What is the true nature of our existence? Surprisingly, the answer is knowable. In fact, it’s so well-known it’s referred to as the Perennial Philosophy—all the great religions tell us that at the core of our being, we are all One. This sounds like religious wishful thinking, but it’s also philosophically sound, scientifically well supported, and personally verifiable. It’s how it is that we are here.

The world is the wheel of God, turning round and round with all living creatures upon its rim. -Shvetashvatara Upanishad

Religions often symbolize our condition with a circle or a tree, because a circle has one center, and a tree has one base. The Perennial Philosophy is more like a mountain with many paths leading to one summit, but the purpose is the same. To point out the nondual side of ourselves. Many of our scientists and philosophers say the same thing…in their own way…under their breath.

A human being is a spatially and temporally
limited piece of the whole…an optical
illusion of his consciousness. The striving
to free oneself from this delusion is the
one issue of true religion. –Albert Einstein

The answers to the big questions are knowable because the source of the world happens to be what we are—consciousness. Waking up to this in a physical body is the goal of evolution, and we are something of a transitional species in this regard.

Why are we here?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?

Answer:

There is an infinite, changeless reality
beneath the world of change.
This same reality lies at the core of
every human personality. The purpose
of life is to discover this reality
experientially—that is, to realize
God while here on earth.
-Eknath Easwaran

An argument for the Perennial Philosophy.

Starting with what can we be most certain about. There is something, and not nothing.

What is it that breathes fire into the
equations and makes a universe for
them to describe…Why does the universe
go to all the bother of existing?
–Stephen Hawking

Why is there something and not nothing? Something must have caused this something, because nothing ever comes from nothing. Something must have also caused conscious beings like us.

Even if the universe did balloon out of a singularity billions of years ago, the lights are still on today (all the physical constants are stable). Something is sustaining the quantum fields underlying everything, and science has no idea what it is. What can we make of this? Something outside of time and space is causing this spacetime. Consider this ancient quote that seems ahead of its time:

Time, nature, necessity, accident,
elements, energy, intelligence—none
of these can be the First Cause.
They are effects…
-Shvetashvatara Upanishad

Actually, we need to clarify what the something is that we can be so certain about. The only thing we can be absolutely certain of is that we are conscious. That is to say, information from our mind and sensory perception is less reliable. Our human senses provide only a limited view of the world, and our perception of them is less than perfect, but we can always be certain that we are witnessing it.

I am, I exist, is necessarily true
each time that I pronounce it,
or that I mentally conceive it.
–René Descartes | Meditation II

This is already enough to draw conclusions. Whatever caused this conscious experience, it must transcend causality and include consciousness. Let’s call it God, for short. And this was the view of Western Science for 2,000 years, until the 1700’s, when materialism became popular—when Parmenidean Monism and Plato’s Forms were replaced by matter itself being most fundamental.

Of course, if you think consciousness is just a random anomaly of matter, then this conclusion would not satisfy you. But, if you think of consciousness as a fundamental property of nature, then this explains everything. Let’s explore consciousness.

How does something as immaterial as consciousness arise from something as unconscious as matter? -David Chalmers

The fact is, conscious awareness is fundamentally different from everything else in the world. And it’s not just different from mass, energy, space, and time, but also from thoughts, feelings, intuitions, and memories (conceptualization). Those are things that happen in consciousness. Without consciousness what good is thinking? In the West we conflate consciousness with thinking because we misinterpret Descartes. He didn’t mean, I think, therefore I am. He meant, I’m thinking, therefore I must be an entity that thinks.

Our level of awareness is clearly a function of our human brain, but consciousness itself is still quite a mystery to science. And it’s what we really are. What are we when we’re unconscious? Our mind and body are just earthly accumulations, and we are the conscious witness behind it. When we meditate (look toward consciousness) we find that it’s behind everything.

