The Great Challenge

CHAPTER 1

Flight of the alone to the alone
16 August 1970 pm

Question 1

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT YOU MEAN BY YOGA, THE YOGI, AND MEDITATION.

The first thing to be remembered about meditation is that it is not something that can be done.
Throughout the world people have the notion that meditation means doing something. It is not a
doing, it is not an act, it is something that happens. It is not that YOU go to it; it comes to you and
penetrates you. It destroys you in one way and recreates you in another. It is something so vital and
so infinite that it cannot be a part of your doing.

Then what is to be done? You can only create the situation in which it happens. All that you can do
is to be vulnerable and open to existence from all sides.

Ordinarily we are like prisons: we are closed up within ourselves with no openings. In a way we are
dead. One can say we have become ”life-proof”: life cannot come to us. We have created barriers
and hindrances to life, because life can be dangerous, uncontrollable; it is something which is not
in our hands. We have created a closed existence for ourselves so that we can be certain and
secure, so that we can be comfortable. This closed existence is convenient, but at the same time it
is deadening. The more closed we become the less alive we are. The more open we become the
more alive we are.

Meditation is an openness to all dimensions, an openness to everything. But to be open to everything
is dangerous, to be open to everything unconditionally makes us insecure. It cannot be comfortablebecause anything can happen. A mind which longs for security, which longs for comfort, which longs for certainty, cannot be a meditative mind. Only a mind which is open to anything that life offers, welcoming each and everything that happens, even death, can create a situation in which
meditation happens.

So the only thing that can be done by you is to be receptive to meditation, to be totally receptive –
not to any particular happening but to anything that comes.

Meditation is not a particular dimension, it is a dimensionless existence, an existence that is open to
each and every dimension without any conditions, without any longings, without any expectations.
If there are any expectations, then the opening will not be total. If there are any conditions, any
longings, if there are any ”ifs,” then the opening cannot be total. No part of you should remain
closed. If you are not totally open, then no vital, vigorous, infinite happening can be received by you.
It cannot become the guest, and you cannot become the host.

Meditation is just the creation of a receptive situation in which something can happen, and all you
can do is wait for it.

A mind that waits is waiting for the unknown, because what is going to happen cannot be known
beforehand; you cannot even conceive of it. You may have heard something about it, but that is
not your knowledge; it remains unknown. A mind that is waiting for the unknown is a mind that is
meditative.

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