Sri Sathya Sai Speaks

As regards the technique of dhyaana (meditation), different teachers and trainers give different forms of advice. But I shall give you now the most universal and the most effective form. This is the very first step in spiritual discipline. Set aside for this at first a few minutes everyday and later go on extending the time as and when you feel the bliss that you shall get. Let it be in the hours before dawn. This is preferable, because the body is refreshed after sleep and the peregrinations of daytime will not yet have impinged on you. Have a lamp or a candle with an open flame, steady and straight, before you. Sit in the padhmaasana (lotus posture) or any other comfortable posture in front of the candle. Look on the flame steadily for some time and, closing your eyes, try to feel the flame inside you, between your eyebrows. Let it slide down into the lotus of your heart, illumining the path. When it enters the heart, imagine that the petals of the lotus open out one by one, bathing every thought, feeling and emotion in the Light, and so removing darkness from them. There is no space for darkness to hide. The light of the flame becomes wider and brighter. Let it pervade your limbs. Now those limbs can never more deal in dark, suspicious and wicked activities; they have become instruments of light and love. As the light reaches up to the tongue, falsehood vanishes from it. Let it rise up to the eyes and the ears and destroy all the dark desires that infest them, leading you to perverse sights and puerile conversation.

Let your head be surcharged with light and all wicked thoughts flee therefrom. Imagine that the light is in you more and more intensely. Let it shine all around you and let it spread from you, in ever widening circles, taking in your loved ones, your kith and kin, your friends and companions, your enemies and rivals, strangers, all living beings, the entire world. Since the light illumines all the senses everyday, so deeply and so systematically, a time will soon come when you can no more relish dark and evil sights, yearn for dark and sinister tales, crave for base, harmful, deadening toxic food and drink, handle dirty demeaning things, approach places of ill-fame and injury, or frame evil designs against anyone at any time. Stay on in that thrill of witnessing the light everywhere. If you are adoring God in any form now, try to visualise that form in the all-pervasive Light. For Light is God; God is Light. Practise this meditation as I have advised regularly, everyday. At other times repeat the Name of God (any Name fragrant with any of His many Majesties), always taking care to be conscious of His Might, Mercy and Munificence.