Sai Baba's Light Meditation

Humanity is Divine. One can purify himself into perfect Divinity, by the process of Dhyana(meditation), taken up with eagerness and followed with faith, by various individuals. As regards the technique of Dhyana, different teachers and guides have different methods. But I shall give you now the most universal and the most effective. Set aside a few minutes, every day, in the beginning for this; later, you are sure toextend the period, when you experience the thrill of peace. Let it be the hours before dawn. This is preferable because the body is refreshed by sleep and the peregrinations of day-time have yet to impinge on the sensesand distract physical and mentalenergy.Have a lamp, with a bright littleflame,steadyand straight, or a candle before you.Theflame does never diminish in lustre,howevermany lamps may be lit thereform. Sotheflame is the most appropriate symboloftheeternal Absolute. Sit in the padmasanaor anycomfortable asana, in front of theflame. Lookon the flame, steadily and closing youreyes.Try to feel it inside you, betweenyoureyebrows. From there, let it descenddownintothe lotus of your heart, in the centerof thechest. Imagine that the petals of thelotus budopen out, one by one, bathing everythoughtand feeling and emotion and impulse intheLight and removing darkness.There is no space now for darkness totakerefuge; it has to flee before theflame.Imagine that the Light becomes wider,bigger,brighter. It pervades the limbs.(Babaistelling this to John Hislop, who hasnow lefthis body.) Hislop asks: Is there aparticularpathway along which the flame, thejyoti,should be moved into the body?Sai: The light is first moved into the heartwhich is conceived as a lotus, the petals ofwhich will open. The jyoti is then moved toother body parts. There is no particularsequence. But important is the final bodystation, which is the head. There the lightbecomes a crown enshrining and covering thehead. The light is then moved outside, fromthe particular to the universal. Move the lightinto relatives, friends, enemies, trees,animals, birds until the entire world and all itsforms are seen to have the same light as theircentre as has been found to be within oneself.The idea of moving the light into the universalphase, the idea of universality is that the samedivine light is present in everyone andeverywhere. To impress this universality onthe mind, we do the spreading of the lightoutside ones own body. One shouldunderstand that what comes about inmeditation as one moves deeply into it, is notthe thinking of the light, but the forgetting ofthe body and thereby the direct experiencethat the body is not oneself. This is the stage ofcontemplation when the body is totallyforgotten. It cannot be forced. It comes aboutbyitself and is the stage that naturally followscorrect concentration. Vivekananda told thatinmeditation he was unable to find his body;where was his body? He could not find it.Seeing the light and moving the light here and there is to give work to the mind, to keep themind occupied in the right direction so that the mind will not be thinking of this and thatand thus interfering with the process of becoming more and more quiet. Spreadingthe light into its universal phase, sending thelight into every other body, when one is so concentrated in that he is no longer conscious ofhis body, is the stage of contemplation. As contemplation deepens, the stage of meditation comes about of its own volition. It cannot be forced. If the meditator remains conscious of himself and that he is engaged inmeditation, then he is not meditating but is still in the preliminary stage, at the beginningof concentration.