The meditation I am talking about is not a meditation on something: rather, it is a state of meditation. So this is what I mean when I am talking to you about meditation as a state. Meditation does not mean remembering someone. Meditation means to drop everything which is in one’s memory and to come to a state where only consciousness remains, where only awareness remains.

If you light a lamp and remove all the objects surrounding it, the lamp will still go on giving light. In the same way, if you remove all objects from your consciousness, all thoughts, all imagination, what will happen? – only consciousness will remain. That pure state of consciousness is meditation. You don’t meditate on somebody. Meditation is a state where only consciousness remains.

When only consciousness remains without an object, that state is called meditation. I am using the word meditation in this sense.

What you practice is not meditation in the real sense; it is only a concept. But meditation will happen on its own through this. Try to understand that what you are practicing at night, exercises involving the chakras, and in the morning, exercises involving the breath, is all a discipline, it is not meditation. Through this discipline a moment will come when the breath will seem to have disappeared. Through this discipline a moment will come when the body seems to have disappeared and thoughts have also disappeared. What will remain when everything has disappeared? That which remains is meditation. When everything has disappeared, that which is left behind is called meditation. A discipline is on something; meditation is not on anything in particular. So what we are in fact doing is practicing the disciplines of the chakras and of the breath.

You will ask, “Wouldn’t it be better if we practiced a discipline using the idea of God? Wouldn’t it be better if we practiced a discipline with an idol?”

That would be dangerous. It is dangerous because while you practice a discipline with an idol, the state which I am calling meditation will not happen. Practicing a discipline with an idol, there will only be the idol and nothing else. And the deeper the discipline goes with the idol, the more the idol will be there and nothing else.

It happened to Ramakrishna. He used to meditate on the mother goddess Kali; this was his discipline. Then slowly, slowly it happened that he started seeing Kali within himself. Closing his eyes, the idol became alive and he became very blissful, very joyous. But one day a sage came to see him. The sage said to him, “What you are doing is only imagination, it is not a meeting with God.”

And Ramakrishna said, “It is not a meeting with God? But I see Kali alive!”

The sage replied, “Seeing Kali alive is not a meeting with God.”

Some see a Kali, some see a Jesus, some see a Krishna – all these are fabrications of the mind. God does not have any visible form. The divine does not have a face, a manner, a shape. The moment consciousness enters the formless, it enters the divine.