"Sometimes I must be silent
For that is the only way
To know a little better,
To think a little wiser,
To become a little more perfect,
To claim God a little sooner."
No matter which path you follow for meditation, the first and foremost task is to try to make the mind calm and quiet. If the mind is constantly roaming, if it is all the time a victim of merciless thoughts, then you will make no progress whatsoever. The mind has to be made calm and quiet so that when the light descends from above, you can be fully conscious of it. In your conscious observation and conscious acceptance of light, you will enter into a profound meditation and see the purification, transformation and illumination of your life.
How will you make the mind calm and quiet? The mind has its own power, and right now this power is stronger than your present eagerness and determination to meditate. But if you can get help from your heart, then gradually you will be able to control your mind. The heart, in turn, gets constant assistance from the soul, which is all light and all power.
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Beyond the mind
In light, vision and reality are one. You are sitting there and I am standing here. Let us say that I am the vision and you are the reality. I have to look at you and enter into you in order to know you. But in the highest meditation reality and vision are one. Where you are, I also am there; where I am, you are. We are one. That is why in the highest meditation we do not need thoughts. In the highest meditation the knower and the thing to be known are one.
Even reflection, which is a quiet kind of introspective thinking, is far from the disciplined vastness of meditation. The moment we start thinking, we play with limitation and bondage. Our thoughts, no matter how sweet or delicious at the moment, are painful and destructive in the long run because they limit and bind us. In the thinking mind there is no reality. Each moment we are building a world, and the following moment we are breaking it. The mind has its purpose, but in the spiritual life we have to go far above the mind to where there is eternal peace, eternal wisdom and eternal light. When we go beyond thinking with the help of our aspiration and meditation, only then can we see and enjoy God's Reality and God's Vision together.
- Sri Chinmoy, The Silent Mind
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