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Why be afraid of this declaration: that the final goal is to merge in the Absolute? Is it because it promises the same as death--annihilation? Yet whenever deep sleep is entered this merger happens. The ego with its thoughts, desires, and agitations, is gone; the world, with its relativities, is no more. Time, space, form, memory are lost. Yet all reappears next morning. So it is not a real death. It is pure Being. Meditation tries to reproduce this condition, to achieve a return to deep sleep but with the added factor of awareness. In the final phase--Nirvikalpa Samadhi--it succeeds. Man dissolves but his divine Source remains as the residue, as what he always and basically was. This is why philosophy includes meditation.

-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 1 : Preparatory > # 199