It has been often remarked, that we come into this world naked and alone – and we depart, naked and alone.
To enter into pure meditation, we must also be prepared to stand naked – that is to say, naked of ego; and alone – without human company.
Our thoughts, desires, habits, attachments, prejudices, beliefs, ideas, ideals, likes and dislikes, fears and fantasies; everything we think we have and we are – all is outer baggage which only obscures our meditation-goal.
Meditation is the pure being which underlies all of these superficial layers of apparent self: this “ego.” Meditation is the ocean: ego is froth on its surface. Meditation is our source, the bedrock, the very basis of our being, upon which everything else stands, and shifts. It is the eternal, unchanging reality: to perceive this reality, we must strip away all that is changeable, all that exists only in time and space.
Meditation ushers us from the finite, through the portal of the infinite. There our nakedness is revealed as the completeness of pure Being; our aloneness blossoms into the fullness of perfect Oneness.
Sri Chinmoy has expressed pure meditation directly and exquisitely in his immortal poem, “The Absolute:”
“No mind, no form, I only exist;
Now ceased all will and thought;
The final end of Nature’s dance,
I am it whom I have sought.
“A realm of Bliss bare, ultimate;
Beyond both knower and known;
A rest immense I enjoy at last;
I face the One alone.
“I have crossed the secret ways of life,
I have become the Goal.
The Truth immutable is revealed;
I am the way, the God-Soul.
“My spirit aware of all the heights,
I am mute in the core of the Sun.
I barter nothing with time and deeds;
My cosmic play is done.”