If we place food in an oven heated only to 20 degrees, the food will not be cooked, no matter how long we leave it inside. Lukewarm is not enough, and will never be enough to cook food.
The same applies to our meditation. It is not enough to go through the motions, to sit in lotus position, mouth some mantras and expect a profound, uplifting experience. Without focus and intensity, our experience will remain mundane.
Not how long – not the quantity of our meditation, but how eager the aspiration we bring – the quality of our meditation – is the key to unlock the doorway and gain admittance to our inner palace of peace, light and bliss.
“You can meditate early in the morning and, if it is possible, in the evening before you go to bed. During the day, if you are free, and if you really get inspiration, then also you can meditate. Please feel the necessity of meditating, even if is for only one minute a day. If it is done wholeheartedly, even if it is for a fleeting minute, then it is worthwhile.”
“If inspiration is there, then meditate. Many people say that they meditate four times or six times a day. But what do they meditate on? They meditate on their bosses or they meditate on their boyfriends or their girlfriends. This is no meditation at all. If you can meditate most soulfully, if you feel that your aspiration is carrying you, only then is it really worthwhile meditating.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The only really essential, indispensable ingredient for meditation, is aspiration. Aspiration stands as guide, guardian and guarantor – carrying, sustaining, intensifying and continually elevating our meditation. When we nurture and treasure our aspiration-flame, we no longer have to seek meditation: meditation finds us.
Regularity and punctuality are critical to success and progress in our meditation and spiritual discipline – not only in the beginning, but at every page and every stage of our journey.
It is impressed on us from day one, that the two most essential pillars of our meditation are to practise at a regular time and a regular place – the same time and the same place each day, without fail. Regularity helps our punctuality, and punctuality helps our regularity: the one supports and inspires the other.
Jointly, they create a momentum, a flow that turns our puddling efforts into a stream, and then a river of continuous and ever-transcending newness-beauty, energy, inspiration, purpose and fulfilment.
The question immediately arises: what if one cannot meditate at the same time or place on a given day or for an extended time? What if you work shift work with varying hours each day? What if you are traveling across time zones, and cannot be at the same place even for two days in a row?
Every challenge presents opportunities; necessity is the mother of invention.
If you do shift work, fix your meditation “time” relative to the start of your work day. Meditate first thing after you wake up and before preparing yourself to go to work, no matter what hour of the day that is.
If you are away from home, create a “travelling shrine kit” that you set up in your room wherever you are.
This kit may include a photo of your spiritual teacher or a scene from nature, an incense holder, flower vase, some spiritual writings, set up on a beautiful cloth. This shrine becomes your “fixed place” for as long as you are away from home, keeping the continuity and thread of your spiritual discipline alive.
So many of our problems and shortcomings arise from impurity in our mind and vital. Lack of purity in our thoughts, feelings and perceptions leads to confusion, misunderstanding and suffering. Yet searching for purity in our mind and vital is a fool’s errand, doomed to disappointment.
Purity cannot be conjured, manufactured or willed into existence; it cannot arise from thinking about or merely wishing for it. For the mind and vital to experience and acquire purity, they must open themselves to purity’s source – the light of meditation flowing from our spiritual heart and soul.
Purity is at once soft, gentle, sweet – and the most powerful of all qualities.
Purity and light are inter-expressive: purity is the breath of light, light the face of purity.
Because many of us find it difficult to conceptualise or visualise purity, we may find ourselves all at sea when we are urged to invoke or meditate on purity. It is simpler for many, to invoke and meditate instead on light: when light appears in our meditation, it invariably comes arm in arm with purity.
All that is impure within us – limited and limiting thoughts, feelings, weaknesses, problems – can and must be expunged by the twin spiritual detergents, light and purity.
Sri Chinmoy offers a beautiful, powerful meditation to achieve this:
“Please try to feel a white column of light coming up from your heart centre. Imagine that this white column of light has pierced the top of your head and is stationed three inches above you. Now you can start meditating. After a while try to feel that you are nothing other than that light. Feel that it is absolutely your own existence. When you feel it as your own existence, all your problems will be unmistakably solved.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Though we see nature all around us, we feel nature inside us. The beauty, power, charm, harmony, subtlety, variety, intensity and immensity of nature that we love, admire and wonder at, is at once a projection and reflection of our own inner universe. All that we see without, we have and we are within.
