Question: In one of your talks you said that if we do less thinking and more meditating, less planning and more acting, then we will be happier. Could you elaborate on this, please?¹²³

Sri Chinmoy: We see that cultured, educated people think in one way and uncultured, uneducated people think in another way. But both the mentally developed and the mentally undeveloped constantly suffer from one thing: confusion. They go on thinking and thinking, but the moment they think they have found the truth they discover that it is not truth at all but only more confusion.

The difficulty is this: when we think of someone or something, we form a conception that we think is absolutely true. But the next moment doubt comes and changes our mind. And a few minutes later we wonder whether we are even in a position to judge the person or thing. This moment I will think that you are a nice man. The next moment I will think that you are a bad man. Then after that I will think something else. Eventually I will see that there is no end to my questions and no certainty at all.

Each time we think, we are lost. But each time we meditate, we are illumined. The mind is caught in the prison cell of thoughts, ideas and habits, whereas the soul is a free bird. Although it stays inside the body, when we pray and meditate it constantly brings us the message of the Infinite. Our problem is that we want to be liberated by thinking. But the mind itself is still in darkness, confusion and bondage, so how can we expect liberation from the mind? No matter how highly developed we are mentally, we are still extremely limited.

When we plan, very often we are frustrated because we do not see the truth right from the beginning. We plan to do something in order to achieve a certain goal. But between the planning and the execution of our plan, different ideas and ideals will enter into us and create confusion. Then our planning goes on and on endlessly and we never enter into the world of action because our plans are never complete or certain. There is a yawning gap between our mental plan and the action itself.

Entering into the obscure, unlit field of action with a mental plan is like carrying a candle into a totally dark room. But when we enter the room with our soul’s light, the room is flooded with illumination. If we have an inner will, the soul’s will, which has come to us from meditation, then the action is no sooner conceived of than it is done. At that time, there is no difference between our inner will and outer action.

In the soul’s world, realisation is spontaneously followed by action or manifestation. An action that comes from the soul’s will has much more force behind it than an action stemming from ordinary human will.