Question: When we meditate, how should we deal with thoughts that come from our imagination? Do these thoughts have any kind of reality to them?¹¹³

Sri Chinmoy: In the best kind of meditation, there is no thought at all in the mind. Right now you are a beginner and you are getting thoughts. So when a thought enters into your mind during your meditation, you have to see if it is a progressive, encouraging and illumining thought or an impure, discouraging and destructive thought. If it is a thought that lowers your consciousness, then you have to destroy it as soon as it appears. You can destroy the thought through your own intense inner cry and eagerness for light, or you can illumine the thought by bringing down peace from Above. But if it is a good, healthy, progressive and illumining thought, then you can let it grow.

The thought may have come from the world of imagination, or it may have come from some other plane of existence. If it comes from your imagination, no harm! Imagination is a world of its own. Today we imagine something and tomorrow that very thing is transformed into reality by virtue of our aspiration. A thought may come from the reality-world that we happen to call imagination. But if we can bring that thought into our real existence by virtue of our aspiration, then it becomes a real reality.