Excerpts Chapter 23
THE MEDITATION BOOK:
INNER EXPERIENCES
Are you meditating well or not?
Question: How can we know whether we are meditating well or not?
Sri Chinmoy: We can easily know whether we are meditating well or not just by the way we feel and see and think. Right after our meditation, if we have a good feeling for the world, then we know our meditation was good. If we see the world in a loving way in spite of its imperfections, if we can love the world even while seeing its teeming imperfections, then we know that our meditation was good. And if we have a dynamic feeling right after meditation, if we feel that we came into the world to do something, to become something, this indicates that we have done a good meditation. This feeling that we have to do something does not mean that we are feeding our human ambition. No! The moment we try to feed our ambition, it will entangle us like a serpent. What we have come into the world to do is what God wants us to do. What we have come into the world to become is what God wants us to become. What God wants us to do is to grow into His very image. What God wants us to become is His dedicated instrument. During our meditation if we get the feeling that God wants us to grow into His very image, wants us to be His dedicated instrument, and if this feeling is translated into action after our meditation, then we can be sure that we were meditating well.
But the easiest way to know if we have had a good meditation is to feel whether Peace, Light, Love and Delight are coming to the fore from within. Each time Light comes forward, or Love comes forward, or Peace or Delight comes forward, the whole body will be surcharged with that divine quality. When we have this experience we know that we have done a very good meditation. Each time they come to the fore, we are bound to feel that we are remembering a forgotten story. It is only through meditation that we can remember our forgotten story. This story was written by the seeker himself, by the seeker in us. The story was not written by somebody else. It is our own creation, but we have forgotten it, and it is meditation that brings it back. When we remember this story we are overjoyed that we have created such a beautiful story and that this is our life story.
Seeing the future during meditations
Question: When I meditate, I enter into the inner world and if certain good vibrations help me, I see things which materialise in the outer world after a few months. Should I try to transcend this?
Sri Chinmoy: You actually enter into the soul’s world and see things which materialise a few months later. No, you don’t have to transcend this. There is no necessity. However, you should be aware whether or not you are crying to know these things. If you are meditating with a view to finding out what is going to happen in the future, then you _do_ have to transcend this. If you say during your meditation, “Oh God, tell me what is going to happen to my husband or my son,” then it is a mistake. But if you are not curious and if your aim is always to go deep within to have a serious, profound meditation, then I can say that God wants to show you these things for a divine purpose. He wants to show you the future; He wants to give you these experiences. You must not try to transcend these experiences because, in this case, it is God’s Will that you are fulfilling and not your own desire.
A very high kind of meditation
Question: When I meditate, I see within and without that everything is alive and has millions of patterns. I see something like a living presence in everything.
Sri Chinmoy: This is a very high kind of meditation because inside everything is God. And where God is, life is bound to be found. Life and God can never be separated. Where there is life, there is God and where there is God, there is life. It is a wonderful experience.
Now you see infinite patterns. Inside one thing you are seeing many varieties. Here the One is being expressed in many forms and many patterns. Look at a lotus flower. It is one flower, but it is expressed or manifested by many petals, by leaves, by the stem and the pollen. In one lotus you see the manifestation of reality through various forms. You touch one particular part of the lotus, the leaf, for example, and you say “This is the lotus.” Then you touch another part, the stem, and again you say, “This is the lotus.” God is there in all parts of the flower; that is why you feel that each part is the whole. God is present wherever life exists. God is endless in expression. He is endless in manifestation.