From meditation arises the separation of the meditated, and that is stillness, without doubt

The formula appears to invert the goal of meditation. Ordinarily, one meditates in order to attain something—stillness, vision, liberation—and the separation (viśleṣa) between meditator and the object of meditation is the obstacle. Vasiṣṭha says it is the result: when meditation matures, it reveals that there was always a separation between the seeker and the sought. Not that they merge: it is revealed that they were never united, that the union being sought was a projection of saṅkalpa (mental conception). The dhyeya—the object of meditation—was always mental, constructed by the dhyātṛ—the meditator—who was also mental. Meditation that seeks to eliminate this separation reinforces the fundamental error: that there is someone who meditates. True meditation is seeing that there is no meditator, not because one is destroyed, but because one never existed as a separate entity. Then śānti arises—not as an attained state, but as the recognition that there was never any agitation in the substratum. The Yoga Sūtra (I.12) prescribes abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyām—practice and detachment—for nirodha (cessation), but Vasiṣṭha adds: when practice reveals that there is no practitioner, detachment is automatic. One does not detach from something external: one sees that there was never any attachment because there were never two entities to be joined.