The artist realizes himself in his work; the mind realizes itself in life.

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.

The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until after having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the gems of its production.

It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.

Meditation is a state, often defined as deep dreamless sleep awake. But, in the same way that you cannot sleep on demand, you cannot meditate on demand—that is, you can’t reach the state instantly in the same way that you can raise your right hand. The practices preceding meditation are relaxation, stillness and mental focus. Those are all things you can do. They are the preparation. Then, if you the circumstances are right, you can transition from the waking to the meditative state.