Question: Is it possible for someone who has no teacher or method of inner discipline to be thinking about something and enter into meditation without even realising it?
Sri Chinmoy: There are various ways of achieving realisation. If the aspirant is an extraordinary soul with intense aspiration, and if he does not have a Master or any possibility of getting one, at that time God Himself comes forward and gives him the necessary inner instruction. But thinking will not lead to meditation. Thinking and meditation are altogether two different things. In meditation there should be no thinking. The first thing in meditation is to keep the mind calm and quiet. No thought should enter into the mind at all.
Sri Chinmoy, Transformation-Night, Immortality-Dawn, Bhakti Press, Ottawa, 1975