It takes some understanding to distinguish
between awareness and conceptualization.
It is said that the scope of
conceptualization is very limited,
whereas awareness pervades all that exists.
-Gen Lamrimpa

We can’t assume the brain causes it because we see conscious behavior in organisms that that don’t have a brain. Also, science can’t explain how life started on earth, but they know it started as soon as conditions became available. So, given that everything is caused by something, and that consciousness is so distinctly different from everything, isn’t it possible that it has its own unique cause? Why isn’t that still a reasonable consideration?

I think that modern physics has definitely
decided in favor of Plato. In fact the
smallest units of matter are not physical
objects in the ordinary sense; they are
forms, ideas which can be expressed
unambiguously only in mathematical
language. –Werner Heisenberg

Where are we going? Nowhere, until we can see past Materialism.

Every man takes the limits of his
own field of vision for the limits of
the world. –Arthur Schopenhauer

Today, we have Scientific Materialism, which sees the world from only the body side of Descartes’ mind/body Dualism. Philosophically arguing from just the one side, they are unable to explain a great many things—like the probabilistic nature of Quantum Mechanics, or how the universe is relative instead of objective, or conscious free will. In its purest form, Materialism must argue that consciousness itself can’t exist. But again, that’s because they are interpreting the world from just the one side of the dualism. In addition, a great point of confusion is that Descartes’ dualism is not actually between mind & body, but between mind-body & consciousness.

The Materialist view is the common sense view of physical determinism; that matter is fundamental, and consciousness is caused by the brain, which was caused by the physical and chemical chaos unfolding from the Big Bang. And since time only began flowing as a result of the Big Bang, there is no chance of finding a First Cause.

Modern science is based on the principle:
‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain
the rest.’ -Terence McKenna

However, we now know that matter is not fundamental, but arises out of quantum probability fields, which never fully become particles, even when they are observed. Kant’s noumena are not physical, or even in spacetime.

Science has discovered that consciousness causes the world to manifest by collapsing quantum states into physical reality. Therefore, the brain can’t cause consciousness, because consciousness causes the brain.

Mind no longer appears to be an accidental
intruder into the realm of matter…
we ought rather hail it as the creator
and governor of the realm of matter.
–Sir James Jeans

To make of the brain the condition on
which the whole image depends is in
truth a contradiction in terms, since
the brain is by hypothesis a part of
the image. -Henri Bergson

Meanwhile, materialists have spent decades not advancing science, and not being able to figure out how consciousness is made in the brain. It’s regarded as an epiphenomenon. One favored theory is that it’s an emergent phenomenon caused by the vast integration of information in our large electro-chemical brains. But then why do organisms without complex brains behave consciously?

The philosophy of the Perennial Philosophy is actually Ontological Idealism, which is well supported by modern physics, yet we still think scientists should be Materialists. For an in-depth look, consider this 2-hr YouTube of an Ontological Idealist interviewed by a famous Materialist:

Bernardo Kastrup on the Nature of Reality: Materialism, Idealism, or Skepticism | YouTube 2:14:21

If we are all One, then why don’t we know it? Answer: Because we don’t meditate.

Brahman cannot be realized by those
who are enmeshed in life’s duality.
-Tejobindu Upanishad

Delusion arises from the duality of attraction and aversion. -Bhagavad Gita 7:27

Desire and aversion blind you to Suchness.
-Xinxin Ming

Born into a world of individual bodies, we learn to see ourselves as separate. By the age of three we develop an ego, and learn how to fulfill our egoic desires within the hierarchy of egos around us. This process is necessary for living in the world, but it hides our true nature, like clouds obscuring the sky.

Our condition is described in the story of the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden, they knew themselves to be God; both immanent and transcendent. But after living as individuals for some time, they forgot their transcendent nature, and began to identify only with their body and its egoic desires (symbolized by eating fruit from the tree of duality, and suddenly becoming self-conscious).

