" most civilized people 

are out of touch with reality 

because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think about it 

and talk about it, and describe it

for on the one hand there is the real world and on the other a whole system of symbols about that world

these are very very useful symbols all civilization depends them

but like all good things they have their disadvantages and the principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality (...)

the difference between myself and all the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea, it is not a real difference

and meditation is the way in wich we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe and what that requires is that we shut up, that is to say, that we became interiorly

silent (...)

because you see most of us think compulsively all the time (...)

obviosly if i talk all the time i don't hear what anyone else has to say 

and so in exactly the same way if i think all the time that is to say if i talk to my self all the time i don't have anything to think about except thoughts

and therefore i'm living entirely in the world of symbols and i'm never in relationship with reality

that's the first basic reason for meditation 

(...)

one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking we find there is only a present only an eternal now

(...) 

meditation when corrected done it's a kind of digging the present, is the kind of grooving with the eternal now and bring us into a state of peace where we can understand that the point of life the place where it's at is simply here and now"

alan watts