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THE DYNAMICS OF MEDITATION
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and yourself and you become their friend. If we do not believe, we cannot receive. One who continues to live in a gutter cannot become the companion of one who lives in a palace. If we think we are'nothing, if we feel helpless and weak, then the distance between ourselves and God will remain.
I remember one storywhich illustrates this feeling of unity. One night a young man went to pay a visit to his lover. It was very late so he climbed a tree near her window and called out softly to her. She heard him and asked, “Who is it?" He replied, “It is I, Calipha. I have come to visit you.” But the girl answered, “Go away. There is no room here for you."
The young man was an aspirant and so he went to a nearby grove of trees and there he sat in meditation, pondering what might have caused his lover to respond in this way. After a while he had a flash of insight and returned. Again he climbed the tree and called to her. Again she asked, “Who is it?" Then he smiled and said, “It is a being. Just being.” The door was then opened to him.
What did he see in his meditation? He saw that he had gone to her with adjectives and nouns, he did not go as essence. Thus he was an outsider. When he dropped the description and the outer concern and became in tune with inner reality, then there was no separation and she was waiting to welcome him.
This story is an example of what we are doing with ourselves in meditating on sobum. We are opening the door to our own higher consciousness, bringing union, breaking the separation between the inside and the outside, the interior and the exterior. This is the meaning of sobum.