The thought: “I am the doer” is the bite of a poisonous snake. -Ashtavakra Gita

Forgetting their transcendental nature, they lost their Oneness with God, the garden, the animals, and found themselves in a world of separateness. That is our condition, and meditation is the cure.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says it most clearly: Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body. The story of the Garden of Eden is meant to remind us of our true nature—that we are not just our mental and physical accumulations, but the Self. This realization is like being born again, but it’s not the egoic self that wakes up. All the true religions are really just about this one thing.

There is only one Self in all creatures.
The One appears many, just as the moon 
appears many, reflected in water.
-Amritabindu Upanishad

As long as we think we are the ego,
we feel attached and fall into sorrow…
When you realize that you are the Self…
you transcend the duality of life
and enter into the unitive state.
-Mundaka Upanishad

Brahman is all, and the Self is Brahman.
-Mandukya Upanishad

Consciousness is the Self.
-Shiva Sutras

I say, ‘You are gods; you are all
children of the Most High.
-Psalms 82:6 | NLT

Don’t you realize that all of you together
are the temple of God
and that the Spirit of God lives in you?
-1 Corinthians 3:16 | NLT

Tao is your very nature.
Seeing this, everything is clear –
you walk free and undisturbed as Tao.
-Xinxin Ming

Remove the veil.
You will find your beloved within.
In every heart the Lord dwells.
Therefore, speak no bitter words.
The one who listens within you
Also listens within everyone else.
-Kabir

God dwells within you as you.
-Swami Muktananda

That one God who shines within everything,
Who is formless like the cloudless sky,
Is the pure, stainless, Self of all.
Without any doubt, that is who I am.
-Avadhuta Gita

I am not the mind. I am not the intellect or
intelligence. I am not the ego, nor am I a
deeper self or soul…I am Absolute
Awareness of Eternal Love and Bliss.
-Atma Shatakam

You are the Solitary Witness
of All That Is, forever free.
Your only bondage is not seeing This.
-Ashtavakra Gita

Lord! I’ve never known who I really am,
or You. I threw my love away on this
lousy carcass and never figured it
out: You’re me, I’m You. All I ever
did was doubt: Who am I?
Who are You? –Lal Ded

Believing appearances are real,
you cannot see their Source.
-Xinxin Ming

What discovering the quantum realm was like

Physics began to see beyond the physical universe more than a century ago, with the discovery of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. As a result, our intuitive view of reality was undermined by wildly abstract notions. We learned that the physical world is like a veil emanating from a more fundamental quantum realm. This quantum substrate acts like an information processor, always ready to render physical reality for any observer. Crazy sounding, right? That’s why physicists have been trying to falsify it ever since.

Position and velocity are what you can
observe. But until you measure them, they
don’t exist. Only the wave function does.
-Sean Carroll

So the question arises, how then did the earth form if it was just wave functions before conscious organisms appeared? The answer is, wave functions interact with each other in a way that translates directly into what we perceive as physical processes. It’s called Quantum Decoherence. So, a rock is a tightly entangled group of wave functions that appears to us as a rock. Crazy, but this is what a century of experimentation has exhaustively confirmed. It’s a quantum universe out there; particles don’t have physical properties before they are observed.

Quantum tunneling map showing unobserved electrons entangled into standing waves. This is Quantum Decoherence.

This is massively counterintuitive, but so are all the great scientific advancements. The universe appears to be information, and our consciousness is like a catalyst localizing it into the physical world. And the really crazy part is, information is a function of consciousness. That means, the substrate of the quantum substrate is also consciousness. Top physicists concluded this. Modern physics has spent the last century confirming that we live in a dreamworld. Before the topic became taboo in physics, this is how they talked about it:

The universe does not exist “out there”,
independent of us. We are inescapably
involved in bringing about that which
appears to be happening…Today we
demand of physics some understanding
of existence itself. –John Wheeler

As a man who has devoted his whole life
to the most clearheaded science, to the
study of matter, I can tell you as a
result of my research about the atoms
this much: There is no matter as such!
All matter originates and exists only
by virtue of a force…We must assume
behind this force the existence of a
conscious and intelligent Mind. This
Mind is the matrix of all matter.
–Max Planck

What are we?