Of all the phenomena of Nature, none is more mysterious, alluring, captivating and enthralling than the moon. Like the moon, we too cycle through phases of waxing and waning revelation; like the moon, we too have a brighter and a darker side; like the moon, we too are detached from the earth, yet captive to its orbit; like the moon, which is reliant entirely on the light of the sun for the revelation of its beauty, we too rely utterly on the light of our own soul for our very consciousness.
Sri Chinmoy urges us to meditate on both the outer and the inner moon:
“When you meditate on the full moon, feel that your consciousness is fully blossomed inside you. The lotus has many petals. So think of a lotus fully blossomed inside you. You can appreciate the beauty of the fully-blossomed lotus. When you meditate on the new moon, at that time you have to feel that one petal has opened, and there are many more petals to be blossomed. Here again you get joy because when one petal of a flower is blossomed, you have the hope that tomorrow another petal will open, and the day after tomorrow, another. In that way you will see the gradual progress. Once you see some progress, you feel it will soon be complete. The full moon gives you joy from completion, and the new moon gives you joy from seeing gradual progress.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The following is a striking passage in which Sri Chinmoy describes meditating on either a rising sun, or a blossoming flower inside our heart – initially, as a way to bring our heart to the fore, and ultimately, to become the heart itself:
“No matter what time of day you are meditating, even if it is in the evening, imagine the rising sun for a few fleeting seconds. Imagine that the sun is rising and radiating light inside your heart. Or you can imagine a most beautiful and most pure flower opening up and blossoming petal by petal inside your heart.
“As soon as you see either the rising sun or the flower, you will feel the light or the purity of your heart. Then, as you breathe in and breathe out, you will feel the light or purity inside your heart increase. And the more light or purity you feel inside your heart, the brighter will be the rising sun or the flower.
“Afterwards, try to feel that you have become the rising sun. Or try to feel that the purity-flower inside your heart has fully blossomed and that you have become this most beautiful flower. The beauty, the purity, the fragrance of the flower is all you.
“As the flower is God’s outer manifestation of beauty and purity, the sun is the inner manifestation of the beauty and power of God.
“From the rising sun or the most beautiful flower that you have become, light will radiate and purity will spread. When the light and purity spread, they enter into those around you. In this way you can meditate more in the heart. Do not feel that you have to go to the heart. Only feel that you are the heart.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Meditation brings us high and deep experiences of peace, light and bliss; glimpses of the Beyond within. Yet for most of our everyday lives, we are not operating from this higher state of meditation, but from our moment-to-moment flux of mental and emotional awareness.
For meditation to be practical and effective in our lives, it is essential to assimilate these higher realisations into our everyday consciousness – to blend the infinite in the finite.
Fear, doubt and worry can only linger in the finite. Once our limited and limiting body, vital and mind surrender to and receive light from our unlimited spiritual heart and soul – which is to say, once we experience and assimilate real meditation – fear, doubt and worry must disappear, calmed by clarity, swallowed by love, dissipated in the indisputability of ecstasy.
Left to themselves, our finite body, vital and mind will instinctively retreat and isolate, blocking out the higher light of the heart and soul. To counter this tendency and ensure continual assimilation of our meditation, Sri Chinmoy advises us to imagine a flow of consciousness or light from our heart of meditation throughout our mind, vital and body. As the flow of a river is constant, continually connecting each part to every other, so must we keep our everyday consciousness open and connected to our higher self:
“Right after meditation you have to feel that the light from the heart is like a river that is flowing to all the parts of the being. The consciousness-water, the consciousness-river, has found a way to flow most satisfactorily into the other parts of the being. So there will be no fear at all. At that time you will feel a connecting link between the heart and the other parts of the being.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Nothing is really solid. This applies to matter, as well as to ideas, feelings, perceptions, beliefs and sensations. So-called “solid matter” is comprised of atoms which are themselves formed of miniscule particles whirring around amidst almost entirely empty space, expressions of energy. As long as our minds perceive something as being solid, it is impervious to us: once we are able to identify with that same substance as an expression of energy, its solidity yields to our deeper perception – hence a yogi can walk through a brick wall.
