Exercises in Meditation

1. The heart-rose

Kindly imagine a flower inside your heart. Suppose you prefer a rose. Imagine that the rose is not fully blossomed; it is still a bud. After you have meditated for two or three minutes, please try to imagine that petal by petal the flower is blossoming. See and feel the flower blossoming petal by petal inside your heart. Then, after Five minutes, try to feel that there is no heart at all; there is only a flower inside you called 'heart'. You do not have a heart, but only a flower. The flower has become your heart or your heart has become a flower. After seven or eight minutes, please feel that this flower-heart has covered your whole body. Your body is no longer here; from your head to your feet you can feel the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your feet, immediately you experience the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your knee, you experience the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your hand, you experience the fragrance of a rose. Everywhere the beauty, fragrance and purity of the rose have permeated your entire body. When you feel from your head to your feet that you have become only the beauty, fragrance, purity and delight of the rose, then you are ready to place yourself at the Feet of your Beloved Supreme.

2. A river of consciousness

When you meditate, try to bring three things into your mind: purity in your entire being, humility in your entire being and gratitude in every limb, in every cell. When you breathe in and breathe out, feel that a river of divine conscious ness is flowing through you without any coercion or exertion. Feel that this river of divine consciousness is flowing in and out with constant oneness with the Source, the Supreme.

3. Offer it to God

When you breathe in, feel that you are breathing in God's immortal qualities and when you breathe out, feel that you are offering God your ignorance. Right now we feel that ignorance is our possession. Although we say that ignorance is very bad, we don't want to give it away. But we have to know that ignorance is not our real possession; our real possessions are peace, light and bliss. During your meditation, offer to God your false possessions and receive from God your real possessions. Ask God to take what you have and what you are and to give you what He has and what He is. What you have is aspiration, the inner cry to become divine. What you are is ignorance. Ask God to take both your aspiration and your ignorance and to give you what He has and what He is: Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.

4. The golden being

Try to feel that you are inside the Heart of God, the Inner Pilot. Although you have not seen the Supreme, just mentally imagine a human being who is absolutely golden. Imagine that He is right in front of you and you are inside His Heart or in His Lap or at His Feet. Do not think that you are I eighteen or forty or sixty years old. Think that you are only one month old and that you are inside the very Heart of the Supreme or in His Lap.

5. The vastness of the sky

Keep your eyes half open and imagine the vast sky. In the beginning try to feel that the sky is in front of you; later try to feel that you are as vast as the sky, or that you are the vast sky itself. After a few minutes please close your eyes and try to see and feel the sky inside your heart. Please feel that you are the universal heart, and that inside you is the sky that you meditated upon and identified yourself with. Your spiritual heart is infinitely vaster than the sky, so you can easily house the sky within yourself.