Here is the characteristic of a saint or a sage. Nothing is outside the saint and, therefore, he needs nothing from outside. One should not want anything from outside, because the outside thing does not exist apart from you and you do not exist outside that thing which you consider as outside. The saints and the sages ask not anything. They do not require anything because they have got everything by being united with that which you regard as outside you. The thing which you want is inside you in the sense that it is connected with your body, your personality, your consciousness. The moment you think, the universe acts, provided that your mind is united with the cosmic mind. Here is the transcendental meaning of true meditation - which is not a doctrine or a teaching or a gospel from the textbook of a scripture, but a scientific fact operating in the astronomical universe. Have you heard that the universe was, once upon a time, a cosmic atom? It was the source of the world. And do you believe that you have come from that cosmic atom? It was one integral whole. That requirement of integration which was characterising in that cosmic atom - brahmanda, as we call it - characterises everything that has proceeded from it. The larger whole produces lesser wholes, but not fractions. There are no such things as fractions in this world. Everything is a whole, though it is a modicum of a lesser order.

So, each level of wholeness gets identified with the larger whole of which it is an integral part, from which it cannot separate itself. This is the art of administration, the art of thinking properly, the art of education and the teaching process, learning - everything. This is the knowledge of the Self, as you may call it. It is said that the greatest knowledge is knowledge of the Self. But do not be under the impression that the Self is sitting inside the body. I mentioned to you that the Self is a wholeness that you feel within yourself, a consciousness rather than a limbed body with bones and flesh and nerves, etc. that you are not. You are the operation of consciousness. Remember very well - what would you be if consciousness were not there? You would not be there at all. If consciousness is not there, you also are not there. So when you are there, it is consciousness that is really there.

Satisfaction is not in you or in somebody else. It is in consciousness itself. Satisfaction is uninterrupted performance of consciousness. A larger satisfaction flashes forth when the unit of consciousness that you are operates as a set adjustment with the consciousness of other such units or centres. Who feels happiness? Who feels peace? Consciousness feels peace. It gets disturbed when there is no peace. Who disturbs it? It is disturbed by the wrong notion that it is outside the thing to which it really belongs.

In essence, everybody is a cosmic being. There is no such thing as an individual person. Can you think for a moment that you are a cosmic being? Go on saying, "I am a cosmic being. This little 'me' is organically related to the cosmic being - which means to say, I am a cosmic being. And the others I seem to see outside are not outside me, just as I am not outside the cosmic being." Go on asserting this with faith, with the power of will. "If I cannot stand outside the universe, I am the universe itself." Who will disturb your mind, then? Tell me frankly: who is there to disturb your mind? Nobody can disturb your mind. There is no such thing as 'your' mind. There is only the cosmic mind operating. Can you think through the cosmic mind? When you are thinking now, who is thinking? It is not the student that is sitting here - not this boy, this girl, this man, this woman. No. It is the cosmic mind that is thinking.

This is meditation. If anybody asks you what meditation is, tell them this is meditation. Toward the achievement of this apex of meditational practice, you are given recipes of a lesser category so that you may adjust yourself gradually, stage by stage, in the higher wholes which are the dimensions of larger and larger wholes of consciousness. You are the maker of yourself. Your peace of mind is within you only. You are the culprit - if at all there is one - and, therefore, complain not. Complain against your inadequacies, your imperfections and the lack of power of will that you are sunk in, by which you are unable to understand how you are connected to the world, to people, to the atmosphere, to ecological conditions, to the world as a whole. Find fault with yourself only. Do not find fault with anybody else, because the world is a whole, and wholeness cannot have imperfections.

Again I tell you, look at that wonderful Viratsvarupa, the cosmic consciousness, the description that we have in the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavadgita. Was any dirty thing there? If the cosmic consciousness - the universe which presented itself before Arjuna - did not have any dirty thing, ugly thing or unwanted thing, from where have these unwanted things come now before your eyes? You are the creator of the problems of life - nobody else - and you are not prepared to accept it because of the egoism that is so hard, flint-like, which says, "I am what I am, and I am right! And everybody has to follow what I think." If everybody started asserting in this manner, there would be a social rift and warfare immediately following.

You should consider yourself as very blessed that you can think like this. You should consider yourself as blessed because you know where your blessedness lies. It is with you - the you that is inseparably connected to the creation as a whole. So, peace is in the cosmos, it is in God, it is in all the forms of wholeness that you can think of. Your blessedness, your peace, your joy, your satisfaction lies in the extent to which you can adjust the dimension of your consciousness to that which you wrongly consider as outside you. Make it your own. Make the atmosphere your own. Make that which you see outside you your own, so that you think as the thing thinks and not as you, in your own individual capacity, think. When you see an object, try to think as the object thinks, not as you think it. Turn the tables round; let the object become the subject. If you assert yourself in that way, in a minute you will find that you are transported into a world which is beyond yourself.

