Summary: Explains the process of meditation and the position of the observer.

An internal change must come and that comes through sadhana – sincere sadhana and meditation. And meditation does not mean just techniques. It means the whole of your life and what you do with it and how. You have to consciously take up the whole of your life and bring it to meditation.

In my past years of experience I have discovered this with the people, that for them meditation means just sitting and doing techniques or somehow managing to get enlightened. Rather, every moment of your life must be offered in the fire of meditation so that it stands transformed – your entire life. Then truly the whole work is done. Otherwise of course you can have this experience and that experience, this moment and that moment, but it has not brought about a complete change, a complete meditation, a complete transformation. And so you have to become conscious every moment. You must develop insight into things. That does come as a result of sincere meditation. And yet have the joy of life. But if in your depth you are also joyful, then your joy is so much more with the outside.

You explode. You explode from the depth of your being, like a child. Children do that. But they start to lose it when they grow up. So through watching you can realise for example, ‘I am not the ear’. You can watch your ear and you can observe yourself. Through that you can come to an understanding that you are not the ear, because you are observing. You have an object of observation. In a sense the observed is different from the observer. Of course at the ultimate they all merge. ‘What Is’ alone remains and is beyond words. That is why Shankara says, “I am the Self. I am neither this, nor that. I am Shiva, I am Shiva. I am the Self, I am all there is.”

There are two ways: one is the way of negation which is neti-neti – not this, not this. I am not this, I am not this – and one comes to the Ultimate Silence. Then there is the other: iti-iti, affirmation. All this is That, That is this. So through neti-neti, not this, not this, you can arrive at the Ultimate, the Absolute. Or you awaken to a new perception and then you have your eyes open and you say iti-iti, it is all this, it is all this. There is nothing else but That, which has become all this. One can accept from the very beginning all this as That in its various forms and also the formless. Or initially you can deny, negate it, and arrive at the absolute position, space, and then you open out to a new perception, an insight, and you come to the same realisation that verily it is all That; That has become all this. So, “I am Shiva. I am the Self – Supreme – Nature of Blissful Consciousness.”

Just like the meditation mantra for the saṃnyāsin, ‘I am not this, I am not this.’ Even when they meditate, even when they watch, as they meditate, they sit, they remember this: remind themselves they are not the body. So you can begin the meditation in this way also. It is also a kind of technique. When you sit, remember, ‘I am not this body. I am not the mind. I am not these thoughts. I am not these feelings when they come up.’ And you keep standing behind, beyond all this.

During meditation you may have a tremendous or beautiful feeling arising and you may immediately identify – but really you are beyond even that. You can experience the feeling, you are the experiencer of that feeling and the feeling is the experienced. Just so the observer and the observed and therefore the observation. But the observed is different from the observer. So also the experienced is different from the experiencer. Through this you establish yourself or you come to an understanding that you are the experiencer, the observer, or the space that continues to Be. To Be. Before you can become the feeling, you have to Be.

Arya Vihar

23 May 1996