Q&A: The silent mind

Ideally, should one reject all thoughts during meditation?

The best thing is to try not to allow any thought to enter into your mind, whether it is a good thought or a bad thought. It is as though you are in your room, and somebody is knocking at your door. You have no idea whether it is an enemy or a friend. Divine thoughts are your true friends, and undivine thoughts are your enemies. You would like to allow your friends to enter, but you do not know who your friends are. And even if you do know who your friends are, when you open the door for them you may find that your enemies are also there.

Then, before your friends can cross the threshold, your enemies will also enter. You may not even notice any undivine thoughts, but while the divine thoughts are entering, the undivine thoughts, like thieves, will also secretly enter and create tremendous confusion. Once they have entered, it is very difficult to chase them out. For that you need the strength of solid spiritual discipline. For fifteen minutes you may cherish spiritual thoughts and then, in just a fleeting second, an undivine thought will come. So the best thing is not to allow any thoughts at all during your meditation. Just keep the door bolted from inside.

There was a time when I loved you, 0 my thought-world. But now I love the beauty of a silence-mind and the purity of a gratitude-heart.

Your real friends will not go away. They will think, "Something is wrong with him. Usually he is so kind to us. So there must be some special reason why he is not opening the door." They have sympathetic oneness, so they will wait indefinitely. But your enemies will wait just for a few minutes. Then they will lose all patience and say, "It is beneath our dignity to waste our time here." These enemies have their pride. They will say, "Who cares? Who needs him? Let us go and attack somebody else." If you pay no attention to a monkey, the monkey will eventually go away and bite somebody else. But your friends will say, "No, we need him and he needs us. We will wait indefinitely for him." So after a few minutes your enemies will go away. Then you can open the door and your dearest friends will be there waiting for you.

If you meditate regularly and devotedly, after some time you will become inwardly strong. Then you will be able to welcome the divine thoughts and chase away the undivine thoughts. If you are getting a thought of divine love, divine peace or divine power, then you will allow that thought to enter into you and expand. You will let it play and grow in the garden of your mind. While the thought is playing and you are playing with it, you will see that you are growing into it. Each divine thought that you let in will create a new and fulfilling world for you, and will surcharge your entire being with divinity.

After a few years of meditation you will have enough inner strength to let in even the undivine thoughts. When an undivine thought comes into your mind, you will not reject it; you will transform it. When somebody undivine knocks at your door, if you have enough strength to compel him to behave properly once he enters, then you can open the door for him. Eventually you have to accept the challenge and conquer these wrong thoughts; otherwise, they will come back to bother you again and again.

I am so proud of my mind. Why? Because it has started enjoying little things: a simple thought, a pure heart, a humble life.

You have to be a divine potter. If the potter is afraid to touch the clay, then the clay will remain always clay and the potter will not be able to offer anything to the world. But if the potter is not afraid, he can transform the clay into something beautiful and useful. It is your bounden duty to transform undivine thoughts, but only when you are in a position to do so safely.

Q&A: The silent mind

I try to keep my mind from wandering during meditation, but I have very little success.

You are not exercising the capacity of your heart; you are only exercising the mind's power. Very often when I am concentrating on you, I see that your mind is rotating like a wheel. When the mind rotates, it is very difficult for the Supreme to act in your mind. But when your heart aspires even for a second, the Supreme opens the door and enters.

From now on, please try to feel that you do not have a mind at all. This does not mean that you will be like a brute or an animal. No! The human mind is not necessary because you have a superior instrument called the heart. If you can stay in your heart for five minutes, even if you do not pray or meditate, your consciousness will be raised.

The heart is like a fountain of peace, joy and love. You can sit at the base of the fountain and just enjoy. There is no need to pray to the Supreme to give you this or that, for you will get all the things that you want-and infinitely more-from this fountain. But you will get them in the Supreme's own way. If you can please the Supreme by staying always in the presence of your heart-fountain, your desires will be fulfilled most luminously. They may be the same desires that you have always had, but they will be touched on a very high level with luminosity. Before He fulfils these, the Supreme will transform each desire into aspiration with His light.

Q&A: The silent mind

I am a beginner in meditation, and I find that I cannot control my thoughts. How can I have a successful meditation?

