Question: During meditation, can one enter into the level of unconscious thought?

Sri Chinmoy: One can enter into the level of unconsciousness, but it should be done with a view of transforming the unconsciousness into consciousness. While meditating, the very aim of the person is to climb to the Highest. When I have gone up to the Highest, if I see that my toe is bothering me, that there is some pain there, naturally I have to come down and cure it. I have to be perfect from my toe up to my head. I need total perfection. So if you enter into the unconscious level of your mind – let us call it inconscience – what for? To transform the inconscience that is in you; otherwise you will be limited. The body will be transformed, the heart will be transformed, but the mind will remain imperfect. Now if a member of my family is not progressing, is not perfect, I cannot be happy. So in your meditation, you have to take your whole existence as a unit, as a complete totality. If you enter into your unconscious level, you have to know that you are entering there to spread the inner Light, to infuse the unconscious level and transform it into Light, the Light that is inside the heart and the soul. This is the soul’s own Light. With that purpose only you can go; not to show off that you have the capacity to go into your unconscious part or that you are far better off there, but only to transform the very face of the unconscious level. You want to be integral. You want to be perfect. You have to be perfect. If your unconscious mind is imperfect, I cannot call you perfect. You have to be perfect everywhere, both in the conscious and the subconscious. Subconsciousness is inside you. As you have the overmind, the higher mind, the illumined mind and all these higher dimensions, you also have lower qualities. Your higher qualities are that you pray to God, you want to be good, divine and spiritual. These are your higher qualities. Again you have undivine qualities which quarrel with the divine ones. These are doubt, jealousy, hypocrisy and so forth. These are undivine qualities within us. So with our divine qualities, our love for God, our feeling of universal oneness, our real concern for mankind, we have to enter into our undivine qualities that we cherish: fear, doubt, worry and so on. We have to transform fear into strength, doubt into certainty, jealousy into sympathy, separation into universal brotherhood and oneness. That is why we enter into the lower parts: to transform them.