Swamiji on Meditation

Meditation is simply a training ground to learn to de-identify. The more you de-identify, the more purely you are able to connect with the truth; you become able to access the truth in more ways and with more completeness than you ever could before. Your clarity and connection with the Absolute grows in proportion to the development of your ability to de-identify with thoughts.

Meditation is breaking contact with the ego. The Absolute is the seed. The tree is the body. The branches and the leaves are the mind. When one goes into nothingness, one essentially moves into the “seed state,” in which neither tree, nor branches, nor leaves exist. During meditation one disassociates from the tree, the branches, and the leaves of the mind for the first time. The longer one recedes into the seed state of the pure Absolute, the more the ego loses its power. The ego now finds it more difficult to sprout to its previous state of fullness. At first, you may experience the seed state for milliseconds and delay the ego’s sprouting time by milliseconds. With practice, these milliseconds become tenths of seconds of samadhi, then seconds, then minutes, and so on.

— Swami Sai Premananda