Question: How does the will operate during meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Now, good girl, you have to know what kind of will: the physical will, vital will, mental will or psychic will? If you mean the physical will, it enables you to keep your body firm, but not stiff. You will not move to and fro during your meditation. Your physical will will keep you properly stationed in one place during your meditation. Vital will is the outgoing energy or thought of dominating others. While you are meditating, you may think of your friends at the same time and you may have some desire to show them that you are far superior to them. This is what the vital will does. The mental will is operating when you think you know much more than others.

These things are on the negative side. Although the physical will is positive when it keeps you sitting quietly, it is not enough. Physical will can be used to feel that you are receiving energy from above. When you are using the vital will, you have to feel that you have spread your wings to cover each and every one in the whole world. And when you use the mental will, you can see that your intense life of aspiration has entered into the entire world. If you use the psychic will, which is the heart’s will, then you will feel that you have become inseparably one with the rest of the world.

Now, which will do you want to utilise during your meditation? During meditation it is always safe to use your psychic will, heart’s will, oneness. If you establish your oneness with God, with me and with the disciples, then you are safe. Psychic will is the will of freedom. If you want freedom from bondage or ignorance, or from anything else, then oneness is the thing that you need.