It is difficult to think like this because you have been born into a family and a cultural background which is totally unacquainted with the normal, subliminal way of the required attitude in human life. Everywhere you see evil and ugliness and wretchedness and enmity - everywhere. There is nothing good anywhere in the world. This is how we are indoctrinated right from the beginning. When a child is born, the parents say, "The other man is an enemy. Don't go there. The next house is an enemy's house." You are told in the beginning itself, "This land is ours. That land is not ours. Don't go there. They want to grab our property." Animosity starts in childhood itself. "This is mine. That is not mine. This is yours. That is not yours. This is your friend. That is your enemy." You go on thinking like this right from your childhood. Your blood is infused with animosity and a feeling of incompatibility with everything. You are incompatible with everything; nothing is compatible. You are never in union with anything; everything is at sixes and sevens. Nothing is good for you; everything is useless. You are, yourself, the best thing, and all others are totally extraneous to you. Let this change of the pattern of thinking be developed, and you will find God prevailing Himself from your side. There is no God in the high heavens; you are yourself constraining Him and covering Him with a bush - with a dark cloud of erroneous thinking - regarding yourself as a totally independent person, unconnected with anybody else.

Remember that you are not unconnected with even a little stick on the ground. You are connected with that also. The stick can know what you are thinking. It is not dead. There are no dead things in this universe. Little things, unimportant things, unseen things, uncared for things - they know that you are there; and It knows. It has eyes everywhere. Everywhere eyes - the world is all eyes, everywhere. Sarvato 'ksi-siro-mukham (B.G. 13.13), says the Bhagavadgita. "Everywhere eyes, everywhere ears." They say that walls have ears - well, maybe. There are ears, no doubt, but there are also eyes everywhere. Every atom sees you. It is not a dead substance as scientists may tell us. There is no dead molecule anywhere; it is a living organism, a living being like you. With that you set yourself en rapport - in mind, in intention, in determination, in meditation - and slowly, thought becomes reality.

The psychology of the mind has to be understood. Thought concretises itself into reality. Do you know that the cosmic mind has concretised itself into this world which looks so solid? The cosmic mind, externalised in the space-time complex, appears to have descended into the concrete, solid form of the physical universe. That is the story of creation. Every little mind is a great potency. It is like a minute atom bomb which can assert, and what it asserts will take place. Think, and it is there.

But you are dubious in your adjustment of thought. You are always under the fear that something else is there outside you which will not agree with you. When you have the feeling that something is outside you which is different from you and cannot agree with you, you are really not en rapport with it, and it will really not like you and it cannot agree with you. What you think you are - that you really are. You must remember that. If you demoralise yourself, condemn yourself as a nobody and a nothing, you are that only. But if you understand your status in this world as a citizen of the cosmos and not merely of a little country or of a village, and know that the country protects its citizens, then the whole world will protect you. The cosmic forces are at your beck and call. This is spiritual meditation - or call it whatever you like - and be careful that you should not forget this.

I am not telling you all these things so that you may listen as a kind of entertainment. It is a recipe and medicine that is to be injected into your personality, so that the illness which is harassing you, day in and day out, may leave you slowly, gradually. This is a medical treatment for you. It is not a discourse that you have heard, as a professor speaks in a college. It is as a doctor speaks to a patient; and you have to be very careful to listen to it and take the medicine as it is prescribed, as it is necessary for you to take it.

So, briefly to say, you are really blessed souls. Everyone is a blessed child of the Immortal God. A child of God cannot be a miserable wretch. Do not think like that. How can the effect, which has come from the cosmic magnificence, become wretchedness? It is not possible. The magnificent divinity which is the cosmic whole reverberates in even the little divinity that you are. That may be a conflagration and you are a spark, but you are a part of it. With this confidence, take to meditation every day; but do not meditate as an exercise which is frightening and tiring, causing exhaustion and so on. You are inundating yourself. A process of inundating yourself cannot tire you. Meditation will bring you immense joy, not merely an ordinary benefit. You will be happy, happy, happy, happy! You will like to meditate more and more, because the more you are united with that ultimate level, the more is the blessedness that it will bestow upon you. This is what we call the grace of God - the grace of the higher total on the lower total. You may call this the grace of the divine omnipotence. Remember all these things as tiny processes of meditation with a different meaning altogether.

I have told you everything. There is nothing left now to speak to you. There are only a few days remaining until the completion of this course, and I want to thank you and bless you from the heart of my heart. I feel confident that I have done my duty very well, to the satisfaction of my own heart, and believe you have benefited immensely. Do not forget what I have told you, right from the beginning of the course until now. There are still a few more days, and when I see you again I will speak to you as it would be appropriate. God bless you!