Scientists discovered that the fundamental building blocks of the physical universe are wave functions, which otherwise reside outside of space and time. The physical world we know is how wave functions behave while being observed at this scale (there is no evidence of wave functions collapsing into matter by any other means).

Because of this, there was a time when our top physicists started to see the world as a play of consciousness. This made the rest of the scientists a little bug-eyed, so most stuck with the sanity of the old fundamental building block idea to await a more reasonable solution.

Meanwhile, physicists spent decades confirming how matter behaves when not observed, and it’s not like matter at all. Unobserved matter stops being in a particular time and place and folds back into probability states of three quantum fields outside of spacetime.

So, if we are made out of wave functions in quantum fields, what makes quantum fields? Science doesn’t know, but the saints and sages do.

A quick tour of the quantum realm.

Whatever exists, animate or inanimate,
is born through the union of the field
and its Knower. -Bhagavad Gita

Quantum mechanics is at play at all scales; from quarks to quasars. We model large objects with classical mechanics only because it’s easier, but quantum mechanics still applies. Quantum behaviors do get washed out in large objects, but that’s because of quantum decoherence (their wave functions don’t all coherently wave together). But there are examples of large objects exhibiting quantum behaviors, such as in superfluids, superconductivity, and Bose Einstein condensates. Quantum isn’t really a scale thing; it’s everything.

Normal matter is densely packed energy, which emanates from three quantum fields outside of spacetime. And strangely, individual quantum wave states behave so precisely like mathematical functions we call them wave functions. Not being in space or time, quantum wave functions are nonlocal and do not localize into matter unless observed. They’re also non-temporal, so even time and causality don’t happen, except in observation. This often leads to confusion, because it means history doesn’t actually happen outside of observation (see Wheeler’s Thought Experiment).

Further confusion arises because quantum becomes classical when it enters the observers causal continuum, which is not necessarily in a persons direct awareness. Like in a video game, the player is not always aware of everything being rendered (gravity, etc.). The moon is subtly felt by every cell in our bodies, so it’s gravity is manifest even though we are not aware of it. In double-slit experiments, even when the which-path data is deleted before it is observed, once it enters the observers causal continuum of space and time, it now must behave as a particle. Physics says all the universe is like this; it only happens in (and around) the experience of it.

Here’s a quick YouTube explaining quantum fields:

What Is a Field? – Instant Egghead #42 | YouTube 2:21

This next YouTube beautifully depicts quantum states collapsing into particles as they are observed. They say the detector is collapsing the quantum states, but in reality, the detector, as well as its detection history, will remain in superposition until collapsed by an observer:

Visualization of Quantum Physics (Quantum Mechanics) | YouTube 14:33

Science has long been telling us that beneath the surface, we are all one. Below is a Cambridge professor explaining how all the universe reduces to quantum fields (19 minutes into his Faraday’s Fields talk).

Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe – with David Tong | YouTube 1:00:17

So, these fields contain information, which collapse when observed by the “light” of consciousness. This scientific conclusion was formalized as the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of the Copenhagen interpretation (also see 2 minutes into Dean Radin’s talk).

Here’s another way of looking at it. The moment before a photon from a distant star collapses into your eye and is witnessed, it was in a quantum state spanning many light years. It could have collapsed into the eye of a distant observer on another planet (hypothetically speaking), but the moment it collapsed into your eye, it instantly became unavailable to any other observer. The only way this information could be conveyed across light years in an instant is if it wasn’t actually a thing in the universe. Everything in the universe is like this. Before it is observed it is only information in a quantum state, and not really a thing in the universe.

What are we? We are consciousness. This quantum substrate has long been described by saints and sages (meditators). For example, the Bhagavad Gita devotes a chapter to quantum fields, and the Spanda Karika (sacred tremor) is a 9th century text about wave functions.

