Of all the phenomena of the natural world, the sky has most affinity with Infinity. The ocean is vastness embodied; the grains of sand on a beach countless; the stars innumerable – yet the sky just stretches on and on, and as far as we can imagine it stretching, it leads us always further.
The idea of the Infinite can be alarming to our mind and vital, implying unending fields of the unknown and unattainable: we fear being swallowed, annihilated, reduced to nothingness or rendered utterly insignificant. Yet the sky is a welcoming Infinite: its very blue soothes our troubled mind, charms our restless vital, and encourages our heart to spread its wings and fly into its embrace.
Though we stand upon the earth, we are as much held in our place by the sky above: the ground below us our solid material base, our bodies’ home; while the ever-expanding sky cradles and inspires our spiritual hearts to enter and merge with our souls’ abode.
In this simple, beautiful and powerful passage, Sri Chinmoy describes how meditating on the sky can open and reveal our own spiritual heart:
“Kindly keep your eyes half open and imagine the vast sky. In the beginning try to feel that the sky is in front of you; later try to feel that you are as vast as the sky, or that you are the vast sky itself.
“After a few minutes, please close your eyes and try to see and feel the sky inside your heart. Please feel that you are the Universal Heart, and that inside you is the sky that you meditated upon and identified yourself with. Your spiritual heart is infinitely vaster than the sky, so you can easily house the sky within yourself.”
– Sri Chinmoy