Excerpts Chapter 18
THE MEDITATION BOOK:
UNDERSTANDING SUFFERING
Can meditation help cure sufferings?
Question: Can meditation help cure physical ailments such as high blood pressure?
Sri Chinmoy: When we meditate, we consciously try to go to the Source, which is all-perfection. Meditation means conscious awareness of our Source. Our Source is God, our Source is Truth, our Source is Light, our Source is Perfection. Meditation takes us to our Source, which is a place where there is no imperfection, no ailment. And where is the Source? The Source is within us.
In the outer life when we meditate, what result do we get? We make our mind calm and quiet. It is almost impossible for most human beings to have peace of mind. And he who does not have peace of mind is a veritable beggar; he is like a monkey in a human body. He has no satisfaction. But if we get peace of mind for one fleeting second, we feel we have accomplished a lot in life. When we have peace of mind, our vital remains peaceful and our body remains peaceful; and where there is peace there is no dislocation. It is only in the world of anxiety, worry, tension and confusion that there is some ailment. Otherwise, there can be no ailment.
So meditation is the answer. Meditation offers us peace of mind, tranquillity in the mind. When there is peace of mind, all sufferings of human life can come to an end. When the mind is tranquil, there is a constant flow of harmony. This harmony is entering into the vital and from the vital it enters into the physical. When there is harmony in the system, there can be no ailment.
High blood pressure, heart failure and all the diseases that we notice in God’s creation are attacks from undivine forces. These undivine forces can be overcome, can be counter-attacked only when we surrender to the positive force. When we meditate, we try to become a perfect channel for the positive force. The positive force is light and the negative force is darkness-night. The positive force is love, not hatred. The positive force is belief, not disbelief. At each moment in our life the positive force helps us because it takes us consciously to the Source, to our destination, which is perfection.
If our mind is calm and quiet, if our vital is dynamic, if our body is conscious of what it is doing, then we are inside the palace of satisfaction, where there can be no disease, no suffering, no imperfection, no obstruction to our abiding peace, abiding light, abiding satisfaction. Meditation is a means; it is a way; it is a path. If we walk along this path, then we reach our destination, which is all-perfection.
The cause of suffering
Question: What causes suffering?
Sri Chinmoy: Because of our wrong deeds, the negative, unaspiring, undivine forces have come into existence. When these forces enter into us, we suffer. This is one point of view. But again, whatever we call suffering, and whatever we call sinful, evil, undivine or unaspiring is also part of God. We experience God in and through everything. When we see suffering, immediately we feel that God is really cruel. This is our human way of judging God. But if we go deep within, we see that what we call suffering is nothing but an experience. And who is having that experience? God Himself. God is the Doer, God is the Action and God is the Fruit. This is what we realise from our inner spiritual life.
The human in us will see suffering as something horrible and undivine, but the divine in us will see it as God’s experience in the process of cosmic evolution. The higher we go, the clearer it becomes to our human mind that all the incidents that have taken place on earth are the experiences of God in and through each human being. Now, in God’s cosmic Lila (Game), we see multitudinous activities, countless forces operating all at once. But a day will dawn when the sincere seekers will realise the highest Truth and outnumber the unaspiring people, and then the undivine forces will have to give way. When a seeker consciously enters into the sea of Peace and Light on the strength of his aspiration, he becomes part and parcel of God’s Will. Then he does not commit the mistakes that unaspiring human beings commit. Unfortunately, right now, out of perhaps a million people, only one or two aspire; and again, out of those aspirants, a very limited few are extremely sincere in their spiritual life.
The world is progressing towards the Light, although this progress is very slow. Human suffering will come to an end, because God is all Delight. We came from Delight. On earth we are growing in Delight. At the end of our soul’s journey we shall return to Delight.
Our Vedic seers sang: Anandadd hy eva khalv imani bhutani jayante…: “From Delight we came into existence. In Delight we grow. At the end of our journey, into Delight we shall retire.”
This experience of Delight we develop when we meditate and pray. Most of us do not pray or meditate sincerely or soulfully; therefore, the existence of Delight is a far cry for us. But if we soulfully meditate and unconditionally surrender our day-to-day existence to the Almighty, to our Divine Father, then Delight will be our everyday reality. At every second we shall feel the presence of Delight. Our outer experience may be otherwise; it may seem painful or destructive. But in our inner experience we shall become inseparably one with the cosmic Will. In that Will there is no suffering. Suffering is in the human mind and in the earth-consciousness. But when we go beyond the earth-consciousness, when we offer our very existence to the Supreme and become part and parcel of His cosmic Will on earth, we see that there is no such thing as suffering. We see only an experience, a divine cosmic experience which God Himself is having in and through us.
Getting rid of pain through meditation
Question: How can we use meditation to get rid of pain?
Sri Chinmoy: You should try to invoke Light in order to cure pain. Pain is, after all, a kind of darkness within us. When the inner Light or the Light from Above starts functioning in the pain itself, then the pain is removed or transformed into joy. Really advanced seekers can actually feel joy in the pain itself. But for that, one has to be very highly advanced. In your case, during your prayer or meditation you should try to bring down Light from Above and feel that the pain is a darkness within you. If you bring down Light, then the pain will either be illumined and transformed or removed from your system.