Question: How do you teach us to meditate?

Sri Chinmoy: Instruction for meditation has to be given individually. Suppose I have ten students. They are seeking together, true. Perhaps they have come to me on the same day. Now, in the ordinary human life, we see that if ten persons come to school on the same day and they want to be in the same class, the teacher gives the same lesson to all ten. After the school hours are over, the students go home and they study the same lesson. Although one may be infinitely more meritorious than the others, they are all treated in the same way.

In the spiritual life also, all of you are not of the same standard. Some are beginners, some are more advanced. In school, a teacher may have ten children who are not of the same standard, but unfortunately he has to teach them the same lesson. Now you may say that I am doing the same thing. When I am here, I give lessons, I give talks, I answer questions. This is the way I teach you.

But in the morning or during the day when I meditate on each individual whom I consider to be my disciple, at that time the consciousness that I give to you I do not give to somebody else. I will enter into you according to your capacity and you will receive from me according to your receptivity. I motivate and I inspire each individual disciple of mine according to his acceptance of me, according to his capacity to receive the light and according to his capacity to manifest the light. I do this only if someone is my disciple; otherwise, a seeker’s own Master will do it for him. Outwardly I have given meditations to only a few; but inwardly I have given meditations to many, many disciples. How do I give meditations? I enter into each soul and I tell the soul what it should do in its outer life. The soul may take one day, ten days, fifteen days or three months to convince the physical mind how to meditate and why to meditate.

If I had very few disciples, today I could give you a specific meditation, tomorrow I could give one to somebody else. In that way I could teach. But if there are many, how can I give each of them a meditation outwardly? It is impossible. So I have to enter into each person’s consciousness and soul individually and see what that particular person needs most, or how he wants to manifest the Divinity within himself.

We are all seekers. Your soul may want you to realise the Truth and manifest the Truth through Power. By power I mean divine Power, not the human power that wants to destroy, wound and kill. Again, somebody else sitting beside you may want to manifest God through love, devotion and surrender. So I can give a meditation only by knowing first what the soul wants. A spiritual Master knows what the individual soul needs and wants. Then he says inwardly to the individual, “You follow this rule.” He may not be able to tell him outwardly, but inwardly he says, “This is the way you have to realise and manifest the Truth.”

So the Master has to enter into the disciples’ consciousness or soul and teach them individual meditation. When they are sitting in front of him they meditate together, but inwardly each disciple has a totally different meditation. Everybody’s meditation is not of the same standard and everybody is not doing the same kind of meditation. We can meditate together for an hour or two a week, but daily meditation is also of paramount importance, because daily you are feeding your soul in a specific way. Naturally your soul is getting nourishment in a specific way.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Experiences of the higher worlds, Agni Press, 1977
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/ehw