WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Real meditation

How should I meditate?

Fix your mind on the aspiration and dismiss everything else.

If thoughts come, what should I do? [old p. 15]

Dismiss them.

*

This morning during the general meditation I felt some pressure. I hope it will not become a hindrance to my studies; in that case I think it would be better not to meditate.

I see no reason why meditation, properly done, should be a hindrance to study--quite the opposite. Only if what you call "meditation" is not meditation at all, but a state of inert passivity and drowsiness, can it harm your studies; and as that state is thoroughly undesirable from every point of view, of course it is better not to indulge in it.

12 February 1934

What is real meditation then?

It is an active and deliberate concentration on the Divine Presence and a sustained, alert contemplation of that Sublime Reality. [new p. 25][old p. 25]

How and why does this pressure come?

If you mean the pressure of inert passivity, it comes from the resistance of the lower vital and the obscurity of the material nature. It can be overcome by an untiring will and aspiration.

12 February 1934

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 17, pp. 14, 24