When we are able to see ourselves also as not a solid entity, but rather as continually flowing energy and light, like a river apparently the same yet ever changing, then it becomes easier for us to let go of damaging thoughts and unhealthy emotions, releasing them into the flow, and keeping ourselves always open to the inflow of new inspiration, illumination and liberation.
“When you meditate, please try to feel the river of meditation flowing through you without coercion or exertion. Let the divine consciousness flow through you. That flow is the real meditation which you have had many, many times. You can always have the real meditation if you allow the river of consciousness to flow in and through you.
“Let this energy which comes in a very exuberant way, flow from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head like a river. Do not try to hold it. Let it not be accumulated at one particular place. Let it take the form of liquid energy. You will see that automatically you will become calm and quiet again. By consciously trying to help the energy flow from one place to another inside you, you will be able to enjoy that divine energy.”
– Sri Chinmoy
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
The realms of the finite always limit and constrain us within their walls, boundaries, limitations, definitions and restrictions. No matter how far we roam within the finite – the mental, vital and physical realms – we always reach an end-point, a place beyond which we can no further go.
Yet our inner heart and soul – our infinite self within – stirs ever with a hunger to surpass all limitations, a cry to fly beyond the finite into the infinite, immortal and eternal truth, light, peace and bliss.
This aspiration, this constant yearning for the Beyond, fuels our meditation and keeps it always new, fresh, vibrant and focussed. To raise us from the finite to the Infinite, through meditation our heart’s aspiration strives to extricate our consciousness from its preoccupation and entanglement with small, limiting, binding and belittling thoughts, distractions and emotions, and immerse us in ever higher, purer, liberating realities.
To enable and expedite this upliftment we must focus, first and foremost, on vastness. Vastness acts as an elevator to raise us beyond the limits of our mind’s vision and understanding, and deliver us from the prison of the finite.
“When you want to meditate, at that time think of something very vast – the sky, the ocean, the mountains – and become one with the vastness, which is all power.
“Imagine something very vast, calm and quiet. When you start meditating, feel that inside you is a vast ocean and that you have dived to the bottom, where it is all tranquillity. If you can identify yourself with this vast ocean, with this flood of tranquillity, then it will be extremely easy for you to meditate.”
– Sri Chinmoy
When we invoke and meditate on the outer vastness, it awakens, reveals, mingles and merges with its secret source, our ever-transcending inner vastness.
Sri Chinmoy emphasises, that the tree which is laden with the most fruit, bows down the lowest. This is the essence of humility: the greater the inner spiritual achievement, the humbler will be the outer personality.
The whole purpose of a fruit is to be eaten, and if the tree does not bow down to offer us its fruits, then we can never taste, appreciate and be nourished by them – unreachable fruits are useless fruits. All the wisdom, love and power in the world are similarly useless unless they can be offered and shared, and for this, their possessor must first have the humility to reach down to those of lesser light, wisdom and power.
“You can meditate on a tree. A tree that does not have fruits, that has nothing to offer, stands proudly erect. But a tree that has hundreds of fruits always bends down with utmost humility and offers its fruits to mankind. When it bends down to offer its countless fruits, it is not looked down upon by others. On the contrary, the tree is appreciated, admired and adored. Why? Because it is offering most delicious, nourishing fruits to us. The tree with fruit has humility. The tree that possesses some light and truth is humble while the tree that does not have light is not humble. So when you see something that has achieved some truth — like the tree with fruits — and when you see how humble it is and how it is appreciated by others, this helps you develop your own humility. When you have some fruits, some achievements, you are of greater necessity to mankind. And when you offer your fruits with humility, the world needs you and loves you infinitely more than it would do otherwise.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To acquire specific divine qualities, Sri Chinmoy often advocates meditating on aspects of the natural world.