The sacred tremor,
the very place of creation and return,
is completely limitless because
its nature is formless.
-Spanda Karika

Returning is the motion of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.
The ten thousand things are born of being.
Being is born of not being.
-Tao Te Ching

Without effort the [Self] encompasses both
the movable and the unchanging,
the manifest and the unmanifest.
-Avadhuta Gita

Universal Consciousness unfolds
the universe on its own screen…
[It] brings about all emanation
and reabsorption of the universe.
-Pratyabhijnahridayam

Though all the galaxies emerge from him,
he is without form and unconditioned.
-Tejobindu Upanishad

That which has form is not real.
Only the formless is permanent.
Once this is known, you will not
return to illusion.
-Ashtavakra Gita

O Seeker, form does not differ from emptiness…
All appearances are emptiness…
No mind, no fear.
The imagined world is seen through.
Nirvana.
-Heart Sutra

Einstein’s Relativity.

I am not other than Light. The universe manifests at my glance.
-Ashtavakra Gita

To be is to be perceived.
–George Berkeley

The salient point of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is that the universe only exists relative to observers, and there is no objective universe out there. It’s not usually described like this, but it should be. Essentially, the two postulates of Special Relativity state that all the laws of physics are relative. But relative to what? Frames of reference? No, observers! Relativity is about how the laws of physics conform to the observer, even if that causes paradoxes in consensus reality—hence, there is no objective (absolute) reality. The word relativity is just a nonpersonal science way of saying subjectivity. So, if all the laws of physics are subjective, then none of the laws are objective. If there are no objective laws, there can be no objective universe.

Realizing there is no objective causality, and that even space and time bend to suit each observer, Einstein theorized that paradoxes in consensus reality could occur. This is explained to us in the form of Einstein’s thought experiments (note how the worldview shattering part is only ever hinted at).

In this light, Einstein’s Relativity is consistent with quantum mechanics in saying the world only renders where you interact with it. Quantum Mechanics says matter and energy are only physical in conscious experience, and Relativity adds, it’s like that with space and time as well. And since this was such an outrageous claim, Einstein spent the rest of his long career arguing for just the opposite—an objective, physically deterministic universe. In fact, he tried so hard to disprove Relativity that he altered the Scientific Method. Despite his effort, all experiments to date have only confirmed his Relativity. Only late in Einstein’s career did he publicly concede to his own discovery. In his last publication (an introduction to a book regarding space) he concluded with:

…the whole of physical reality could
perhaps be represented as a field…
the introduction of an independent
(absolute) space is no longer necessary.
That which constitutes the spatial
character of reality is then simply
the four-dimensionality of the field.
-Albert Einstein | The Concepts of Space

Einstein showed us how the laws of physics conform to our personal continuum of causal reality, even if that creates causal paradoxes in consensus reality. This ancient Buddhist quote most eloquently sums up the implications of Einstein’s Relativity:

What appears as a world of
apparently external phenomena, is
the play of energy of sentient beings.
There is nothing external or separate
from the individual. Everything that
manifests in the individual’s field
of experience is a continuum.
–Pratītyasamutpāda

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence …which is exactly we have, plus a century of failed attempts to disprove it. Modern physics is empirical metaphysics. Berkeley’s Idealism was empirically verified by Einstein’s Relativity of Simultaneity more than a century ago. Relativity, the delayed-choice experiments, the measurement problem, entanglement, etc., have laid to rest the philosophical debate between Realism and Idealism. Realism (Materialism) have been proven false. It’s well past time to give up the materialist ontology of Kant and Newton.

Premises:

• Consciousness is more fundamental than mass, energy, space, and time.
• We can be absolutely certain that we are conscious, and that is something.
• Something can’t come from nothing.

Conclusion:

• Consciousness transcends causality. All life is the result of nonlocal consciousness localizing into a universe of its own creation, and we are this consciousness, masquerading as humans.

