Question: The Bhagavad-Gita talks about purification. How can I be purified?

Sri Chinmoy: How can you be purified? You can purify your existence, your inner and outer life, just by feeling deep within yourself a living flower, a burning flame and an incense stick that is burning all the time. The incense, the flower and the candle flame symbolise purity. If you can feel within yourself, for example, a beautiful flower, a rose or lotus or any flower that you cherish, then you are doing the right thing. Today it is imagination; but if you continue imagining for five days or ten days or a month or two, then you are bound to see and feel the flower within you. First you may feel it, then you are bound to see the existence of the flower, and then automatically the fragrance and the purity of the flower will enter into you to purify you.

We have to feel that we have within us all the divine qualities. If we feel that we don’t have them, then it is almost impossible to get them. If we feel that God is within us, for that reason one day we shall see God face to face. But if we think that God is not within us, that He is somewhere else, then we will never see God. If we want to achieve something in our life, first we have to feel that we have that very thing within us. And because we have not yet discovered it, we have to use our imagination-power to help bring it to the fore.

Also, we have to feel that we are God’s children. Now we can’t feel it. We have done many things wrong and to say that we are God’s chosen instruments is a self-mockery. This is what we feel. But if we continuously say, “No, we are God’s chosen children. Deep within us is divinity. God is there, only we have covered Him with our ignorance,” then we are bound to bring our inner divinity to the fore. So try to have that kind of feeling. You have to feel that God is within you, purity is within you; only you have to reveal it. How do you reveal it? You reveal it by imagining within yourself the things that you see around you as pure — flowers, incense, candles — and then automatically one day you do become purified.