Question: Yesterday when I was meditating, I got a message from the silence that said, "Love one another." When we get this kind of message in our meditation, should we meditate on it and take it into ourselves?¹²⁰

Sri Chinmoy: When you get a message in your mind during your meditation, you have to know whether it is in the physical mind — the restless, aggressive, destructive and doubtful mind — or in the calm mind, the vacant mind, the silent mind. When you receive a message in the silent mind, you should feel that it is the foundation stone on which you can build the Palace of Truth, Love, Divinity and Reality. This type of message actually originates in the soul or in the heart and then enters into the mind. When the mind is absolutely still, calm and peaceful you can hear that message.

Suppose you are meditating and after a few minutes a thought or idea comes into your mind. Let us say it is about sacrifice — that you will sacrifice something for a friend or relative or someone you know. This is not just an idea but an ideal. When you accept a divine idea as your own, the idea does not remain an idea but becomes an ideal. In your case, the thought that came to you in your meditation was about divine love. This is the love that permits you to see all human beings as part and parcel of God Himself. Man and God are like the foot and the topmost branch of a single tree. If you go to the foot of the tree with your divine love, from there it is very easy to go up to God, the topmost branch. On this kind of divine thought you can build your life of love.

But you have to be careful when thoughts come to you during meditation. If you are a beginner in the spiritual life, you should not allow any thought to enter your mind. Somebody is knocking at your mind’s door. You would like to allow your friends, which are divine thoughts, to enter. But you do not know who your friends are. And even if you do know who your friends are, when you open the door for them you may find that your enemies are standing right in front of them. Once your enemies gain access to your mind, it is very difficult to chase them out without the strength of solid spiritual discipline.

So it would be wise to keep your mind’s door closed. Let it remain closed for a day or for a month or for a year until you have gained some spiritual strength, inner strength. Then you will be in a position to accept the challenge and deal with whoever is knocking at your mind’s door. If it is a divine thought, you will try to expand it. And even if it is an undivine thought, you will know that you have enough strength to compel it to behave properly once it enters.

Eventually these wrong thoughts have to be conquered; otherwise, they will come back to bother you again and again. You have to be a divine potter. If the potter is afraid to touch the clay, he will not be able to offer anything to the world. So the potter touches the clay and shapes it into something beautiful and useful. In the same way, it is your bounden duty to transform your undivine thoughts, but only when you are in a position to do so safely.