What if there was another level of being awake, where you realize the physical world is also a dream? A physical dream.

The world is illusory.
Brahman alone is real.
The world is Brahman.
-Ramana Maharshi

Seeing consensus reality as a mental dreamscape doesn’t sound like science to us, but this is essentially what the founders of quantum mechanics discovered a century ago. The modern physics community has not advanced this culturally uplifting discovery despite how the last hundred years of experiments have only confirmed that consciousness is fundamental; all there really is.

Peter Russell | The Reality of Consciousness | YouTube 38:21

This is going to sound strange, but it shouldn’t. Consciousness is the only medium in which time flows. The physical world we know, including space and time, only exists as qualia in conscious experience—an apples color, taste, and texture exist only as qualia. Otherwise there is just a quantum sea of information, not in space or time. We make time (spacetime) in our own experience. This is the only way to explain the experimental evidence science has amassed, such as the measurement problem, entanglement, quantum eraser experiments, and Einstein’s Relativity. All of reality seems to be some kind of dream.

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
–Albert Einstein

In a dream, we look out into the dreamworld from a dream character’s perspective, and interact with other characters. When we wake up, we realize all those other people were just our own consciousness—our consciousness was playing a trick on our awareness. It’s the same with the physical world. Our individual characters, and all of reality, are just disassociated parts of our own universal consciousness. Sometimes people wake up to this. We call them saints and sages.

Our consciousness has been compartmentalized down into individual egoic selves, and meditation helps us to re-associate with our true Self (the dreamer). When we look into the world, everything is inside out, because that’s the dreamworld.

Shakti opens her eyes and the universe is reabsorbed in pure consciousness; she closes them and the universe is manifested within her. -Spanda Karika

Being in a state of pure universal consciousness is part of our daily routine. We rejuvenate in it every night in deep sleep. Modern science has actually confirmed all this. Consider these quotes from notable physicists of the early to mid 1900’s:

Where does Space-Time come from? Is there any answer except that it comes from consciousness? –John Wheeler

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. –Max Planck

Consciousness cannot be accounted for in
physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely
fundamental. –Erwin Schrödinger

The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind…The stuff of the world is mind-stuff. –Sir Arthur Eddington

The very study of the physical world leads to the conclusion that the concept of consciousness is an ultimate reality. -Eugene Wigner

The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. –Sir James Jeans

How is this different from what the saints and sages (meditators) have been saying for millennia?

In the absolute sense, subject and object are nothing other than the space of profound consciousness. -Spanda Karika

Universal consciousness is the cause of the universe. -Pratyabhijnahrdayam

Matter derives from mind not mind from matter. –Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation

The world you perceive is made of consciousness: what you call matter is consciousness itself. -Nisargadatta

What appears as a world of apparently external phenomena, is the play of energy of sentient beings. -Pratītyasamutpāda

The world in which we live is a play of universal Consciousness.
-Swami Muktananda | Play of Consciousness

Consciousness is everywhere, there is no differentiation…What you call universe is an illusion, a magical appearance. To be happy, consider it as such. -Vijñāna-bhairava

[Buddha said,]
My dreamlike form
Appeared to dreamlike beings
To show them the dreamlike path
That leads to dreamlike enlightenment.
-Bhadrakalpa Sutra

So why is today’s scientific view so materialistic and antithetical to the primacy of consciousness when their own data points directly at it? Because in the 1700’s, science claimed authority over the church as purveyors of the truth, and they don’t want to give it back.

Materialism worked well until the early 1900’s, when experiments revealed, among other things, that the universe doesn’t physically exist outside of observation (Local Realism is false). This would negate physical determinism and upend their entire common sense world view, so they’ve vigorously tried to disprove it ever since. A policy of shut up and calculate became firmly established.

Nobel Prize 2022 – Universe is not real | Where quantum physics meets Vedanta | YouTube 19:30

The link to Eastern religion was obvious. Schrödinger even wrote about the Upanishads. In the 1960’s, “hippies” learned of these experiments, and ideas about vibrations and universal consciousness infused into popular culture, eventually becoming the New Age movement.