If you are a beginner, try to allow only divine thoughts to enter into you, and not undivine thoughts. It is better not to have any thoughts at all during meditation, but it is next to impossible for the beginner to have a mind without thoughts. So you can begin by having good thoughts: "I want to be good, I want to be more spiritual, I want to love God more, I want to exist only for Him." Let these ideas grow within you. Start with one or two divine ideas: "Today I will be absolutely pure. I will not allow any bad thought, but only peace, to enter into me." When you allow one divine thought to grow inside you, you will see that immediately your consciousness changes for the better.

Start with divine ideas: "Today I want to feel that I am really a child of God." This will not be a mere feeling but an actual reality. Feel that the Virgin Mary is holding the child Christ. Feel that the Divine Mother is holding you in her arms like a baby. Then feel: "I really want to have wisdom-light. I want to walk with my Father. Wherever He goes I will go with Him. I will get light from Him."

Some people don't have ideas like this. Creative thoughts and ideas don't come. There is just a vacuum. You may ask which is better-to have many silly messages in the mind or no messages at all. But there is a negative, inconscient way of meditating which has no life in it. This is not the silent mind. It is not productive. In real meditation, the mind is silent but at the same time it is conscious.

Q&A: The silent mind

During a meditation, if there is a noise or disturbance, is it better to include it in the meditation or try to shut it out and pursue the meditation?

Each seeker has to know his own standard of meditation. If you are a beginner, you should feel that anything that is not part of the meditation is like an intruder, and you should not allow an intruder to enter and disturb you. But if you are very advanced, and there is a disturbing sound or noise during your meditation, you can go deep into the sound itself and try to assimilate it. If you have the capacity, then in your own consciousness you can transform the attack of a powerful and challenging foreign element into an inner music, which will add to your meditation.

How to purify the mind

The mind is almost always impure, and it almost always brings in unaspiring thoughts. Even when it is not doing this, the mind is still a victim to doubt, jealousy, hypocrisy, fear and other undivine qualities. All negative things first attack the mind. The mind may reject them for a minute, but again they knock at the mind's door. This is the nature of the mind. The heart is much, much purer. Affection, love, devotion, surrender and other divine qualities are already there in the heart. That is why the heart is much purer than the mind. Even if you have fear or jealousy in the heart, the good qualities of the heart will still come forward.

But again, the heart may not be totally pure because the vital being is near the heart. The lower vital, which is situated near the navel, tends to come up and touch the heart centre. It makes the heart impure by its influence and proximity. But at least the heart is not like the mind, which deliberately opens its door to impure ideas. The heart is far better than the mind. And best is the soul. The soul is all purity, light, bliss and divinity.

How can I control the mind?

Question: How can we control the mind?

Sri Chinmoy: Please try to imagine a lotus inside your heart. Then try to imagine that the lotus is not only inside your heart, but that your heart itself is a lotus. When you look at the lotus or imagine the lotus, try to be deeply absorbed in the beauty of the lotus. It is your own heart-lotus. Then your mind will have no time to roam.

When you enter into a garden, you look at the flowers and enjoy their beauty and fragrance. At that time you do not pay attention to anything else. You have no thought. You are only enjoying the experience that the flowers are offering.

In the same way, try to be deeply absorbed in the lotus which is inside your heart. Then a day will come when you will see that this lotus is not a flower at all-it is your heart itself, which is full of beauty and fragrance. If you start appreciating the beauty and fragrance of your own heart, then there will be no time for your mind to think of anything else.

It all depends on where we place our attention. You are a teacher. When you pay all attention to the subject that you are teaching, whether it is mathematics or any other subject, then you become deeply absorbed. It is when you are not deeply absorbed that the mind roams here and there. When an athlete is running, does he have time to think? No, his goal is only to reach the finish line as fast as possible. Now that you have entered into the spiritual life, your goal is only to remain inside your heart. Who can prevent you from remaining inside your heart-room? For many years, or even centuries, you have been living in your mind-room. Therefore, your heart-room is not familiar to you. But once we start living in the heart-room and pay all attention to the heart-room, we can forget about the other room. This is how we can always be in the heart and pray to God, meditate on God and become choicest instruments of God.

Europe

Americas

Oceania