Meditation succeeds in a marvellous way in revealing the great truths of life through the operation of the laws of thought. The first law of thought is: anything which is held in the mind persistently and intensely dwelt upon for a protracted period of time soon becomes concretized into fact. It becomes as actual as a concrete fact. This is one of the great laws upon which the knowledge of the power of thought is based. The other law, which is not restricted to the mental and intellectual level, but goes deeper and beyond and is much higher, is a spiritual law. This law is: such deeply concentrated thought persisted in to its ultimate conclusion suddenly ‘takes a leap’ beyond the intellect and mind and enters the realm of intuition. This is the law of transcendence. When the mind is totally concentrated and deeply absorbed in this process of meditation, it transcends itself and you are plunged into the experience of Pure Consciousness. It is similar to the electric current switched on to an arc lamp. When the current reaches one terminal of the arc, it faces a gap separating the two terminals and then, suddenly, with a flash it springs out, bridging the gap in an instant and bursts into the incandescence of a dazzling light.

It is in just such an inner experience—at once thrilling and sublime—that you ‘leap across’ the great void separating the relative from the Absolute, that you transcend all relativity and phenomena and attain to the Experience Absolute. It is a triumphant leap from the trifling bonds of confined human consciousness into the exalted vastness of the boundless and infinite Divine Consciousness, a supra-mental, superconscious experience in which meditation, the meditator and the object meditated upon, all three, fuse into undifferentiated oneness, merge into an indescribable experience of ineffable peace, limitless joy and dazzling light.

This great process of meditation is ultimately the one that links you with God and bestows upon you immortality; and concentration is the most important factor in meditation. What is it in your daily life that will be of the greatest help to you in developing concentration? In whatever pursuit one may be engaged, how does one begin to develop the ability to concentrate? You may be dishwashing, writing your accounts, preparing formula for the baby, penning a letter, licking stamps for an envelope, dusting or wiping a table-top—no matter what you may be doing—do it with meticulous care and attention. Give it your full attention. Do not try to think of half a dozen things at the same time. That is an art which may be very useful sometimes—especially if you have to wait at a downtown lunch-counter—but not for meditation. If you try to think of half a dozen things at the same time, you may become a very accomplished waiter or reservations clerk at an airport or travel agency, but such habitual miscellaneous and multifarious thinking will not help in acquiring meditation.

Therefore, try to be specific and definite in thinking and acting. Develop the habit of fixed attention. The more you practise, the more quickly you will grow into the habit of attentiveness. Your practice should not be haphazard or sporadic, but it should be regular; and you should have some exercise for the development of keen attention to be practised daily, throughout the entire year. If you persist in such practice, you will soon begin to find that you are developing the power of attention in a miraculous way and that whenever you fix your attention upon anything, there it stays.

Meditation is a matter of continuously fixing your attention upon something interior. Success in meditation depends upon the power of concentration. Concentration depends upon the ability to pay attention. Attention comes by practice and practice becomes regular through habit. If you practise regularly, you will be able to meditate and such practice is possible only if you are genuinely and sincerely interested in the entire thing.