Meher Baba: ~ ‘Meditation has often been misunderstood as a mechanical process of forcing the mind upon some idea or object.+

Meher Baba: ~ ‘Meditation has often been misunderstood as a mechanical process of forcing the mind upon some idea or object. 

Ashtavakra says: ~ “This is your bondage, that you practice Samadhi or meditation.”

Meditation is not the means to Self –Knowledge or Brahma Gnana or Atma Gnana. Meditation is not the goal itself. It is an important and useful tool to quiet the body, mind, and emotions and allow one to enter a deep and quiet state of mind. Once the turbulent tendencies of the body or ego and emotions are brought into harmony, clarity and renewed strength are available to meet and overcome each life challenge as it presents itself. Meditation will not eliminate our life challenges but can enable us to harmonize our body, mind, emotions, and spirit and to focus that energy like a powerful beam of light on the challenges that lie ahead in worldly life. 

When one sits down to meditate, he is thinking first of sitting, i.e. his body; then he tries to have only had the thoughts of getting rid of the thoughts, with the thoughts of getting rid of the thought.  Thus, he is thinking as a person within the world.  Thus, he remains as a person practicing meditation, thinking the ego alone is illusory, and the rest (universe) is a reality within the illusion.  He only thinks of the object, within the object, as an object.  But he is never aware of the formless subject.  

When one is absorbed in thinking of anything, he is thinking within the object (mind) that which witnesses all these three states is within, but always apart.

As a thinker, he gets only thoughts.  The thinker and thoughts are part of the illusion. Whenever there are thoughts and experiences, there is the duality (mind). Where there is the duality (mind) there is always ignorance. Where there is ignorance there is an illusion.  The duality, mind, ignorance, and illusion, are one and the same thing and they appear together and disappear.  The ignorance vanishes when the wisdom dawns.

When one puts aside the imagination and has the thinker-- what does he get with thinking—he can get only thoughts. Meditation is only an effort; it is imagination, an idea; the Soul, which is present in the form of consciousness remains the same with or without ideas.

Remember 

Yoga does not yield truth because it ignores the objective world. Say the yoga has its place rather than its value and that its value is for a certain type of mindset. One cannot live without the physical world; it is the basis of his life, so it must be the starting point of his inquiry. Things, not imaginations, must be the seeker’s material.

Yogi shuts his eyes against the world and then has the temerity to declare that he knows the world to be Brahman! Because he has not inquired into it, he knows nothing.

Yoga helps the yogi by giving him the feeling that the world, which confronts him is not worth bothering about, it detaches him from the world; it makes him treat the world as a dream, i.e. an idea. It does the same to his ego to some extent, because he becomes indifferent to what happens to him. But the great secret is that this is only feeling, he feels these things only but does not know that the world is an idea. Such knowledge can come only from deeper ‘Self’-search and in no other way. That is why yogi cannot be Gnani.

Sage Sankara says:~  'Yoga is not the means of liberation (page 132-133 - Commentary on Brihadaranyakopanishad

Yoga can yield the only duality because everything that one can do or practice becomes a vanishing 'know

It yields relative truth based on imagination, which is true from the dualistic perspective, not on the nondualistic perspective. 

It is the difference between feeling and knowledge. The feeling of the yogi that the world is unreal may change in the future because all emotions are liable to change; and the fact is that yogis do change, as when they indulge in accumulating wealth they lose their sense of the world unreality though previously they felt it.

 A permanent view of the world as unreal can come only after Soulcentric reasoning; such knowledge cannot change. Were the yogi of sufficiently sharp intellect he could discover the ideality of the world by Soulcentric reasoning alone and then it would not be necessary for him to have gone through yoga practice at all; that is why yoga is for dull or middling intellects.

Panchadasi: - the impossibility of yoga arrives at a successful end to its practices. (P.509 v, 109)

To realize the truth of the whole, one must know the world, which confronts him, otherwise, he gets a half-truth. The seeker of truth should not run away from the external world means the incapacity to think. Thus, it is necessary to know the nature of the world in which he exists.

The ultimate truth is attainable by perfect understanding, assimilation, and realization of ‘what is what’. The perfect understanding of ‘what is what’ leads to Advaitic ‘Self’-awareness.

Remember:~

Sage Sankara said: ~ Neither by the practice of yoga nor philosophy, nor by good works nor by learning, does liberation come, but only through the realization that Atman and Brahman are one in no other way. (1) Vivekachoodamani v 56, pg 25

Sage Sankara says: ~ there is no need to study the Scriptures, in order to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman

 ~ then why do you indulge in studying the scriptures.

Sage Sankara says: ~ there is no need to study philosophy, in order to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman

~then why do you indulge in studying philosophy.

Sage Sankara says: ~ there is no need to indulge rituals, in order to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman.

~ then why do you indulge in rituals.

Sage Sankara says: ~ there is no need to indulge in yoga, in order to realize the ultimate truth or Brahman

~ then why do you indulge in yoga.

Sage Sankara says the transparent Truth of the ‘Self’, which is hidden by the illusion, is to be attained through the instructions of a knower of Brahman, (Gnani) 
~then why you are sticking a Guru who is not a Gnani.

Sage Sankara says: ~ “The exercise in discrimination between real and unreal and renunciation of the false is real meditation, then why you are indulging in other types of meditation. : ~ Santthosh Kumaar