Inner meditation and outer vibration¹

There was an Indian spiritual Master living in America who gave utmost importance to his disciples' meditation. He had asked twenty-five disciples who did the best meditation to meditate together once a week at different disciples' homes. The Master felt that the collective aspiration of the group would further increase the strength of each individual's meditation. Whenever he could, the Master visited these five special meditation groups, which met with their respective hosts or hostesses at four o'clock in the morning.

Now it happened once that the Master arrived back earlier than had been scheduled from a month's lecture tour. The next morning he paid surprise visits to these meditation groups. At the first home he was sad to see that the host had forgotten to buy candles, flowers and incense and that the shrine cloth was soiled and wrinkled. Alas, at the other homes the Master was even more disappointed. Either there were dirty dishes piled in the kitchen, which was in most cases right next to the meditation room, or books and papers were strewn all over the meditation room itself. Two of the places looked as though they had not been cleaned for weeks. At the fifth house the Master would have had to use a side entrance to enter the meditation room, as the main hall was filled with bags of garbage and dirty laundry. Instead of going around the house to the side door, the Master went home. He telephoned the five hosts and hostesses and asked them to come to his house immediately.

The Master told them, "The aspiration of each disciple is necessary to make the meditation very high, very deep and sublime. But in addition to aspiration, the vibration of each place is also important. If the vibration is bad, then the aspiration of each individual disciple will have to fight against this vibration. It may be that the vibration is good but the aspiration of the disciples is not. That is a different story. Here we will assume that the disciples are coming with aspiration, although some come with almost no aspiration. But I wish to say that some of the places are not at all satisfactory. And it is the leader of the group that is totally responsible for the vibration of the room."

The five hosts were silent.

"What you do with your own meditation," continued the Master, "you know and God knows. Seekers come to your place only once a week; the rest of the time it is all yours. Now, I am not at all satisfied with your standard."

One disciple asked, "Is there anything else besides physical tidiness and cleanliness that can help the vibration, Master?"

The Master said, "Your daily activities in the meditation room create either a good vibration or a bad vibration. If it has a bad vibration, then your brothers and sisters have to fight against the bad vibration and half their energy will be lost in fighting. They need this energy to fight against their own ignorance so that they can bring down Peace and Light from above. You are all seekers, so you know what good vibrations are. At all your places I was sad and disappointed."

"Master, we are all very sorry for today," said one girl, "but our homes are not always like this."

"True" said the Master, "it is not that every time the vibration of a place is bad. It changes. Outwardly I have come to your places two or three other times as well and every day the vibration changes. Today your place is good; tomorrow the vibration changes. It is a great honour to have the disciples at your place, but if you cannot offer them a good vibration, then we shall have to change the locations.

"Dear ones, these are the simplest things to do. If you cannot do them, then how will you do the more difficult things in your inner life?"

The Master blessed the five disciples and said, "Next week we shall have another opportunity. Let us see what happens."