Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers

I would like to know how one can reach the spiritual heart during meditation.

The spiritual heart is located right in the centre of the chest. You can feel the spiritual heart when you are aspiring intensely, and you can also see it with the third eye. If you find it difficult to meditate on the spiritual heart, you can concentrate on the physical heart in the chest. But after you meditate there for a few months or for a year, you will feel that inside the ordinary human heart is the divine heart, and inside the divine heart is the soul. When you feel this, you will start meditating on the spiritual heart.

To reach the spiritual heart you have to feel that you do not have a mind, you do not have arms, you do not have legs, you have only the heart. Then you have to feel that you do not have the heart, but that you are the heart. When you can feel that you are the heart and nothing else, then easily you will be able to reach your spiritual heart during your meditation.

I find it very difficult to leave the mind and enter into the heart. What should I do?

Just throw the mind and all its possessions into the heart. You may think, "If I throw away my mind, then how can I exist? I will become an idiot." But I tell you, the mind that you use to converse with people, the mind that you use to acquire information, the mind that you use for ordinary earthly activities, cannot take you even an inch toward God-realisation. It is lame. It is blind. It is deaf.

Try to feel that your whole existence, from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head, is the soul. Soulfully repeat, "I am the soul, I am the soul." If you can soulfully repeat this for five minutes, then the resistance of the physical mind will go away and only the soul will exist for you. Once you live in the soul and bring the soul's light forward, then this light will bring the physical mind to the higher regions or it will bring down peace from above. In either case, the physical mind as you know it will be transformed, and you will not have any more problems.

When I am meditating sometimes I have trouble distinguishing whether I really feel my heart or whether it is my mind that I am experiencing.

If it is really your heart, then you will get a sense of pure satisfaction. If it is the mind, you may get satisfaction, but immediately you will also get doubt. Your experience will be attacked by other thoughts: "I am so bad, so impure, so ignorant. This morning I told a lie and yesterday I did something else that was bad, so how can I have this kind of satisfaction?" When that kind of idea comes, you will know that your experience was from the mind.

When you get an experience from the mind, you may temporarily feel very happy. But the joy will not remain, because you will not be able to establish your identification with what the mind has seen or felt or realised. But once you get an experience from the heart, immediately you will feel your oneness with it, and your joy will be lasting.

When you see a flower with your mind, you appreciate and admire it. But when you see it with your heart, immediately you feel that your heart is inside the flower or that the flower is inside your heart. So when you have an experience, if you are one with the experience itself, then you will know it is from the heart. But if you feel that the experience is something that you are achieving outside yourself, then it is from the mind.

What is the difference between going high and going deep in meditation?

There is a great difference in the methods of meditation, although ultimately height and depth become one. When we want to go deep in meditation, we have to start our journey from the spiritual heart. We should feel that we are digging or travelling very deep into our heart. We are travelling inward, not backward or downward towards the feet. Below the knees the plane of inconscience starts. If we feel that we are going downward, then it is not spiritual depth we are getting but only the lower planes of consciousness. The spiritual heart is infinitely vast, so there is no limit to how deep we can go. We can never touch its boundaries, because the spiritual heart embodies the vast universe that we see, and at the same time it is larger and vaster than the universe.

When we want to go high in meditation, then we have to feel an upward direction in our meditation. Our aspiration is climbing, climbing fearlessly toward the Highest. We must pass through the thousand-petalled lotus at the top of the head. Again, the distance is infinitely vast. There is no end to our upward journey because we are travelling in Infinity. We are climbing toward the ever-transcending Beyond. In terms of distance, upward and inward are both infinite journeys toward one Goal, the Supreme.

We cannot go high by using the mind, however. We must pass through the mind, beyond the mind, and into the realm of the spiritual heart. The domain of the spiritual heart is infinitely higher and vaster than that of the highest mind. Far beyond the mind is the domain of the heart. The heart is boundless in every direction, so inside the heart is the highest height as well as the deepest depth.

The higher we can go, the deeper we can go. Again, the deeper we can go, the higher we can go. It works simultaneously. If we can meditate very powerfully, then we are bound to feel that we are going both very high and very deep. Height and depth go together, but they work in two different dimensions, so to speak. But if a person can go very high in his meditation, then he also has the capacity to go very deep.

