Question: When I meditate, I have this pressure in my head.

Sri Chinmoy: One reason you may feel pressure is because your mind-vessel is filled with impure thoughts and ideas. By sheer will you are trying to kill the undivine thoughts, and this is causing you pain. Again, when the vessel is filled with impure thoughts and you unconsciously pull down Peace, Light and Bliss, you become frightened. You never expected them to be so brilliant, so divine. Your mind is filled with all kinds of undivine thoughts and impurities and then divine Peace, Light and Bliss come. At that time they seem like strangers to you, so you resist them. You are driving at top speed in a car, and then suddenly you use the brake. You are going very high and suddenly you feel fear, so you try to stop. The pressure can also be from this. It can mean there is an obstruction such as fear inside you.

Please keep a candle burning in front of you and try to feel that it is actually burning inside you. The flame is your own aspiration, which wants to climb to the highest. The candle will outwardly convince your physical mind that your existence is inside the heart and not in the mind. After a few minutes try to feel that you do not have a head at all. You do not have arms and legs; you have only the heart's soft, sweet feeling of oneness with God, your Inner Pilot. It is here that you have to grow, where there is constant, infinite Light from the soul. The heart which is purified by the soul's light will never have any tension.

You have to know that the mind will never be able to identify itself with the Vast. It will always feel like a stranger, an intruder; so there will always be fear. But if you meditate in the heart, there can be no fear. It is all oneness. A child looks at his father who is so big, but he does not feel afraid. He knows that his father's strength will not be used to hurt him. But if the person is a stranger, then the child may be afraid. The heart always feels the message of oneness, and in oneness there can be no fear.

So when you feel pressure in your head, please feel that you are not the mind but the heart. That which separates you from everything cannot be yours; that which unites you with everything is the real you. Feel that the mind does not exist. Only the heart exists. The moment you feel that you are the heart, you will feel your oneness with the Vast, and boundless Peace, Light and Bliss will enter into you.