Question: There is concern by some people that meditation rejects the world. What is your response to that?⁷⁶

Sri Chinmoy: That theory is absolutely wrong. Meditation does not discard or reject anything in life. On the contrary, proper meditation accepts everything that we have and everything that we are. Meditation is all-embracing; it will not tell us to shun society or give us a negative feeling towards anything. It does not ask us to retreat into the Himalayas. God gave us a body, vital, mind, heart and soul because He wants to manifest His Dream, He wants to fulfil Himself in and through us. He has created us as His own prototype. So how can we think of renouncing the world or rejecting any aspect of life? If today we renounce the body, tomorrow the vital and the following day the mind, then what will remain?

Despite our own shortcomings and the world’s shortcomings, we have to accept both ourselves and the world. First we try to illumine our own shortcomings. Then, on the strength of our feeling of oneness with the rest of the world, we try to illumine and fulfil others.