Excerpts Chapter 2
THE MEDITATION BOOK:
THE ULTIMATE AIM OF MEDITATION
The aim of meditation
Question: What is the aim of meditation?
Sri Chinmoy: The ultimate aim of meditation is to establish our conscious union with God. We are all God’s children, but right now we do not have conscious oneness with God. Even an atheist, who denies the existence of God, can use the word “God”. His mouth can pronounce it, but he is not going to feel God’s qualities. He is not going to feel anything for God. Again, someone may believe in God, but his belief is not a reality in his life. He just believes God exists because a saint or a Yogi or a spiritual Master has said that there is a God. But if we practise meditation, a day comes when we have established our conscious oneness with God. At that time, God gives us His infinite Peace, infinite Light and infinite Bliss, and we grow into this infinite Peace, Light and Bliss.
In the Upanishads it says that when someone is consciously one with God, he sees that from Delight he came into existence, in Delight he is growing, and at the end of his journey he will enter into Delight again:
Anandadd hy eva khalv
Imani bhutani jayante
Anandena jatani jivanti
Anandam prayantyabhisam visanti
Ananda means Delight. God is Delight. When an aspirant realises God, he realises Delight and drinks Delight. When he becomes perfect in his meditation, or when he is on the verge of liberation, he sees that the ultimate aim of meditation is to achieve Light and Delight within himself in infinite measure.
God-realisation
Sri Chinmoy: God-realisation, or siddhi, means Self-discovery in the highest sense of the term. One consciously realises his oneness with God. As long as the seeker remains in ignorance, he will feel that God is somebody else who has infinite Power, while he, the seeker, is the feeblest person on earth. But the moment he realises God, he comes to know that he and God are absolutely one in both the inner and the outer life. God-realisation means one’s identification with one’s absolute highest Self. When one can identify with one’s highest Self and remain in that consciousness forever, when one can reveal and manifest it at one’s own command, that is God-realisation.
Now, you have studied books on God, and people have told you that God is in everybody. But you have not realised God in your conscious life. For you this is all mental speculation. But when one is God-realised, one consciously knows what God is, what He looks like, what He wills. When one achieves Self-realisation, one remains in God’s Consciousness and speaks to God face to face. He sees God both in the finite and in the infinite; he sees God as both personal and impersonal. And in his case, this is not mental hallucination or imagination; it is direct reality. This reality is more authentic than my seeing you right here in front of me. When one speaks to a human being, there is always a veil of ignorance: darkness, imperfection, misunderstanding. But between God and the inner being of one who has realised Him, there can be no ignorance, no veil. So at that time one can speak to God more clearly, more convincingly, more openly than to a human being.
As ordinary human beings, we feel that infinite Peace, infinite Light, infinite Bliss and infinite divine Power are all sheer imagination. We are victims to doubt, fear and negative forces which we feel are quite normal and natural. We cannot love anything purely, not even ourselves. We are in the finite, quarrelling and fighting, and there is no such thing as Peace or Light or Bliss in us. But those who practise meditation go deep within and see that there is real Peace, Light and Bliss. They get boundless inner strength and see that doubt and fear can be challenged and conquered. When we achieve God-realisation, our inner existence is flooded with Peace, Poise, Equanimity and Light.
Love your goal!
Automatically
You will make progress.
– Sri Chinmoy
Enlightenment
Question: There are some paths which speak of the goal as enlightenment, and there are other paths which speak of the goal as God-realisation. What is the difference between enlightenment and God-realisation?
Sri Chinmoy: Full enlightenment, complete and all-illumining enlightenment, is God-realisation. But sometimes, when a seeker is in his highest meditation, he gets a kind of inner illumination or enlightenment, and for half an hour or an hour his whole being, his whole existence, is illumined. But then, after an hour or two, he becomes his same old self; he again becomes a victim to desire and undivine qualities. Enlightenment has taken place, but it is not the Transcendental Enlightenment which occurred in the case of the Buddha and other spiritual Masters. That kind of all-fulfilling, all-illumining enlightenment is equivalent to God-realisation. God-realisation means constant and eternal enlightenment, Transcendental Enlightenment. When we get God-realisation, automatically infinite illumination takes place in our outer as well as our inner existence.
The enlightenment that is spoken of here in the West and also in Japan is only a temporary burst of light in the aspiring consciousness. After a short while it pales into insignificance, because there is no abiding reality in it. Abiding reality we will get only with constant, eternal and Transcendental Illumination, which is God-realisation.
Sometimes when we speak of enlightenment, we mean that we have been in darkness about a particular subject for many years and now we have inner wisdom, or now that particular place in our consciousness is enlightened. But this is just a spark of the boundless illumination, and that little spark we cannot call God-realisation.