Mrs. Kovanda: Should I Pray In Silence...

Mrs. Kovanda: Should I pray in silence or out loud?

Sri Chinmoy: Praying out loud is always better. If you say out loud, "O God, please bless me with good health. Grant me love, joy and peace" then your physical mind will be convinced. But you do not have to break down the ceiling! You do not have to pray that loudly. Although I was born a Hindu, I also love Muslims and feel that they are my brothers. But when they pray in the mosque, they pray so loudly that you can hear them at quite a distance. We Hindus feel that as long as you can hear your prayer with your own ears, then you are convinced that you are praying and that is enough.

While praying, you are using words: "O God, give me this, give me that. Do this for me, do that for me." At that time you can speak reasonably fast-the way we are talking now. Pray loudly enough to hear yourself and also at your normal talking speed. But when it comes to meditation, try not to have any words or any thoughts at all; try to keep the mind empty. Every thought or idea that enters into your mind you have to silence. If you cannot silence it, then try to slow up its speed. If some current of thought is entering into you very rapidly and you cannot stop it altogether, then try at least to slow it down. And eventually you will try to silence it. Also, to make the mind more silent, it is good if you can imagine something very peaceful, such as the vast sky early in the morning or the setting sun in the evening. Or you can try to feel that you are at the bottom of the sea, or on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas.

While you are praying, you are talking to God and God is listening to you. While you are meditating, God is talking and you are listening. While you are praying, your prayer is going up high, higher, highest. Then while you are meditating, God's Love, Light, Peace and Bliss are entering into you. That is the difference between prayer and meditation.

There is also another difference. When you pray, try to feel that you are utterly helpless. You have to pray like a beggar-woman asking for alms. "God, give me this." And you have to sincerely feel that you are in desperate need of what you are praying for. You have to feel that your whole world will collapse if you do not get it. Unless your prayer is fulfilled, you will be absolutely hopeless.

When you meditate, on the other hand, you have to feel that you are a princess, or a queen, or the dearest daughter of God, with infinite wealth inside your heart. When meditating, you are bringing to the fore your own divinity and inner wealth-your own inner peace, inner bliss, inner love, inner joy. You are not inventing these things; they belong to you and you are discovering them.

On 2 April 1989 Sri Chinmoy was invited to meditate with the nuns and Mother Superior of the Benedictine Monastery Heiligenkreuz in Cham, near Zug, Switzerland. Afterwards, he answered their questions. A transcript of that question-and-answer session follows:

Excerpts from Sri Chinmoy's Meeting with the President of York College, Dr. Josephine Davis

On 11 July 1994 the President of New York's York College, Dr. Josephine Davis, met with Sri Chinmoy at Annam Brahma Restaurant in Queens. Excerpts from their conversation follow.

Dr. Davis: Is it all right if I share with you what I have been using as a mantra? Does it matter if I tell you?

Sri Chinmoy: In India they say that if you share your mantra with others, its inner strength goes away. The mantra that you repeat is like your life- breath. You are repeating it millions and billions of times. It is part and parcel of your divine reality. That most sacred possession of yours represents your very existence on earth; it is not to be shared. Only you and God and the person who has blessed you with the mantra should know it.

Dr. Davis: But if I took the mantra from a book, does that still apply?

Sri Chinmoy: It is the same thing. Even if you got it from a book, that mantra is sacred for you. You are taking it very seriously in your life, and that automatically makes it sacred. Anything that we are serious about eventually becomes sacred in our life. Seriousness and sacredness go together. There are many things that you have read, but you have not memorised them or recited them over and over again. But this one mantra you have selected. It is giving you immense joy and a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. So this mantra has to be kept very sacred inside your heart; otherwise, it loses its power.

As soon as you share it with someone else, no matter how friendly that person is, immediately jealousy and other negative forces can enter. If the person you share it with is undeserving, he or she will just ruin it for you. It is like dealing with a monkey. Let us say you have got a most beautiful flower and you are enjoying its beauty and fragrance. If you show the flower to a monkey, the monkey will just tear off the petals because that is its nature. Similarly, if you reveal your mantra to people who are not praying and meditating, people who are restless and full of self-doubt, they will destroy it's sacredness for you. As soon as they touch it, its beauty, its purity, its divinity will go away.

On 24 April 1993 Sri Chinmoy met with Russell Wilson, who was then Staff Director of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Sub-committee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. The following informal conversation took place at Annam Brahma Restaurant in Queens, New York.

The following questions were asked by Mrs. Noemi Kovanda, wife of the Czech ambassador to the U.N., during a meeting with Sri Chinmoy at Annam Brahma Restaurant in Queens on 13 June 1994.