On Sri Chinmoy’s path, we meditate on the spiritual heart. In this passage, Sri Chinmoy speaks about the spiritual heart and how to bring it to the fore in our lives. If you do not believe in God, then you can think of your highest self, or of infinite light, when Sri Chinmoy uses the word ‘God’. When Sri Chinmoy speaks about ‘running towards the destined Goal’, the Goal he is speaking about is God-realisation or Self-realisation, realisation of our highest, most illumined, selves.
When we enter into the spiritual heart, we come to realise that we have a soulful heart, a heart of peace and a heart of delight. The soulful heart we need at every moment in our life of aspiration. Without it, we cannot make an iota of inner progress. The peaceful heart we need because when the peaceful heart is wanting in our life, this life has no abiding satisfaction. The heart of delight we need because it is the very source of our divine plenitude and infinitude. We came from delight, we live in delight and, at the end of our journey’s close, into delight we retire.
Anandadd hy eva khalv imani bhutani jayante…
How can a beginner in the spiritual life have a soulful heart? Let him look into the sky in the evening when the sun starts to set. When the beginner-seeker looks at the sky and becomes deeply absorbed in the setting sun, his soulful heart comes to the fore. If the beginner needs a peaceful heart, let him concentrate, meditate and contemplate on the very depths of the ocean, the ocean of life. And if he needs a heart of delight, let him look at the ocean surface and allow his inner being to get in tune with the waves of the ocean.
The heart is most intimate to us and most significant in our life. When our physical heart fails, we pass behind the curtain of Eternity and die. Similarly, in the spiritual life, when our heart of aspiration fails even while we are living here on earth, we will be living in the world of death….
When we enter into the spiritual life, we discover that there are two significant roads that can lead us toward our destined Goal. One road is the mental road, the road of the mind; the other is the psychic road, the road of the heart. Now both of these roads will take us to our destined Goal. But one road is shorter and safer, and that is the road of the heart.When we follow the road of the mind, at any moment doubt can snatch us away. The world’s information can pull down human aspiration. But the road of the heart is sunlit. When he follows this road, a seeker always feels deep within himself a deer running towards the destined Goal. Each individual has to know whether he listens more to his mind or more to his heart. The message of the heart is altogether different from the message of the mind. Since we want to reach our Goal as soon as possible, we feel the supreme necessity of the heart….
Right now, knowledge and love seem like two different things. The mind supplies us with knowledge and the heart supplies us with love. But the deeper we go, the clearer it becomes to us that love and knowledge are one and the same. God is omniscient, God is omnipotent, God is omnipresent. He is everything. He embodies Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. But when we go deep within, we find that these qualities do not satisfy us. There is only one aspect of God that satisfies us totally and most convincingly, and that aspect is God’s Love. When on the strength of our own love we approach God’s Infinite Love, we are totally satisfied. We will not be satisfied when we see or feel God the all-awesome. Only the Love aspect of God quenches our eternal thirst.
–Sri Chinmoy, Fifty Freedom Boats to One Golden Shore, Part 1, New York: Agni Press, 1974, pp. 52-56
To learn how to meditate on the spiritual heart, you are warmly invited to attend meditation classes, offered free of charge on the first Thursday of every month by the Sri Chinmoy Centre of Chicago (see elsewhere on this site for times and number to call to register). Free follow-up classes will be offered at times to be determined to those who complete the introductory session.
To read more of Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy and approach to meditation, please see The Wings of Joy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997 and The Jewels of Happiness, London: Watkins Publishing, 2010. Both are in print and available in bookstores and from on-line sites.
