Question: What is the difference between going high and going deep in meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: There is a great difference in the methods of meditation, although ultimately height and depth become one. When we want to go deep in meditation, we start our journey from the spiritual heart. From there, deep is not downward or backward, but inward. We should feel that we are digging or travelling deep, deep, deep into our heart. It is not like digging downward far below our feet. No! Below the knees, the plane of inconscience starts. If we go downward, then it is not actually spiritual depth that we are getting but only the low, lower, lowest planes of consciousness. The spiritual heart is infinite, so there is no limit to how deep we can go. We can never go too deep; we can never touch the boundaries of the spiritual heart because it embodies the vast universe and, at the same time, it is larger and vaster than the universe.

When we want to go high in meditation, then our direction is upward. Our aspiration goes upward; we are climbing, climbing fearlessly towards the Highest. We must pass through the mind and through the thousand-petalled lotus at the top of the head. Again, the distance is infinite. There is no end to our upward journey because we are travelling in Infinity. We are climbing towards the ever-transcending Beyond. In terms of distance, upward and inward are both infinite journeys towards one Goal, the Supreme.

We cannot go high by using only the mind, however. We must go beyond the mind and into the realm of the spiritual heart once more. The domain of the spiritual heart is infinitely higher and vaster than that of the very highest mind. Far beyond the mind is still the domain of the heart. The heart is boundless in every direction, so inside the heart is height as well as depth. The higher we can go, the deeper we can go. And again, the deeper we can go, the higher we can go. It works simultaneously. If we can meditate very powerfully, then we are bound to feel that we are going both very high and very deep. The highest height and the deepest depth both are inside the spiritual heart. Height and depth go together, but they work in two different dimensions, as it were. But if a person can go very high in his meditation, then he has the capacity to go very deep also. It is a matter of choice.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My meditation-service at the United Nations for twenty-five years, Agni Press, 1995
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