Heart and Soul

Remain always in the sunshine of your heart until its illumining rays have also flooded your mind.

If you meditate in the heart, you are meditating where the soul is. True, the light and consciousness of the soul permeate the whole body, but there is a specific place where the soul resides most of the time, and that is in the heart. If you want illumination, you have to get it from the soul, which is inside the heart. When you know what you want and where to find it, the sensible thing is to go to that place. Otherwise, it is like going to the hardware store to get groceries.

There is a vast difference between what you can get from the mind and what you can get from the heart. The mind is limited; the heart is unlimited. Deep within you are infinite peace, light and bliss. To get a limited quantity is an easy task. Meditation in the mind can give it to you. But you can get infinitely more if you meditate in the heart. Suppose you have the opportunity to work at two places. At one place you will earn two hundred dollars and at the other place five hundred dollars. If you are wise, you will not waste your time at the first place.

As long as you have tremendous faith in the mind, which complicates and confuses everything, you will be doomed to disappointment in your meditation. Ordinary people think that complication is wisdom. But spiritual people know that God is very simple. It is in simplicity, not in complexity, that the real truth abides. I am not saying that the mind is always bad. No, it need not be. But the mind is limited. At most, what you can get from the mind is inspiration, which itself is limited. For real aspiration you have to go to the heart. Aspiration comes from the heart because the illumination of the soul is always there. When you meditate on the heart, not only do you get aspiration, but you also get the fulfilment of that aspiration: the soul's infinite peace, light and bliss.