Part II — Purity in the various parts of the being

Question: On what part of our being should we meditate for purity?

Sri Chinmoy: There is no hard and fast rule about where we should meditate for purity. Some of us should meditate for purity in the mind some should meditate on the vital or on the body; some should meditate on the entire being. Meditating on the entire being means that if we meditate for half an hour, within this half hour we try to meditate for five minutes on the heart. In this way purity will be established in the whole being.

We need to invoke purity through aspiration and meditation on the physical, the vital and the mind. After that the heart and the soul are left. The soul is always pure; the heart can be impure at times, when the impurity of the vital has captured it. But the heart has boundless purity when it has a free access to the soul's purity. The light of the soul must be brought into the heart as often as possible.

After we establish purity in the physical, we have to feel that this purity must be made lasting. For a month we may be absolutely pure in our mind, in our vital and in our physical, but if there is no permanence, after a while this purity will be totally lost. We have to get something everlasting. First we get a temporary taste of purity. If we get purity for five minutes, then we know that purity exists. Then when this purity goes away after a few days or a few hours, we feel a barren desert within us. If we want purity permanently, we have to enter wholeheartedly into the life of aspiration. If we want to have something lasting we have to meditate on the soul, not to purify the soul, but to spread the light of the soul to all parts of our being. When we meditate on the soul we have to pray to the Inner Pilot or to our soul to give us lasting purity in the heart. We bring the soul's purity into the heart and from there it enters into the mind. After that it enters into the vital and then into the body. First we start with a temporary glimpse of purity. Once we get a little purity, then we are inspired, energised. We see that we have got something real, although it may not be permanent. Even the purity which is transient will give us joy. Then we will try to get more joy by achieving something permanent. If we start our lessons with something easy, then we get inspiration and we make progress step by step. But if somebody starts offering us the lessons of a college student when we are still in kindergarten, naturally we will be frightened, disheartened and totally lost. First we have to try to work on problems which are easy; then we use the capacity of our achievement to work on more difficult ones. When we solve the easy problems we will get joy. Our joy makes us ready for the difficult problems.