Meditation

Question: What is meditation?

Meditation is man's self-awakening and God's Self-Offering. Meditation is the language of God. If we want to know what God's Will is in our life, if we want God to guide us, mold us and fulfill Himself in and through us, then meditation is the language we must use.

When we meditate, what we actually do is to enter into a calm or still, silent mind. We have to be fully aware of the arrival and attack of thoughts. That is to say, we shall not allow any thought, divine or undivine, good or bad, to enter into our mind. Our mind should be absolutely silent. Then we have to go deep within; there we have to observe our real existence.

Meditation is that very state of our consciousness where the inner being, instead of cherishing millions of thoughts, wants only to commune with God.

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Question: Why do we meditate?

If we feel that we are satisfied with what we have and what we are, there is no need for us to enter into the field of meditation. The reason we enter into meditation is because we have an inner hunger. We feel that within us there is something luminous, something vast, something divine. We feel that we need this very thing badly; only right now we do not have access to it. Our inner hunger comes from our spiritual need.

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Question: Will you please tell me how a beginner should start meditation?

First you have to read a few spiritual books in which they teach the various ways to start meditation. Then you start. Soon you will see that reading books is not enough. You will see that you need a particular teacher. The teacher will know which kind of meditation will most suit your nature and soul.

When your meditation is correct, you will feel a kind of joy all over your body. But if you do not feel that joy, if, on the contrary, you feel a mental tension or disturbance, then you will know that that particular kind of meditation is not meant for you and is not advisable. When you get a kind of spontaneous inner joy, then the meditation you have adopted is correct.

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Question: What do we learn from meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: The first thing that we learn from meditation is vastness. Meditation is the only way to expand our outer existence, our limited being. Without meditation, we would never expand ourselves; but if we meditate even for one minute, we have expansion.

What does expansion mean? In our expansion, we cross beyond the finite, and the finite enters into the infinite. We have come from the infinite, but we are playing the game of the finite. Instead, we should play the game of the infinite in the finite body. God is deep inside us. He wants to manifest Himself and we want to be His conscious instruments. The sense of being a conscious instrument we get only in our meditation.

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Question: What is the highest meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: The highest meditation is when you do not have any thoughts at all. Right now when we are meditating, we are victims to many thoughts undivine thoughts, ugly thoughts, evil thoughts. At other times we do a kind of meditation where we get fairly good thoughts, divine thoughts, fulfilling thoughts and illumining thoughts. This is a higher state. But when we are in the Highest, there will be no thoughts, either good or bad. There it is only Light. http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/ech-154