This knowledge which beholds the interconnection of all things among themselves is a higher knowledge, says Sri Krishna, but the highest knowledge is something quite different. It beholds one Being, from which one cannot extricate oneself. All are immersed in that Being. All the rivers find themselves in the ocean; they do not stand separately in the sea.

Likewise is the case of the choice of the object of meditation. You love that object as your dear child. There are some devotees who develop what is known as vatsalya bhava, the affectionate attitude towards the child transferred as God Himself seen in an image or idol. You may consider God as your child. Transfer yourself to the position of a father of this little child who is Rama or Krishna or Christ. Visibly see them as living bodies. You have a symbol. People embrace pictures, paintings of Krishna or Christ; they kiss the cross which is hanging on their neck: a great delight it is. You can embrace God through a symbol, an idol, a cross, a murti made of marble or metal, or a diagram. People worship it, hang it on the neck, hide it secretly and feel immense satisfaction that it is there.

Or you may have a majestic feeling as Bhishma had towards Sri Krishna. Bhishma's love for Krishna was not sentimental or rapturous as the gopis had towards him. He loved Krishna as the master of the universe, great force and power, indomitable energy descended as an incarnation of the Absolute. That is the bhava of Bhishma, which is something like considering God as the Supreme Father, who is the Creator of the cosmos. This attitude is called aishvarya pradhana bhakti, God loved in His Might and Magnificence and Glory. Ramanuja, Madhva and acharyas of that kind advocated a love of God which is known as aishvarya pradhana bhakti, devotion emanating by the perception of the magnitude, magnificence, glory, power, and strength of God. "Great Master, all-powerful Thou art! Great Father, Thou art all!"

You can regard God as your beloved of heart, which is usually the most difficult thing to conceive. That is called madhurya pradhana bhakti, wherein one melts in the sweetness of love. In aishvarya pradhana bhakti one admires the greatness of the Almighty; here one tastes the sweetness, the deliciousness, the beauty, the tenderness of the exquisite presentation. God is honey. There was a saint in southern India who used to jump in joy, calling God by no other name than 'Honey' - "Oh Honey, oh Honey! Oh Honey, bathe me. Oh Honey, come! Ocean of Honey, inundate me, I shall drink You! Oh blissful Honey, come!" When you are virtually mad with the ecstasy of love of God, you will not know what word to use to describe it. "Oh my Beloved, You have come!" Afterwards, your mouth closes, because you do not know what other word you can use in respect of that thing which is simply breaking your heart due to the excess of love. At that time you have no word to speak. You keep quiet in the stillness of bliss.

Romeo sees Juliet and Juliet sees Romeo. The gopi sees Krishna and Krishna is dancing in the circle of rasa. Mortals cannot understand what all this is. The joy of madhura rasa is the pinnacle of the feeling possible in a human being.

Are you able to conceive your object of meditation in that way: "Oh, my dear Honey, come!" Will you say that, or will you say that it is only a dot on the wall or a pencil, a rose flower, a picture, an idol, a lingam? Will you think like that? You may ask: "Why should I love a lingam or a murti which is made of metal or wood?" If you think like that, then your meditation will bring you nothing worthwhile.

When I have a love for you, do I love your bones, your flesh, or your nose? What am I loving? When I tell you that I am delighted to see you, what am I seeing? I am seeing something inside you, the 'you' which is not a conglomeration of bones and flesh. Thus, also, when you are satisfied and overjoyed at the perception of an object of meditation, you should not look at it as a metal, or a picture or drawing. It is vibrant life.

If you are capable of choosing the object properly, you can pour upon it any kind of feeling. It is your child, master, husband, wife, friend, father. It can be anything whatsoever, provided you are able to adjust your feelings correctly in respect of that object which becomes your all-in-all. The object is a representation of a cosmic force. People say that Krishna is a concentration of the total power of the cosmos. One ray of the sun, properly concentrated through a high power lens, can draw the energy of the sun. That is why this concentrated personality of Krishna could assume a cosmic form.

The object of meditation is a concentrated focus of the entire structure of the universe. To give the same example, if you touch any part of my body, you have touched my entire body, though it is only a touching of the toe. The toe will communicate the message to the whole body. The little object of meditation is not one object as such. It is a representation of the totality of creation as a whole, because the universe is reflected even in an atom.

As you can reach the ocean through any river, can reach a place through any road, can fly with an aeroplane to any place in any direction, so also can you reach the Universal Whole through any symbol that you employ, because every symbol is a representation of the Total Whole.

All right, intellectually you have understood that every object is as good as every other; scientifically conceived, it represents all the things in the world. The whole creation is concentrated in that object, but can you love it? You have to understand it as the focussing point of the whole universal power and also be capable of loving it. You cannot simply look at it with a scientific eye merely.

There was a lady who was weeping in sorrow. She had some grief; the tears were flowing. The husband was a scientist. He came running and said that he wanted to take a little of her tears because he wanted to see what they consisted of. She said, "I am weeping and you are trying to analyse me scientifically?" Look at that man's attitude on her feelings. He had scant respect for the feelings of the weeping lady; he was concerned only with the components of the tear and wanted to chemically analyse it in the laboratory. He had no heart; he had only brain.

