limits of meditation

When you become old, umpteen well wishers and friends advise one to do so many different things for spiritual pursuit, that one is bewildered at first.. One person advises doing japa(repetition of the name of a deity) or upasana(pleasung a deity by concentration and tantras). Another advises chanting of Mantras. Meditation of a particular type is another’s suggestion. Raja Yoga of hundred types are there says yet another. Service of the poor and needy is promoted by somebody else. Devotion can achieve anything says another.
All of these, I am sure, are effective. But, it all depends for what purpose one is making the spiritual effort. Some say that all the approaches lead to the same result, namely, self realization, apprehending reality, receiving God’s divine Grace, or achieving Godhood.
I beg to differ. A circus man practicing relentlessly on a flying trapeze can only become a good trapeze artist, not a bar player or a cycle acrobat. Similarly a man practicing Raja Yoga to get some special powers may be able to get those powers in the long run. But he may never be able to apprehend the reality or feel the Source. A man with deep devotion may feel the divine grace and be ecstatic all the time. But it may not mean that he has encountered the Ultimate Reality.
But the Ultimate Reality may be a fictitious imagination of the mind. Nobody can know, until and unless it is suddenly encountered. Therefore what one can do is only to strive to directly perceive and understand the self completely, first in it’s ego or ‘I’ form, then in it’s blank un-manifested form (pregnant nothingness), and then still deep below the sub-conscious mind, whatever is there. From that the rest may follow, if at all.
In meditation, one can only go deeper and deeper inside the mind and attempt to know/feel/perceive to the extent of the knowable. That is to say, that one can go and find out only up to the limits of the knowable, up to the point one is allowed to directly perceive, and one is capable of perceiving. It is just an approach to the infinite, never reaching there, but always on the path in an endless journey. That is perhaps its beauty and grace too In meditation, you can see/perceive only that which is shown to you, and only that which you are capable of seeing and knowing.