What is the actual meaning of meditation?

   While asleep, whether you are aware of it or not, you are meditating. Deep sleep and meditation are very similar to each other. Meditation is deep sleep with consciousness, and deep sleep is meditation without consciousness. Meditation is to sleep consciously and the way to tap the source of energy within.

When you go to bed, you will first feel sleepy then there will be a dream and from the dream stage you will enter into sleep and from sleep into deep sleep. In deep sleep there is no consciousness of the world, no consciousness of the environment, no consciousness of the body; you have forgotten everything. Similarly, you are to attain that deep sleep state during your meditation. When thoughts still arrive, your meditation is similar to your dream state and not sleep or deep sleep and therefore it is not real meditation. You should try to attain that deep sleep state, where there is no sense of the world, nothing.

The actual techniques you are practicing are not meditation, they are just techniques to prepare you for meditation. When you sit practicing, it does not mean you have been meditating. You are simply practicing to attain that state.     

 

Paramahansa Prajnanananda – Yoga: Pathway to the Divine