Question: How can we use our imagination to help raise our consciousness or improve our meditation?¹³⁰

Sri Chinmoy: Inside us are many worlds; imagination is one of them. We have a free access to the world that is around us and before us, but we do not have a free access to the worlds inside us. We have to bring the imagination-world to the fore so that it can enter into the reality-world we are now living in. We have to establish a friendship between the world of imagination and the world of so-called reality. It is like this. Somebody is inside the house and somebody is outside the house. We are friendly with the person who is outside the house because most of the time we stay outside. But when we come inside, we see that somebody else is there. We can also make friends with that person and ask him to come out with us and make friends with the person who is outside.

This we can do only if we take imagination as a reality in its own right, as a reality in a higher world or inner world that is on another plane of consciousness. We have to see imagination as an inner reality that is waiting for revelation and manifestation here in this outer world. Then we can try to bring it into this world. If we take imagination as something unproductive and unreal, then it can never be of use to us. If we think imagination is the South Pole and reality is the North Pole, if we think imagination is only mental hallucination, then we will never take it seriously and we will never be able to use it to raise our consciousness or improve our meditation.

Imagination can play a most significant role in the spiritual life. Suppose we are not having good meditations, but six months ago we had a very powerful, very high meditation. What we can do is try to imagine that powerful meditation. After fifteen minutes or half an hour, our imagination will become reality and we will once again have a good meditation.