Part V — Talks

Our soulful prayer and our fruitful meditation¹²

Our soulful prayer and our fruitful meditation. Our soulful prayer is answered even before we pray if we have a pure aspiration-heart. Our fruitful meditation is fulfilled even before we meditate if we have a sure surrendered life.

What is a true prayer and what is a true meditation? A true prayer is constant self-giving and a true meditation is constant self-transcendence.

We pray to God for His Greatness. We meditate on God for His Goodness. When we pray we feel that God is above us. When we meditate we feel that God is within us. We pray to God because He is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. His Greatness inspires us. We meditate on God because of His Love and Compassion, His unconditional Love and unconditional Compassion. Not because He is great but because He is good is the reason we meditate on God. We pray to God to give us what He has and what He is. We meditate on God for His manifestation in and through us.

When we pray, we feel our closeness to God. When we meditate, we feel our oneness with God. Closest intimacy we enjoy on the strength of our soulful prayer. Deepest ecstasy we enjoy in the inmost recesses of our heart by virtue of our fruitful meditation.

The finite in us desires the Infinite, the unknown, the unknowable. Therefore, it prays. The conscious reality, which is aware of itself in infinitesimal measure, wants to bring down the Infinite, the Eternal and the Immortal here on earth, in the immediacy of today. This is what our meditation wants.

Both prayer and meditation are of paramount importance. We pray because prayer constantly makes us feel that there is someone for us. We meditate because we feel that what we are now is not everything that we have or everything that we are. But there shall come a time when we shall grow into the very image of our Absolute Lord Supreme, which is our own perennial Source. With divine humility we pray, and thus we satisfy our Absolute Lord Supreme. With divine dignity we meditate, and thus we satisfy our Beloved Supreme.