In a similar manner, with all your understanding of the nature of the object of meditation being one concentrated point representing the whole universe, you may not be able to pour your affection on it: "It is only a lingam, a cross, a picture; how can I love it?" It is necessary to accommodate yourself to the need to love it also in the same way as you love anything in the world.

There is a technique of meditation prescribed in another section of the scripture known as Tantra Shastra, a technology of approaching divinity in a different manner than the way generally known to people. It is not necessary to look at an object in order to concentrate upon it. The need to have a physically visual object in front is the lowest kind of requirement. You can be immensely happy by the very thought of the object, mentally, and generate the same sensations inside, even when the object is not present physically.

What happens to you is that even when you look at an object physically, the sensations that you feel inside are psychological; physically you are getting nothing from the object. The beloved object that is physically in front of the eye does not enter one's body. It is standing outside. The object of affection, even if it is sitting on one's lap, is really outside oneself. It has not entered one's being. How, then, can one feel happy?

The happiness is a reaction set up by the nervous system inside. It is purely internal, to bring about which situation, the object outside acts as an instrument. The object of affection, physically, is just an instrument. It cannot bring satisfaction, really. The satisfaction is in the nervous titillation, mental operation, psychological acceptance.

If this is the case borne in mind, you do not need any physical object in front of you to be happy inside. Even if you want an object of that kind, you can close your eyes and feel its presence and the same situation will be summoned from within. You will burst forth through your nervous system, in your mind, and you will feel the same sensations as you felt apparently by the perception of the physical object, externally.

Later on, even the thought of the object will not be necessary. There is a higher kind of concentration, namely, that the substantiality of that object is inseparable from the substantiality of oneself. The happiness that you feel in the presence of a beloved object is due to the Atman manifesting itself thereby. We are confused in our mind when we feel that an object of sense is giving us satisfaction. What is actually happening is that when you are desiring an object, the mind goes out of the Self. You are out of yourself at the time of your love for anything outside. You have transferred yourself into the object. As you are out of yourself, you are unhappy: you have lost yourself. The identity of yourself has been broken by the separation of your so-called self in transferring it to the object outside. Then you are not in you; you are somewhere else, in that object. You can be even in London, though physically you are sitting in India, by the transference of mind to that object which is there.

The unhappiness of the mind is caused by the separation of the object from the Atman. When you obtain the object, when the object comes near, the desire diminishes due to the prospect of having it. When it is nearer and nearer, the joy goes on increasing further and further - "Oh I am getting it!" When it is actually under one's possession, physically, it is immense joy. The mind ceases to go outside itself at that time. It settles in its own root. You plant yourself in yourself due to the feeling of the mind that it need not any more think of the object and it need not go out of itself. That is why you are feeling happiness when the object seems to be under your possession. The happiness has not come from the object, it has come from yourself only!

So, be careful in the choice of your object. This object of your meditation should be satisfying to you in every way, not merely as a titillating medium as a sense object, but as a total blessing that is going to be poured upon you.

Don't you think that you are meditating on the object because it is representing God Himself? Do you consider God as a sense object? He is the All. Everywhere He is legs and feet, everywhere eyes, everywhere Vishvarupa, the Universal. How will you consider Him as a sense object? That great Being, the cosmic inclusiveness, was concentrated in one person called Krishna, which the gopis were chasing. Why were they after this one person? He was capable of manifesting himself as all persons because the concentrated whole was charged with the force of the whole, which attracted their attention. When anybody loves you, they feel for the time being that you are all things; otherwise, nobody can really love. If you are only 'something', the love also will be 'something' only. It cannot be the all-consuming thing that it really is.

When you choose the object of your meditation, be sure that you can persuade yourself to pour your affection on it. Don't be under the impression that you are only concocting some feeling which is not genuine. You can summon anything if your mind is really concentrated on it. Jnaneshvar Maharaj concentrated on a wall; he just touched it and it started moving. The great Bharadvaja Rishi, who gave a grand reception to Bharata when he went to the forest in search of Rama, summoned the gods in heaven by uttering mantras in his yajnashala and the divinities started raining down on earth.

Your feeling, your love, your longing for God in the form of the object that you have chosen is not an imagination of your mind. It is a truth that has been manifested before you in the form of this little 'occasion' of the cosmic power. Your heart is meditating, not merely your brain or sense organs. The meditating consciousness is the soul of yourself. If you want the soul of the object to speak to you and delight you, then your soul has to rise up to the occasion and concentrate itself on the soul of the thing looking like an object.

Who is meditating? Your soul is meditating on the soul of the object. When I love you, I love your soul, the greatness, grandeur, beauty of your depth of personality, and not your physical feature. And when I love you, it is not my body that loves you, nor my mind. My whole being, the root itself, is poured forth on your centrality. The deepest root of mine is loving the deepest root in you. Soul loves soul. "Nobody loves anything except the soul," says Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

The soul of the meditator is pouring itself forth upon the soul of the object, so that it may become united with the All-Soul of the universe. Such is the background which you need in your mind before you take to Yoga practice in the form of meditation.