Compassion is not charity. It does not give according to the wants or desires of the receiver, or for the glory and recognition of the giver. Compassion is the unconditional and unreserved self-offering of the giver according to the true inner needs of the receiver.
“To develop compassion, meditate on a tree. Although the flowers, leaves and branches are above the ground, they are not looking downward with contempt or a feeling of superiority. The trunk of the tree may be very tall; the flowers, fruits and leaves may be all above us. But when we pass below the tree, the leaves, flowers and fruits say, ‘Take us; we are ready to be utilised by you.’ Because of its oneness with us, everything that the tree has, it is begging us to take.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The key word in this last sentence is “oneness”. The tree is able to offer everything that it has, to offer its whole being completely, because it identifies with us and has established its oneness with us. Oneness is the essence of compassion. In its oneness, the tree is identified with our weaknesses, shortcomings and limitations, as well as our capacities and potential, so the tree intuitively knows and feels exactly what we need to be nourished and fulfilled, and offers to us accordingly.
Thus, we are fed, nourished and inspired not only by the tree’s flowers and fruits, its shade, beauty and strength but more significantly, by its self-giving, its nobility of being and radiant compassion. The tree has always been our silent teacher, an ever-present emissary of God in plain sight. Let us ever be worthy and grateful students of the tree.
As meditation is the most natural state of pure being, so is Nature itself a perfect expression of pure meditation.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“The best way to appreciate nature’s beauty is to sit and meditate with nature. If you take a tree as nature, then sit at the foot of a tree and meditate. If you take the sun as an expression of nature, then look at the sun and meditate. If you take the ocean or sea as nature, then sit in front of the water and meditate. While looking at the tree or the sun or the ocean, try to feel your oneness with it. Anything that you consider as nature or nature’s beauty, you should try to become one with.
“Again, if you want a particular thing from nature, you have to go to that thing. If you want to have vastness, then just go out of the house and look at the sky and you will enter into vastness. If you want to have a very vast, pure consciousness, then stand in front of a river and meditate on the river. And if you want to achieve height in your life, then go to a mountain and meditate there. If you want to meditate on the power aspect of life, then look at the sun and meditate. The sun represents power, not the power that destroys, but the power that creates, originates. And if you want to have mildness, softness, tenderness in your life, then you can meditate on the moon.
“So whatever you want, you have to stand in front of that particular thing and invoke it. You have to invoke the spirit of nature or become one with the soul of nature. That is the best kind of identification.”
Flowing silent, unseen, often unknown and unsuspected, an underground river brings life, energy, hope, inspiration, refreshment, nourishment and fulfilment.
We each have a beautiful, powerful and ever-reliable underground river flowing somewhere beneath our surface awareness. No matter how bleak, barren and hopeless our outer circumstances, our life-giving, life-nourishing, life-transforming, life-perfecting and life-fulfilling soul flows constantly within.
The source of our underground river is the soul’s world, the spiritual realm of infinite Peace, eternal Light and immortal Bliss. Our underground river flows alike through our life and death, through sleep and wakefulness, action and inaction, time and timelessness, success and failure, progress and regress, hope and despair.
The underground river of our soul is more real, more alive, more powerful and reliable than anything we will ever encounter in our outer life, or even imagine.
It is tremendously encouraging to know that we each have this underground river within. Yet simply knowing of its existence is not enough; it flows not just to connect our one life with the next and the next beyond that; it flows not to be admired or appreciated, painted or praised; it flows to be swam in, to be drunk from, to drown our weaknesses and imperfections in, to power our turbines of creativity, to cleanse our bodies, purify our vitals, clarify our minds, hydrate our hearts, irrigate our actions and drench our lives.
Meditation reveals our underground river; it gives us a glimpse, and reassurance of its existence. Daily meditation maps and digs a tunnel to our underground river; it gives us access, and a pipeline to channel and utilise its life-flow. Practise of the spiritual life brings our underground river to the surface and employs it for constant good, flooding the fields of our conscious awareness with inspiration, aspiration and dedication.
