Beauty To Grace

Being A Witness

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.

Watching is the key of meditation: Watch your mind.

Don’t do anything – no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God – just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don’t disturb it, don’t prevent it, don’t repress it; don’t do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly the mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing – without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.

The watcher is never part of the mind and as the watcher becomes more and more rooted and strong, the distance between the watcher and the mind goes on becoming longer and longer. Soon the mind is so far away that you can hardly feel that it exists… just an echo in faraway valleys. And ultimately, even those echoes disappear. This disappearance of the mind is without your effort, without your using any force against the mind – just letting it die its own death.

Once the mind is absolutely silent, absolutely gone, you cannot find it anywhere. You become for the first time aware of yourself because the same energy that was involved in the mind, finding no mind, turns upon itself. Remember: energy is a constant movement.

We say things are objects, and perhaps you have never thought why we call things objects. They are objects because they hinder your energy, your consciousness. They object; they are obstacles. But when there is no object, all thoughts, emotions, moods, everything, has disappeared. You are in utter silence, in nothingness – rather in no- thingness; the whole energy starts turning upon itself. This returning energy to the source brings immense delight.

Quote by William Blake, “energy is delight.” That man, although he is not a mystic, must have found some glimpse of meditation. When meditation comes back to its own source, it explodes in immense delight.

This delight in its ultimate state is enlightenment.

Anything that helps you to go through this process of meditation is discipline: perhaps taking a good bath, being clean and cool; sitting in a relaxed posture with eyes closed, neither hungry nor overloaded; sitting in a posture which is most relaxing… having a look at the whole body, every part and whether there is any tension. If there is any tension, then change the posture and bring the body into a relaxed state.