Question: How can one contact one's dear ones in the other world?

Sri Chinmoy: There are a few ways to contact dear ones who are not in this world. The easiest way, the way that you hear about all the time, is to go to a medium. The medium will tell you many stories about your relatives who are in Heaven.

Unfortunately, very often these stories have nothing to do with reality. Only rarely do mediums bring real inner messages from the soul. You have to know that when a person has left the body only a few days or a few months ago, or a year or two ago, then there is a possibility that the soul is still in the vital world. At that time it is easier for the medium to bring down true messages. But when the soul enters into the mental world, intuitive world, psychic world and the soul’s own proper world, which is infinitely higher than the vital world, at that time the messages that you get from the medium are all untrue.

Another way is to go to a real spiritual Master. If I go to the owner of a shop, a big shop, and ask him to do something, if he is pleased with me he will immediately do me the favour. But if I go to just a messenger boy or am ordinary clerk, I will see that his capacity is very, very limited. In the spiritual world, when one goes to a real Master, one finds that his capacity is unlimited. He is like the owner of the shop. He knows what he has, he knows where it is, and he can give anything he wants to anybody. But a medium is just like a clerk or messenger boy. He has very little power to give you what you want.

When a spiritual Master takes or brings the message, he enters into the soul of the person who is asking him for this favour, because this person’s soul will know where the soul of his relative is right now. His mind does not know, his heart does not know, his vital does not know, his body does not know where the soul of the dear one has gone. But the soul knows. However, spiritual Masters usually do not like to carry this kind of message, because they feel it is all curiosity.

If a person has a sincere cry rather than just curiosity, he does not have to go to anybody if he wants to send a message to a departed friend or relative. His sincere prayer is infinitely more safe and sure than accepting someone else as his messenger. If he offers his message to God with his heart of prayer and his heart of meditation, God can easily carry his message to the person it is meant for. The heart that wants to pray immediately becomes one with God’s Compassion. The heart that wants to meditate immediately becomes one with God’s Light. If we contact God’s Light and God’s Compassion, then without fail our prayer, our meditation will reach the right person.

Now how do we know whether the person has received our message or not? We have to have faith. We go to a medium because we have faith in the medium. We go to a spiritual Master because we have faith in him Why should we not also have faith in our own prayer? If we have no faith in the medium, even if the message is correct, we will not believe it. If we have no faith in the Master, even if he does everything right in front of us, we will say that it is all hallucination. If we have faith in our own prayer, our prayer has the capacity to become a pure child who will run lovingly toward his Father to get something. The moment the Father sees that His child has come running to Him with such love and faith, the Father will immediately give him everything.

If we cannot pray or meditate, if we do not care for a spiritual Master and have very little or no faith in a medium, then there is a practical way to send messages to our departed ones. We should note down about seven incidents in our life that have to do with that person. The incidents should be most soulful and intimate, anything that is still living in our heart. When we have seven incidents which are most intimate, most soulful, we must place them before ourselves one by one. Then we must take each incident and enter into it with our present life and present concern. Each incident is like a tiny dot. When we enter into it with our present life-breath, we see that from a dot it becomes a big round circle. The intensity, the capacity of our life-breath immediately makes it bigger. Then the life-breath of that reality will enter into the universal reality and become one with the universal reality. When we clearly see that this is the universal reality, the face of the person in subtle physical form is bound to appear. If we are ordinary men, we will not be able to touch this subtle physical; if we are spiritual people, the subtle physical will be palpable, solid.

Here we have to be very practical. We have to have confidence in the world which is; right in front of us. When we look into the universal reality and see the person’s face, we will be able to offer our message. But we have to feel that those intimate moments are the only moments that existed between ourselves and our loved one. If any disturbance or any action which displeased us enters into our feeling for this person, then immediately we are ruined. We have to have the feeling that we would be willing to give our life for that person, and that he would also be willing to give his life for us. When we can feel that we each are ready to give our life for the other, at that time we can become consciously one with that person’s life, and we can easily give or receive a message.