Question: Why should you concentrate and meditate in the heart instead of in the mind?

Sri Chinmoy: Before you concentrate on the heart or anything, just think about the mind for a few minutes instead of allowing the mind to think of something else. Separate yourself from the mind and observe the mind. Observe what it has done for you and see whether you are really satisfied with its capacity. The mind has given you many things, but are these things worth having in the spiritual life or not? In the ordinary human life, the mind is of paramount importance. Without it we would not be able to function properly. But if you enter into the spiritual life you will see that most of what the mind has given you is information and not illumination. There is a great difference between the two. You read books and talk to people and get much information from them. But where is illumination? You can read hundreds of pages or talk to hundreds of people, but you will not get illumination. So when you think of what the mind has given you, think at the same time of the thing that you really need most and you will see that the mind has not fulfilled this need. Since your mind has disappointed you, why should you concentrate there?

Once you are totally dissatisfied with the limited capacity of the mind, it will be possible for you to concentrate on the heart. As long as you have tremendous faith in your mind, the mind that complicates and confuses everything, you will be doomed to disappointment in your meditation. Ordinary people think that complication is wisdom. But spiritual people know that complication is dangerous. God is very simple; Light is very simple. It is in our simplicity and sincerity, not in complexity, that the real Truth abides. Complexity cannot give us anything. Complexity itself is destruction.

If you meditate in the mind, you will be able to meditate for perhaps five minutes, and out of that five minutes, for one minute you may meditate very powerfully. After that you will feel your whole head getting tense. First you get joy and satisfaction, but then you may feel a barren desert. For five minutes you will get something, but if you want to go beyond that, you may feel nothing. If you meditate in the heart, a day will come when you start getting satisfaction. If you meditate in the heart, you are meditating where the soul is. True, the light, the consciousness of the soul permeates the whole body, but there is a specific place where the soul resides most of the time, and that is in the heart. If you want illumination, if your ultimate goal is illumination, you will get that illumination from the soul, which is inside the heart. When you know what you want and where to find it, the sensible thing is to go to that place. Otherwise, it will be like going to the hardware store to get groceries. If you concentrate on the mind you will be disappointed and disheartened. You will not get what you want because you have gone to the wrong place. It is like my situation now. I am here at the United Nations. If someone asks, "Where is Chinmoy?" you can say that I am at the United Nations, or you can say that I am in Conference Room 10. My presence is spiritually pervading the entire United Nations, but my living consciousness is right here in this room. If you come here, I will be able to do more for you than for others who are elsewhere in the building. Similarly, when you focus your concentration in the heart, you get much more inner satisfaction than when you meditate in the mind, because the heart is the seat of the soul. You have to know that the Source and the Reality are in the heart. Reality is everywhere, but the actual manifestation of the Reality has to be in a particular place. Inside the heart is the soul, and if you meditate in the heart, the result is infinitely more fulfilling. But it is difficult for some people to meditate in the heart because they are not used to doing it.

You have to be wise. There is a vast difference between what you can get from the mind and what you can get from the heart. The mind is limited; the heart is unlimited. Deep within us is infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. To get a limited quantity is an easy task. Meditation in the mind can give it to you. But you can get more if you meditate in the heart. Suppose you have the opportunity to work at two places. At one place you will earn two hundred dollars, and at the other place five hundred dollars. If you are wise, you will not waste your time at the first place.

Let us not be satisfied with the things that we get very easily. Let us cry for something which is more difficult to get, but which is infinite and everlasting. If you get something from the mind, tomorrow doubt may come and tell you that it is not real. But once you get something from the heart you will never be able to doubt it or forget it. An experience on the psychic plane can never be erased from the heart.