Question: How do you discipline your emotions?

Sri Chinmoy: First of all you have to know what kind of emotion you are dealing with. There is divine emotion and there is undivine emotion. Emotion itself is not bad; it depends on how we use it. When we misuse emotion, it becomes undivine emotion. When it is properly used, it becomes divine emotion.

First I wish to tell you about the undivine emotion, which is purely in the gross physical, in the lower vital or in the obscure mind. The emotion is constantly trying to possess either an individual or the whole world. We start with one individual, then we move to two, then three, four and five. Finally, we want to possess the whole world. “Mine, my, I": this is the undivine emotion.

But again, there is divine emotion. You are God’s child. You have to realise God consciously. You have to fulfil God on earth. These are the expressions of divine emotion. To come back to your question on how you can discipline your emotion, the answer is here. You will be able to discipline your emotion, the emotion that binds you, the emotion that makes you want to bind the world and possess the world, if you take shelter in the divine emotion. The embodiment, the expression of the inner urge to realise and fulfil God is inner, divine emotion. If you care for the freedom of inner, divine emotion, then you become all-pervading. You are thinking of humanity all at once, not in the sense of possessing humanity, but in the sense of feeling humanity as part and parcel of your own consciousness. When something goes wrong in the world, if you are affected, then you truly feel your own existence in the heart of humanity.

So if you want to discipline your lower emotion, then I wish to say that you must start feeding your divine emotion. If you can consciously feed your divine emotion, if you can feel that each individual is God’s child and humanity’s embodied divinity, and if you have the inner urge to fulfil the divinity in humanity, this is divine emotion. This emotion will never bind you and you cannot bind it. So pay more attention to the divine emotion in you, which is all-pervading. Also think that the divine emotion will fulfil you and that you will be able to fulfil it. Pay all attention to the divine emotion and you will see that all the unlit, impure, earth-bound emotion will automatically be disciplined. It will be thrown into the sea of divine emotion, where everything is purified. If you want to discipline your lower emotion, then take shelter in your higher emotion. When you stay in your divine emotion, the undivine emotion will automatically be purified.