Questions & Answers Part 6

Continuation: The following questions were asked by Sri Chinmoy's Jharna-Kala assistants on 4 March 1976.

Question: When I chant my name, I seem to feel energy more from lower down, from the vital centre.

Sri Chinmoy: That is the right place for energy. Life-energy is in the navel centre, not the heart centre. The flow of life-energy should come from the navel centre. That is the correct place. Here (the heart) is for oneness, oneness with the Supreme, with divinity and reality. From there (the navel) life-energy is flowing upward and downward. That is the right place, the navel.

Question: When we see spiritual beauty, what are the predominant feelings that we will have?

Sri Chinmoy: There can be quite a variety of feelings, but the main feeling will be that you want to embrace the whole world as your very own. You will feel that you are not only embracing the world, but also becoming the world itself. And then you will feel that there is nothing dark either within you or around you. Right now you see darkness all around you and if you are sincere with yourself, you will see darkness inside you as well. But when you have seen real spiritual beauty you will immediately see that inside you is a flood of beauty and outside it is only a reflection of what is within.

Question: How can one describe to a small child spiritual feelings, which tend to be abstract, as opposed to beauty which a child can receive with the senses?

Sri Chinmoy: For us, something like prayer is not abstract. We fold our hands and cry inwardly to someone who is above or within us. If you want to explain prayer to a young child, do not try to convince him only with the physical. Tell him that prayer is something totally different than just folding his hands and looking up. Tell him that prayer is something that we do inside, but if we want to see or feel it, then we have to fold our hands. You can tell a child that prayer is something which he will feel when he folds his hands and talks to God. Then, when he folds his hands and feels something within -- whether it is awe or love or sweetness or softness -- then for him prayer will no longer be abstract. It will be a reality.

For meditation he has to sit calmly and quietly. When he sits like that, immediately he will begin to feel that he is meditating. This concrete action will take him into something which is abstract. You can teach a child through outer action, but do not neglect to emphasize the inner feeling. When he starts feeling joy, peace and love, gradually he becomes that joy, that peace, that love and all that he is feeling. When he feels something, how can it remain abstract? Now he feels that his body is his own. His body is not abstract because he is identified with his body. Whatever he is identified with he claims as his own. If he identifies himself with prayer or meditation, he feels peace, joy, love and so on. And once he feels these things, he gives form to them and they no longer remain abstract. Through outer action, make your child aware of something within him. In the beginning that thing will be abstract but afterwards it will not be abstract.

Question: Can we do our meditation without doing concentration exercises first?

Sri Chinmoy: If you want to learn meditation without going through concentration, you must feel that you are standing at the door of your inner room. When you stand at the door you allow only your friends to enter into your room. You do not allow strangers or your enemies.

You have to welcome only good thoughts, divine thoughts. These are your true friends. Undivine thoughts, hostile thoughts, must not come into your mind. Your mind is constantly receiving thoughts and you have to be very careful. You have to welcome only divine thoughts. Then, play with these divine thoughts. Let them play in the garden of your mind. Play with thoughts of divine qualities, divine Love, divine Power or divine Peace. Let them play, let them grow. While playing you will grow into the divine aspects of Truth. If you allow only divine thoughts to play within you, then a time will come when you will see that there are no thoughts. Your entire being will be surcharged with inner Divinity. Your consciousness at that time will try only to be receptive. And what will descend? What will enter into you? Truth in abundant measure, Light in abundant measure, Love in abundant measure, everything in infinite measure.

Question: Is there any way you can incorporate your spiritual life into your everyday life?

Sri Chinmoy: Naturally you can and you should incorporate your spiritual life into your everyday life, only you must do first things first. The spiritual life comes first. That is to say, if you pray or meditate early in the morning before you go to the office, before you enter into your earthly activities, you are doing the first thing first. If you do it the other way around, if in the morning you lead an ordinary life and then after say 11:00 a.m. or 12:00 noon you try to aspire, it becomes almost impossible.

You have to feel that the outer life is not to be discarded as a filthy rag. The outer life has its own value in our evolution. Only right now, it does not have as much light as the inner life. Since the inner life has light, naturally you will try to bring to the fore the light of the heart, the light of the soul. If you expect light from the physical body, the outer mind and the outer life, you will be frustrated because they do not have any light. If you concentrate on the inner life, on the in-ner heart and the soul, you can easily get abundant light and then you will see that the outer life and the inner life can easily march together. This is the only way you can integrate the inner and the outer life.

Question: Is there a link or bridge between the inner world and the outer world?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, there is a link between the inner world and the outer world. Now what actually happens is that we are not paying any attention to the inner world? Most of the time we are on the surface. We pay all attention to the outer world. We don't get five minutes to meditate or concentrate on our inner, real world. Twenty-four hours a day we are moving, talking, shouting and living in the hustle and bustle of the world.

Now a true spiritual seeker feels that there is a link between these two worlds. And some-thing else he also feels. He feels that if we feed the inner world, then only can the outer world have its true meaning. The body is the outer world. Daily we feed the body three times without fail. We have been doing it and we shall keep on doing it until we breathe our last. But again, there is deep in-side us a divine child called the soul. We don't get time to feed this child. To keep the body alive we eat, but to help the soul, to fulfil its divine mission on earth, we have no time. Unless and until the soul, which is the conscious representative of God in us, is fulfilled, we can never be fulfilled in our outer life.

Now how do we make the connecting link? If we know the art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and con-sciously we can unite these two worlds. And to our widest sur-prise we shall see that the outer world, which is now full of com-plexity, disharmony and so forth, is bound to be harmonious, simple, straightforward and genuine. The inner life has the capacity to simplify the complexities of the outer life. The inner world and the outer world must go together. Other-wise, what will happen? The inner life will have to wait for millennia to offer God's Truth to the world at large and the outer life will remain a barren desert for millennia.

There is definitely a link between these two worlds. We have to consciously feel this link and finally we have to touch and strengthen the link with our soul's determination and our body's dedicated service and willingness. Now the body listens to the mind when the mind says, "Go this way." The body goes, but the next moment the mind says, "No, no, no! That is the wrong way to go. Go in some other direction," and the body follows. In this way, the body is caught by limitations. But far beyond the domain of the mind, is the soul. This soul is flooded with light. Now if we consciously try to have a free access to the inner being, to the soul, then naturally the light of the soul will come to the fore and it will help us at every mo-ment to deal with the tenebrous darkness in us and around us. And finally, we will see that either we have transformed darkness into light or we have come millions and millions of miles away from darkness and are bathing in the sea of infinite Light.

So if the physical body listens to the soul and not to the doubtful, doubting and sophisticated, complex, destructive, unaspiring mind, at every moment the link between the two worlds will be strengthened and one will complete the other. That is to say, the inner world will need the outer world as its chariot and the outer world will need the inner world as its charioteer. If there is a chariot without a charioteer, it is useless, for without a charioteer the chariot cannot move. Again, if there is a charioteer without a chariot, he is also useless. So both the charioteer and the chariot are necessary. They are of equal importance. Similarly, the outer life and the inner life are of equal importance.