Saying the universe only exists in the experience of it is an extraordinary claim, but after a century of trying to disprove it, science has only substantiated it. It’s time now for scientists to set aside their materialism, but when they do, hippies will say, we told you so, and so will the church.

Entering into the unitive state,
he attains the goal of evolution.
-Paramahamsa Upanishad

Knowledge is bondage.
-Shiva Sutras

Silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.
-Rumi

To be full of things is to be empty
of God. To be empty of things is to
be full of God. -Meister Eckhart

For one gains by losing
and loses by gaining.
-Tao Te Ching

Rational discernment is not going to wake you up on its own. There are many benefits to having a regular meditation practice, but it is especially deigned for enlightenment. The spiritual path has two parts: preparation and practice. The prep is about purifying yourself, and the practice is meditation.

Meditation is immediacy without concepts. It’s about looking inward toward conscious itself, rather than looking out through the senses. It’s about the witness paying attention while taking a rest from all thoughts and emotions; you need only be present. When done as a daily practice, it will even deconstruct subconscious egoic programs. It’s been the enlightenment method of choice for centuries because it really works.

There’s so much more to us hiding just below the surface that they call it grace. Meditation makes you much more available to grace, and if you meditate with a true guru your chances are better, because they are conduits for grace.

Swami Girijananda Meditating

There are many techniques which are
supposed to lead us to God, but, of
all these, meditation is the one
recognized by all the saints and sages
because only in meditation can we see
the inner Self directly.
-Swami Muktananda | Meditate

Unity obtains when the activities
of mind have ceased. The witness then
abides in its true nature. Otherwise,
the witness is identified with the
activities of mind and is just another
thought-form itself.
-Yoga Sutras

The Self is realized in a higher state
of consciousness when you have broken
through the wrong identification that
you are the body…
-Kena Upanishad

In the depths of meditation, sages saw
within themselves the Lord of Love, who
dwells in the heart of every creature.
-Shvetashvatara Upanishad

How to meditate.

The goal of meditation isn’t to achieve something, but to reveal the ground-stuff of your being, by getting all the noise out of the way.

I have lived on the lip of insanity,
wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door.
It opens.
I’ve been knocking from the inside.
-Rumi

When first trying to meditate, most people find it hard not to think. Parts of our brain are subconsciously thinking along various lines of thought, and our consciousness moves between them. Meditation is about learning how to extend the time between those thoughts until those thoughts fade. Adyashanti would say something like, if you take your foot off the gas pedal, eventually the car will come to a stop.

The amount of practice it will take to go thoughtless for short periods depends on how much attention our thoughts are requiring. Practice makes perfect, and if one practices even a few minutes a day, it will get easier. Meditation is like taking the ultimate break from the day; to step out for a second. Relax, maybe starting at the base of the spine, and just practice being aware without thoughts.

The more you process those thoughts, the easier it gets, until eventually a thoughtless state becomes a familiar resource you can easily drop into. Spending time there each day will refresh you, clear your head, and make you much more available to Grace.

Here is an excellent introduction to why people meditate, with a little at the end on how to meditate.
Why Meditate | Joel Morwood | Vimeo 10:31

It cannot be perceived by the mind, because it makes the mind think. Still, the Self can be known, and to know it we do not need the help of the mind or the senses. -Swami Muktananda | I Am That

And being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God cometh, [Jesus] answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation…the kingdom of God is within you. -Luke 17:20-21 | KJV

That which makes the mind think but cannot be thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed. This Self is not someone other than you.
-Kena Upanishad

The Self is one, though it appears to be many. Those who meditate upon the Self…see the Self in everyone… -Chandogya Upanishad

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me. -Meister Eckhart

God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man. -Ibn Arabi

Wake up from this dream of separateness.
-Shvetashvatara Upanishad