Question: When I am meditating I am all peace, but since I still don't have full control of my thoughts, sometimes a negative thought comes. I am afraid the wrong thought may use the power of my meditation for doing some wrong.

Sri Chinmoy: When a wrong thought comes to you during your meditation, try to feel that this thought is as insignificant as an ant. Wrong thoughts cannot utilise your power if you feel that the spiritual power you have received from your meditation is infinitely stronger than the power of the wrong thoughts. Sometimes when wrong thoughts come during meditation, a person feels that the strength of the wrong thought is so powerful that even if he has meditated for an hour, or two or three hours, it is all useless. One wrong thought, one ordinary thought comes in and he feels lost. For two hours he has meditated most sincerely and divinely, but he gives more importance to one wrong thought than to his entire meditation. This is foolish. The seeker should not give any importance to wrong thoughts at that particular moment.

The moment we can stop paying attention to wrong thoughts, the wrong thoughts have no power. But what happens is that we are terribly afraid of them. We dwell in them and think they are going to ruin us. Just by thinking about them, just by being afraid of them, we give them power. So do not be afraid. You are the lord in your house. You are meditating inside your own consciousness, and somebody is knocking at your door. If you do not pay any attention, how will he dare to come in? When you are meditating you simply must not open the door to these wrong thoughts. And in case they have entered before you were aware, what do you do? Again, you do not pay any attention to them.

Wrong thoughts are terribly jealous of divine thoughts. Wrong thoughts come to attack us and take away our divine feelings, divine thoughts, divine power. But when we pay all our attention to divine thoughts, divine feelings, divine power, in many cases the wrong thoughts just go away. "We have no place here. He does not care for us," they think. Wrong thoughts also have their pride. They do not care for you when you do not care for them.

I wish to say something more with regard to this question. Many years ago, a disciple asked his Guru what to do when emotional thoughts, thoughts from his lower vital, sex thoughts, entered into him during his highest meditation. The Master said, "Immediately stop meditating. When wrong thoughts come during intense meditation, they will receive intensity from your meditation and become very powerful forces. So it is better to leave meditation at that time."

One can try this approach if one wants to. But I wish to advise my disciples of another approach. During meditation, when wrong thoughts come to you, you can immediately try to recollect one of your sweetest or highest divine experiences. Enter into your own experience which you had two days ago or twenty years ago, and try to bring it into your mental consciousness. You will see that while you are fully immersed in your own experience, the vital or emotional thought from the lower vital plane is bound to leave you because the highest, deepest, purest ecstasy will be in your consciousness. Divine Delight is infinitely more powerful than the power of pleasure. When you invite or invoke or try to recollect one of your divine experiences, the inner delight or ecstasy comes to the fore. Then you drink in the nectar-delight of your own spiritual experience, which is infinitely stronger than your lower vital forces. In this way you can solve the problem without leaving your meditation.