This is not about a meditation technique, nor is this about a few minutes or few hours of meditation practiced in the midst of one’s daily life. This is not about destressing oneself. This is about a life of meditation, a profound shift in which one’s whole life becomes a field of meditation. This begins only when one has understood and finished with all psychological becoming.

Almost all of us are not working merely to sustain ourselves. While livelihood, unfortunately, has become an increasingly complex and time consuming affair in modern society, it is still possible to earn enough by the age of 45 or so and come out of the rigmarole of livelihood. Of course, this is for those who would want to come out of all affairs of life that involve one’s mind in external affairs.

All modern organizations, are not meant merely to meet the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter for man, but for psychological becoming. Which means one is not working merely for a decent house, decent food and decent clothes. Houses, food and clothes are used as means of showing off status and personal aggrandizement. One could do with very few clothes, a simple, well ventilated house, with a few rooms, and simple home cooked food. It would be great if man had never gone into industrialization. Farming and handicrafts together can create a sustainable, environmentally peaceful lifestyle. Not much technologically is required to live life comfortably and peacefully. Some intermediate technology is enough. However, the technologically we have invented, and continue to invent, has been the source of greatest human conflict and environmental destruction. It is our pleasure addicted, power hungry mind which has created this behemoth industrial civilization where ceaseless production and consumerism turn humans into automatons.

There are many individuals who feel the stress of this chattering, grinding industrial machine. They turn to spirtuality to practice some meditation technique to destress themselves. But no amount of meditation or meditation technique can end psychological becoming. If I am craving for name and fame, identified with my status and wealth, no amount of meditation is going to touch all this. The mind is an extremely intricate and ingenious mechanism. It can survive and co-opt any thing for its continuity and survival. Spirituality is alo co-opted by the mind for it’s survival. Contrary to what so many modern spiritual teachers and gurus claim, there is no way one can enter into meditation till one has understood and put an end to all forms of psychological becoming.

Psychological becoming comes to an end only with deconstruction of mind through a process of penetrating self inquiry. As opposed to what most would like to believe, it is disturbance and discontent involved in deconstructive self inquiry, that is the way out, rather than lulling the mind with meditation techniques. A meditation technique is a duality. One does not “do” meditation. Rather one “comes” to meditation. A mind doing a meditation technique is in duality; there is a meditator and there is meditation. When one comes to meditation without any techniques, through self inquiry, it is after the mind has automatically fallen silent. So meditation is not a means to make the mind silent, but meditation begins when the mind has become silent without any effort or will. This silence of mind is not just a temporary state, but a global silence in the mind after it has understood and ended with all forms of psychological becoming, through self inquiry. In such a case, there is no meditator: just meditation.

All psychological becoming comes to an end only when one begins with the outer, and inquires into all relationships one has, in daily life. One inquires into family, society, organizations and systems which govern one’s life, and mediates one’s relationships with others. All these farmeworks of family, society, organizations and systems involve one in the process of psychological becoming through the values they uphold, and enforce an individual to adopt. Till one has not freed oneself from all values upheld by all these frameworks, there is no alternative for an individual, but to be enchained to the wheel of perpetual psychological becoming.

One who inquires into all this, walks out of society, out of all it’s framework of values. He/she has become psychologically alone. As far as the society is concerned, such a person is useless for it. But the person who walks out, has walked out after a tremendous amount of inquiry and responsibility borne out of it. Such a person is no longer responsible for adhering to the false values of society which are based on psycholoigcal becoming. He/she has clearly seen the misery, suffering, danger and conflcit born out of psychological becoming. He/she has clearly understood that a total psychological revolution is required in human consciousness. No amount of social work, reformation or idea based revolutionary systems can bring about a world free of conflict. Therefore such a person steps out of society, out of psychological becoming, and dedicates himself to the task of bringing about a revolution in one’s consciousness.

Even though such a person has walked out, he/she has not walked out for personal liberation. He/she has realized that the consciousness of the individual is the consciousness of man. So a revolution in the individual consciousness is bound to affect the human consciousness. Outwardly such a person shows no signs of working for the society. His/her life would be lived in complete silence. Since he/she would have saved enough to fulfil his simple needs of life, he/she would not need to work for livelihood. The only activites he/she does pertains to maintaining his/her survival. This is not at all enforced, but born out of the silence due to the end of all movements of psychological becoming. He/she does not feel the desire to do any work or to socialize. Even if he/she does any work he/she is free from all needs of psychological approval. Such a person then comes to a life of meditation.

A life of meditation is the real beginning of plumbing the depths of mind and consciousness. The work done so far only negated the superficial layers of consciousness, which keep one engaged and busy with external affairs of life. Even though the work of cutting through the external layers is humongous, a task which extremely few ever achieve, the task of penetrating the deeper layers of consciousness is rarer and requires infinite patience. The deeper layers of consciousness are about biological drives of pleasure, sex and pain. There is no way that these deeper layers would be revealed if the outer, working consciousness has not been silenced. As was the case with the earlier self inquiry, there is no method here too. There is no meditator. Becasue the outer noise has been silenced, the inner is going to be revealed. It is not going to be neatly revealed like the chapters in a book. The consciousness has it’s own wily movements. One has to read the book in the seemingly disorganized and abrput sequence of chapters presented by consciousness. If there is a meditator, he/she has his/her own agenda. Without a meditator, consciousness is going to plumb it’s own depths. Although I have used the word depth here, there is no measurement here, no stations, no grades, no achievements. Meditation without the meditator is a movement beyond all measure.