Among them, the therapists from Alexandria, as described by Philo, knew how "to take care of the Being", connecting psychic healing to metaphysical knowledge and to a re-orientation of desire towards its true end: Being itself.

As for the word meditation, it usually evokes the Buddhist and Hinduist Orient, the great specialists of that marvelous art of "coming back to the Self".

Nevertheless, the Western world too has its "letters of nobility" on the matter, in the heart of the mystical trends of its great religions : gnostic, hesichastic or Eckhartian Christianity, hassidic and kabbalistic Judaism, Islamic Sufism, all describe the paths of the soul seeking unity with the Divine - within itself. Among the ways and methods that their respective sages and spiritual teachers proposed, meditation, under its diverse names, is considered as "the Royal Way".

Among the many definitions and descriptions of what meditation is, we shall choose here the one that stresses a "coming back towards the center of being" (from the latin "itari in medio", as suggested by Jean-Yves Leloup). That coming back towards the center implicates a path that would start at the periphery of being, made of daily worries, thoughts, feelings, projects...

Meditation would then be the Ariadne's thread that would make possible the finding of one's path into the immutable center of the endless whirlpool, the silent eye of the cyclone.

Much of the research on meditation explores its "measurable" effects upon self-regulation and self-exploration, and other research takes into account its spiritual dimension.

Some researchers - those belonging to the Transpersonal Movement in particular, - speak about a line of psychological development that would start in the darkest recesses of the id, grow through psychological health as defined by the psychotherapies. It might then blossom into an "optimal psychological health", of an "ideal man", freed from himself, as described by the spiritual traditions (the Christian saint, the Jewish "righteous man", the liberated man of Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism) - all those who disidentified themselves from the restriction of their personality to comprehend both their human and their divine identity.

For those who attain that maturity, words become inadequate, but still try sometimes to describe those ineffable heights of a live intuition.

As Thomas Merton puts it, "Everything sums up not in a concept, but in an experience : I Am" - and as Saint Jean of the Cross has experienced "The center of the soul is God".

Master Eckhart adds : "If God is me, there is no me any longer, there is only the Absolute, the Unique, the Eternal left".