Before we realise the Highest, we feel that there is a difference between height and depth. When we are climbing up we feel that we have reached a certain height, and when we are diving deep within, we feel that we have reached a certain depth. But height and depth are all in the mental consciousness. Once we go beyond the barrier of the mind and enter into the Universal Consciousness, we see everything as one and inseparable. At that time Reality is singing and dancing within us, and we become the Reality itself. It has no height, no depth, no length. It is all one and at the same time it is always transcending itself.

What will happen if I meditate on the navel centre?

At this point in your spiritual development, it is not a good idea for you to meditate on the navel centre. This is the centre of dynamism, strength and power. If you misuse this dynamism, it becomes brutal aggression. The navel centre is also the emotional centre. With this emotion you can expand yourself and become the Infinite. But instead, if you do not have abundant purity in your nature, you will become a victim to earthly pleasure-life. You should meditate on the heart centre to get peace, love and joy. When you have these qualities, you will feel that peace itself is power, love itself is power, joy itself is power.

What is the relationship between the third eye and the heart centre?

Let us say that the heart is consciousness and the third eye is light, although there is no actual difference between the two things. The third eye has infinite light and at the same time it is infinite light. The spiritual heart possesses infinite consciousness and at the same time it is infinite consciousness. But infinite light and infinite consciousness are one and the same. This moment the infinite light—which I am calling the third eye—is a building, and inside it the heart resides. But the next moment the infinite consciousness— which I am calling the heart—can become the building, and the third eye will become the resident. They constantly change, because they are not really separate, Sometimes we see light before consciousness, while other times we see consciousness before light. The one which we see first, we feel is the source of the other. But a time comes when we see that light and consciousness are inseparable.

The heart usually embodies sweetness and love, and the third eye embodies power and illumination. But those who are very wise will feel that the third eye is also the heart, for what else is the heart except that which gives us satisfaction? And what gives us satisfaction? Only light! So if light from the third eye gives us satisfaction, then naturally we are dealing with the heart's quality. And what gives us the highest wisdom? Wisdom comes only when we go deep inside the inmost recesses of our heart, where Infinity, Eternity and Immortality play. To possess Infinity as our very own, to possess infinite light and bliss eternally as our very own, is real wisdom. So we can say that wisdom comes from the heart.

Is it desirable to try to open the third eye in meditation?

The inner eye should be opened only when there is inner purity and maturity, and when neither the past nor the future will disturb you. Many times the vessel is not ready, but by means of tremendous determination a seeker does succeed in opening the third eye. Then the result is most discouraging and damaging. When you are not spiritually mature, if you see with your third eye that your mother is going to die tomorrow, then you will die today with worry and anxiety. Or if you become aware of some unfortunate incident that took place in your past, you will feel extremely miserable and you will not have the strength to continue going forward.

There are people who have opened the centre between the eyebrows before having opened their heart centre and, by the Grace of the Supreme, have not made serious mistakes in using this power. But most of the time, unless and until the heart centre is opened and the emotional part of one's nature is totally purified, the seeker will fall victim to merciless temptation if he opens the third eye. He will try to see something inwardly and immediately he will tell others, or he will try to enter into somebody out of curiosity to see what is happening in that person's nature. There are a thousand and one things which can eventually lead the seeker far, far away from the path of spirituality.

For beginners especially, it is always advisable to meditate on the heart centre. In fact, even if you are advanced, you should meditate there, because in the heart centre you get joy and become part and parcel of whatever you are meditating on. If you concentrate on the third eye, you may not have the feeling of oneness. You may see light, but you will feel that it is not yours; you will think that perhaps it was not light at all but just imagination or hallucination. Doubt may enter into your mind. But when you use the heart, the joy that you get you immediately feel is yours; the peace that you feel is yours; anything that you feel becomes yours. This is the heart's capacity for oneness.

0 my heart, 0 heart of mine, you are my life-boat. You sail the uncharted seas of ignorance and reach the Golden Shore of the Beyond. 0 sweet, sweeter, sweetest heart of mine, you are not only God's. God also is yours.