Show me this western mind.  Put it in front of me and I will show you what to do with it. Or, if you can't,  show me an eastern mind instead. 

You see, they both have this one thing in common.  They cannot be shown.  Where is the difference  between them?  

The agitation is not in the present.  It is in your memory.  During meditation it was not there, otherwise you would have found the cause.  So, forget it.  

You need to be vigilant.  Vigilance is not just observing the thinking or the no-thinking. Complete forgetfulness is vigilance.  When you have forgotton everything, there is vigilance.  If you believe that you are not in peace, you are activating thoughts from your memory.  Just forget everything and stay quiet. 

In both cases, they are beliefs. 

Reincarnation only exists in the waking state.  When all the activities of the mind and the body cease, we are silent and inactive.  We call this 'the sleeping state'.  When all the activities go back to their objects, we are in the waking state. The silence of sleep is an inactive silence out of which activities arise.  But the real state, that lies behind waking, dreaming and sleeping,  is an active silence.  Nothing arises in it. There is no coming or going in that real silence.  

Two individuals will never agree.  There will only be one understanding when both of them find out what mind really is. 

It is your interest in things that brings these pictures.  When you are not vigilant, there are pictures. But when you are vigilant, there is nothing. 

If there is no desire, the reality of things disappears.  Anyway, why not simply say that things are only appearances?  When you have a question, the question is never in the 'now'.  Questions always refer to the past or the future.  To be vigilant is to live in the present. 

Objects exist in time, through time.  The perception of them is ignorance.  The ultimate reality is not an object of thinking.  When you perceive objects, you are in ignorance, you are in time. The mind is time.  It is past and present appearing to you as objects of perception.  The present cannot be shown.  It cannot be perceived.  It has nothing to do with time or mind.  

You have a strong conviction that the world exists as a real, separate entity.  At night you go to sleep with this concept, and in the morning this same concept wakes you up.    

'Look at the mind' means ' Don't look at any outside objects, or any inside objects'.  

Knowing the mind still implies a movement of the mind.    

The mind never appears nor disappears.  When you look properly, you discover that it was never there at all.    

Every time you record an impression on your mind, you feed it.  Whether you think ' I am nothing' or 'I am everything', it is still thought.  Let go of all thoughts, all ideas, and see what is left.  When you have let go of everything,  you are absolutely alone.  It is the Master who gives you this aloneness.    

'Here'  is the substratum that makes the waves move, that makes the wind blow.  In 'here' you experience 'Who am I?'  In 'here' another power will take care of you, and the silence will be deeper and deeper.   
 

 Be vigilant. Your mind has compared the vastness of the ocean with the smallness of a lake that you have seen before.  Don't let your mind dwell like this on any object of vision.  What is the difference between a thousand drops and a single drop? If you look at the depths, you see only water.  This is the way to look.  If you see a 'you', it is always in relationship to a 'me'.  Dive to the substratum of all vision.  There is an old Indian story that illustrates this. One day a teacher sent his two disciples into the forest with a pigeon each.   He told them, 'Find a place where no one is looking at you and secretly kill the pigeon. Then bring the body back to me to prove that you have done it.'  The disciples set off in different directions.  The first one found a secluded spot, killed his pigeon and brought the body back to his Master.  They both waited for a long time but the second disciple didn't return.  Eventually they had to go looking for him.  They found him under a tree with the live pigeon still in his hands. When the Master asked him why he hadn't carried out his instructions, the disciple replied, 'I couldn't. You told me to find a spot where no one was looking at me, but wherever I go this pigeon is staring at me.'   'Ah,' said the/ Master, 'If you look at him, then he is looking at you.  But if you go to the substratum, you will not be looking at anything, and no one will be able to see you.'  
 

  When the thought 'I am meditating' arises, you are separating yourself from the Self.  Real meditation is not something that you can practice.  When you practice meditation, you have an idea about what you want to accomplish.  It may be witnessing, or visualization or quietness, or something else.  If you try hard enough, your preconceied idea will eventually manifest as a subtle mental state and you will enjoy it as an experience. But it will not be real meditation.  It will be a mental experience that is constructed out of your initial desire.  Real meditation does not lead anywhere. Nor is it done through effort.  It just happens by itself.  
 

 You have to remove the concepts of good and bad from your mind.  When they are gone, you are in a state of meditation.   If you are convinced that you have to do something, just look at how thought arises, how it stays and how it goes away. When you separate yourself from thought completely, you are yourself, as you really are.  This is freedom.   
 

 Functioning will take place spontaneously.  But if you have to ask how this will happen, you introduce new concepts into your mind and the spontaneity stops working.   A mind without objects is talking by itself.  As I speak to you, it looks a if there is an 'I' who is speaking.  But i am not speaking.  It is THAT who speaks.  When speaking takes  place in this way, nothing is stored in the memory. 

 If there are pictures and concepts in the mind, some effort must be there to make and sustain them.  Most methods of  meditation introduce more effort by making the subject    consciously watch all the mental pictures.  But if the subject disappears, the objects will disappear along with it.  Get rid of the watcher, the meditator, and you won't need any help in removing the images and concepts.  
 

 Meditation is the unknown.  It is not something  you do or practice. 
 

 When this thought 'I am meditating' arises, don't meditate.

 Don't project the one who meditates.  It is important not to start something that will finish at some later point in time. Instead, look at who you are before the idea of meditation arises in you.  See who this person is who wants to start meditating.  What is he?  Where does he come from?  
 

 When I say the word 'monkey', where does your mind go? 
 

 To an object, a thought in your mind that you call 'monkey'.  The monkey is not  real.  It is just a thought that appeared in your mind as an object.  When I ask you to look at the place where you have come from, I am asking you to look at this unreal idea called 'I' to see how it appeared in you and gave you so much trouble.  If you find out where this idea of 'I' comes from, it will not trouble you any more.  There is a real 'I', your own Self, hat is unknown and unknowable.  If you follow the unreal 'I' back to the place it first arose, it will lead you to that unknown.  
 

 

You are who you are whether you meditate or not.  When you travel a distance, any distance, you experience something, and this something is never yourself.  An experience is always an experience of an object.  If there is no object, there is no experience.  When you move  away from yourself, your source, you create differences and distances.  You even create birth and death.  Identify with yourself and remain as yourself, without moving away from yourself.

A planned meditation is an exercise in which one makes an effort to control, stop, witness or manipulate thoughts.  Spontaneous meditation has no aim.  There is nothing opposed to it that needs to be watched or controlled.  It is reality itself.

Some schools of meditation speak of finding an inner light.

Light is still an object, as is darkness, its opposite. Both are objects that the mind sees.  Find out who is looking at  the light. Find out who is the subject who is looking at the light.

How should I choose the best circumstances for inner work?

Don't choose.  There are no circumstances for the one who dives deeply into himself.  Disconnect.  Dive!  Jump! After you have disconnected in this way, there may still be an impression of events going on, but you will know that they belong to the body and its destiny, not to you.  Let the body react.  You are not involved with it.

You only need to start if you have a goal to attain.  To start a journey, you must know where your destination is. What is the place you want to reach?

In that case the destination is also the starting point. Why do you need to move or do anything to reach it? The mind has a tendency to make the Self an object that it wants to reach or attain after a process that takes place in time.  The Self is out of time, out of space.  No journey through time or space can ever take you there.

How do I get and keep this awakening of the Self?

By not letting any concept take hold of you.

Do you sit every morning and meditate this way?

Here we are learning how not to sit on anything.

 If I told you, I would start sitting on it.