Sometimes when I meditate I feel that I am about to go through some experience, but nothing happens. What is the cause of that?

The reason nothing happens is that you have not reached the height. You are just on the verge of it, but you do not quite reach it. It is like lighting a stove. When you turn on the gas, you have to turn the handle to a certain point before the flame comes. You come almost to that point, but you stop too soon. If you had turned the handle just a fraction of an inch farther, you would have succeeded.

It is the same with your meditation. If you had gone just a bit higher or deeper, you would have had your experience. But your attention was diverted or something made you pull back instead of going on. You failed to maintain your aspiration, and your consciousness fell. It is as if you were climbing up to the highest branch of a tree, but all of a sudden somebody called you from

below and you forgot about the delicious fruit at the top of the tree and climbed down. If you can maintain your height and not respond to any call or pull from below, then you will reach your highest, and you will get your experience.

While you are praying and meditating, imagine that you are riding a bicycle. When you ride a bicycle, the wheels have to be turning all the time. You cannot balance motionless at one point. While you are meditating you have to aspire all the time; otherwise, you will fall. In the spiritual life, movement has to be constant. Either you move forward or you move backward. If you try to remain motionless, the ignorance of the world will pull you back to your starting point.

In your life of aspiration what you need is not success but progress. Progress itself is the active form of success. When you start meditating early in the morning, if you think, 'Today I have to get the highest experience, or I will feel miserable," then God may give you the experience, which you will call success. But He will not utilise You as His instrument, because you are already trying to get something from Him. You are demanding that He give you an inner experience, whereas you should be asking only for the opportunity and privilege of being His instrument to serve Him in His own way.

If you cry only to please God in His own way, if you cry only for progress, then you are bound to get all the experiences which God has in store for you, at God's own time. Right now you are trying to climb up to a great height in order to get an experience. It is extremely difficult for you to go to that height at this stage of your spiritual development. But it is very easy for God to bring the fruit down and give it to you. He is an excellent climber; He can climb up and climb down. So if you can please God, even if you remain at the foot of the tree, God will climb up on your behalf and bring the experience down, if it is His Will that you have it.

On different occasions I have seen red, blue and white light during meditation. Could you please explain the significance of these?

Red is the dynamic aspect of God; it represents the divine power which you are seeing inside yourself. When divinity's power enters into you, you are energized. White is the colour of purity. It represents the consciousness of the Divine Mother. When you see white all around you, you feel that your whole physical existence is inundated with purity, from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head.

When you see a pale blue colour, it means that Infinity is entering into your aspiring consciousness. You cannot understand Infinity with your mind. The mind will imagine a great distance, expand it a little farther and then stop. But Infinity goes on expanding forever. When you see blue, try to feel that your consciousness is expanding into Infinity and that Infinity is entering into your aspiring consciousness.

Is it possible to receive something in meditation and not be aware of the experience?

Sometimes when we receive light, peace or bliss on a higher level of consciousness, the physical mind is not convinced that it has actually received anything. But it is not necessary for the physical consciousness to be aware of what has been received. Light may enter into a higher part of the emotional being and start functioning for a few minutes or a few days or even longer. There it will create a new soil, and eventually it will grow a bumper crop of inner experiences. But it may take a while for these inner experiences to enter into the gross physical consciousness.

If an experience takes place in the physical consciousness, then we can see and feel it with our senses. At that time, naturally we can rely on our own awareness. But if the experience is something very subtle, and is taking place on a higher level of consciousness, we may not be aware of it. What we are trying to do is to make the physical mind consciously aware of what is going on in the other parts of the being. If the physical and the spiritual in us are simultaneously conscious of what we are doing, then no matter in which plane of consciousness we are having an experience, we will feel it in our physical consciousness. Then we will have free access to all planes of consciousness, and the physical will not be able to doubt the reality of these subtle experiences. Otherwise, it may happen that when the Highest knocks at the door of the physical, the physical will deny it.