Question: Concentration and meditation give us certain power, even if we are not looking for it. Should we pray to God to keep us from misusing that power?

Sri Chinmoy: In the course of his meditation, when one knows how to meditate well, naturally he gets power. Sometimes one misuses this power and sometimes one uses it properly. Now, how can you use it divinely? If you can feel that this power is an act of God’s Grace that has descended into your life, then the first thing you will observe is that your responsibility diminishes. Since it has come from God, the power is His.

When you get any inner power, the best thing to do is not to use it until the psychic being is fully developed and you become totally one with your psychic being. At that time you can truly be the possessor of power. What happens when you get power from your meditation is that the power comes and possesses you; power becomes the owner of your outer life. When power possesses you, although you feel that you have got the power, at that time there is every possibility that the power is using you; then you feel that you are using the power wrongly. But this is not true; it is the power that is using you for a wrong purpose. But when the psychic being is fully developed and you become one with the psychic being, when you are able to speak to the psychic being and you are growing in its consciousness, there is no problem. You become the lord of your power; no matter what power enters into you or what power you develop, your inner being will guide you, protect you and show you how to use the power for a divine purpose.

In the spiritual life, until one has become totally one with God’s infinite Consciousness, it is not advisable to use power. People accumulate money and hold it. The spiritual power that you get during your meditation, I wish you to collect it and hold it. Then a time comes when you are fully realised and there is no chance of your misusing the power. Then you will use the power for the manifestation of the Truth, not to break the cosmic harmony. If power is used before realisation, most of the time it is used wrongly and then it creates more problems than harmony in the atmosphere.

So if you have power, hold it to the last. This power is bound to help humanity at God’s choice Hour. Without the divine power, nothing can be manifested on earth. At the same time, the divine power has its own time, and that time one can know only when one is on the threshold of realisation or when one is totally one with God’s Will.