Page:Personality (Lectures delivered in America).djvu/173

 MEDITATION

are things that we get from outside and take to ourselves as possessions. But with meditation, it is just the opposite. It is entering into the very midst of some great truth, so that, in the end, we are possessed by it.

Now let us see by contrast what wealth is. Money represents so much labour. By its means I can detach the labour from man and make it my own possession. I acquire it from outside and convert it to my own power.

Then there is knowledge. One kind of knowledge is that which we gain from other men. Then there is the other kind which we acquire through observation, experiments and the process of reasoning.

These are all efforts to take that which is away from me, and get it to myself. In these things our mental and physical energies are employed in a manner quite contrary to that of Meditation. 151