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There is no relationship because meditation is unlearning. They are not two things that can be related; they are one thing, one process. Meditation is unlearning, unlearning is meditation.

What in fact do you do when you meditate? You simply unlearn the mind; by and by, you drop the layers and layers of mind. You are like an onion, you go on peeling yourself. One layer, the most superficial, is thrown out; another layer comes up, you throw that, you drop that also. Another one comes up – and it goes on and on. But one day the last layer is peeled off and there is nothingness in your hands. The whole onion has disappeared. You look around and you cannot find yourself. This is the point where meditation is achieved. Now it is no longer meditation, it has become samadhi.

It has become what in the West you call ecstasy, but rather should be called instasy than ecstasy. The word ecstasy means “to stand out.” It has a certain meaning. It means to stand outside your personality so totally that you are no longer part of it – that is ecstasy. But samadhi is more like instasy – to stand within yourself so deeply that the within and without have disappeared. You have become the withinness, the very withinness; not that you are standing within, you are the withinness. This is samadhi.

The word samadhi comes from two roots, one is sam; sam means together, absolutely together. Another is adha; adha means going, reaching, being. Being together, reaching into togetherness, becoming togetherness. Samadhi means you become so together, so one, so crystallized, that there is nothing opposite to you within you. You have become one unity, a unison, a harmony of all the opposites.

The mind is opposites. You think one thing, and suddenly another part of the mind denies it. You want to meditate? One part of the mind says yes, another immediately says no. You want to become a sannyasin? One part of the mind says, “Right,” another part of the mind says, “Beware, what are you doing? Don’t do it. Wait.” For small things also: what clothes to wear today. You stand before the mirror and the mind cannot decide. The mind is a crowd.

Unlearning means to drop this crowd, to let these people go, and become so one that you cannot even say that it is one, because one is meaningful only in a crowd. One is meaningful only if two is meaningful. That is why Hindus have never called it one – they call it nondual, they simply say “not two,” just to show that if we say “one” the two enters from the back door. Because what will one mean if there is no two? If we say God is one, if we say in samadhi you are one, then two is just at the corner; and then three – and then the whole world.

Hindus have insisted that the God is non-two, nondual, advaita; in samadhi you are not two, that’s all. Nothing more is said, just a negative – so that numbers should not enter again from the back door. By unlearning you become not-two. By learning you become many. By learning you become legion, a crowd, and the crowd goes on increasing. The more you learn, the more the crowd goes on and on. The ultimate result of learning can be madness and nothing else.

So it is not just an accident that great thinkers in the West have almost all gone mad some time or other. In fact if some thinker in the West has not been mad that simply shows that he is not a very, very deep thinker, nothing else. Nietzsche went mad – he was really a thinker. Bertrand Russell? He never went mad, he remained superficial: a popularizer, but not very deep.

In the East just a totally different thing has happened. We cannot conceive of Buddha going mad. That would be the most impossible thing in the world – Buddha going mad. Nietzsche goes mad because Nietzsche is a thinker, Buddha cannot go mad because he is a no-thinker. He drops thinking, how can he go mad? One day the whole crowd is gone and he is sitting alone, nobody to even disturb, so much alone that he is not even one – because who is there to say that you are one? If somebody is there to say that you are one, the other is still present.

Meditation is unlearning. Peel your onion: it is difficult because you have become identified with the onion; you think these layers are you, so to peel them is difficult. It is painful also because it is not like just throwing off your clothes. Rather it is like peeling your skin; you have become too attached to it. But once you know, once you drop one layer, you feel freshness arising. You become new. Then courage increases. Then hope. Then you feel more confident. Then you can peel another layer. The more you peel, the more silent, the more happy, the more blissful you become. Now you are on the right track. Now it is not very far away when you will throw away the whole onion. But it is good to peel layer by layer, because it may not be possible for you to throw away the whole onion. That too is a possibility, it has happened sometimes, but it happens in such an intense understanding which is not ordinarily available.

There are two ways to attain enlightenment – one sudden, the other gradual. The sudden way happens very rarely, but it happens. The gradual way is easier because then I am not asking you to throw away the whole onion; that will be too much. I will have to persuade you. Just peel off the first layer which has already become dirty – and you also feel it is dirty. So much dust has gathered on it, and it has become so dry, and you are so encased in it that it goes on shrinking and shrinking and it has become a prison. So you listen to me, you peel it off.

The second layer will be more difficult to peel. It will be fresh, you would like to cling to it. The third layer will be still more difficult – the nearer you reach, the more difficult it is because beautiful things start happening. You have not reached the center yet but you are moving nearer – just as if you are moving toward the river, and the air is cool and you start feeling good. Now the marketplace is left behind, the dirty air is no longer there, the stale atmosphere is not there. The sky is more open, the river is closer. The river is sending messages through the air: I am close, come on!

The nearer you come, the more you may start clinging to the layers because you will feel, “This is happening because of this layer.” It is not happening because of the layer, it is happening because you are now nearer to the center. So there are people who cling to worldly things, and then I come across so many people who start clinging to spiritual things – these are part of the layers.

Somebody says, “Such beautiful light happens to me!” He comes and says, “Bhagwan, help me so I can always experience this light.” What will you do with it? Light is an experience, it is not you. It is something different from you. You are the experiencer, the witness. Once before, you were experiencing money, now you are experiencing light, but it remains the same – it is an object. Now you want to cling. If I had said, “Drop your money, all worldly things,” you would have understood. But if I say, “Drop all this nonsense, this light. And your kundalini arising. And visions. And the lotus flowering within you – drop all this nonsense,” you wonder what type of spiritual man I am. I should help you so that more lotuses blossom within you.

But they will remain “of the layers,” they have to be peeled off. And I have to help you to peel the whole onion. I am not going to help you stop anywhere before nothingness happens. Nothingness is the goal, śūnyatā. All layers gone and emptiness in the hand. You are left alone, with no experience. Spirituality is not an experience. It is to come to, fall back on, the experiencer itself. It is not an experience – all experiences are of the world because they belong to the layers. They don’t belong to you.

Meditation is an unlearning process. Don’t ask for the relationship, there is none – they are not two, they cannot be related.