The substance is concealed. You can’t see it. Supposing now, for instance, I show you the glass. Now this glass has a name and form and no one is seeing the silica of which it is made. You don’t see the silica. And if it is broken and crushed, it will return to silica; the sand which no one has seen. So when we see the name and form, pure substance is concealed. 

So we are involved in names and forms for all of our transactions. Therefore, we have missed our substance. Although we have been hitchhiking through 8.4 million species and have spent 35 million years coming and going, we have not seen the substance. Now we are here and we are looking. 

We are here and we are happy to sort it out together.

The other day, I read a clipping out of a newspaper. It seems that seconds after the birth of a child, the child cried out, “No, not again!”  And the child cried for 20 minutes.

What does that mean? It means the child had led a very good  previous life and surely he was ready to find the substance, not name and form. 

We are occupied with name and form, morning to evening,  the whole span of our lives. We have no time to sit quietly with the question, “Who am I?”

It may only take two seconds for you to find out who you are. 

But no one has spent this time nor has found a teacher who could tell you “What is my substance.” You have not gone with the longing, “Who am I?” You have not gone with this question, this burning desire. Instead of showing you your own substance, you have been handed some books or some other method to go through once again. That is not the way. You have to keep quiet for two seconds. 

Let us proceed now towards the self which is consciousness, freedom, bliss eternal — your own nature. It has always been with you and within all beings. If you drect your mind towards your own self, rejecting name and form, it is going to happen. Leave behind name and form. Meditate. And search for who you really are. When you go further beyond, this world, crowded with names and forms, will drown in the quiet. Some teachers have ended the journey here. Meditate and there will be a void and in that void there will be no name or form. And some teachers put a stop there.

But that’s not the end of the journey. You still have to continue.

Some of you understand now. For some, it may take hours, days or weeks. Then this — just observe this void. You can observe this void when you meditate. 

When you observe the void, this void has name and form drawn into it and this void is going to drown into bliss, consciousness, your own being. And then when you stay there, you will know this is my home and this is the end of my journey. And when you see that there is a very deep longing, burning, longing for freedom you see that it is nearer to you than your own breath. 

You don’t have to make any effort. You don’t need to think anything. You just have to keep quiet and not touch what is not permanent. 

Name and form are not permanent. You can discriminate. Where there is name and form, there is some fraud. It is like a mirage in the desert. You see the mirage. Some people are misled, thinking they can bathe in the mirage waters. However, the lake is  there in the morning but not there in the night. 

Then  they think how can this be? How can the river flow in the desert? The reason being that, although it looked real, the name was there but not the form.

Fifty, sixty, years ago this form, this body, was not with you and it’s not going to stay. So you are attached to something that is not abiding, which is not permanent, which is not eternal, which is not your nature. 

Once you understand, you will be capable of having a very different inward journey. And that journey, it is so smooth.

It is so lovely that you have neither to make any kind of effort not even to start a thought. Simply by keeping quiet, you see, for a few seconds. I call it one second. Some people come and in just one second out of a lifetime of perhaps 80 years life span, spend one second, and it happens.

And this is up to you to experience. I can’t describe it as it has never been described so far. If you do it, you will love it. And you will never come out of it. 

Is that what you want to know?

Satsang excerpt, 1992 April 8