Question: Where should I concentrate my efforts towards purity, and how should I do so?

Sri Chinmoy: Everybody has to have a different centre on which to concentrate. In your case, try to concentrate on your forehead, on the third eye. I want you to forget the past totally. Your past has been a deplorable past. Even now the past is coming to the fore and eclipsing your present. This is a very sad situation. I wish to say that when you think of the past consciously or unconsciously, the impure thoughts and unfulfilled desires of the past will come to you; and when you unconsciously enjoy them, at that time you are actually cherishing impure thoughts, unhealthy thoughts.

From the past you cannot expect anything. It has already given you what it had to offer. The past offered you its wealth, but this wealth was not fulfilling; it was all frustration. And when you dwell upon this frustration you have to feel that you are consciously and deliberately entering into something obscure, uncertain, and more than that, unfulfilled.

What is unfulfilled, unrealised, unmanifested, from the spiritual point of view, is now unwelcome. Things that we want to manifest and reveal in a spiritual way have to be pure. When you concentrate on your third eye, try to look forward and envision the future — a future which is flooded with light and delight, where there is no darkness. When we see something with our ordinary eyes, very often we see through uncertainty, through bias, through unclear light, and whatever we see is not clear, certain or fulfilling. But when the third eye sees something, it sees through light, and it sees the light that is embodied in that thing. When we concentrate with the third eye everything is clear; there is no darkness; there can be no impurity.

So concentrate on the third eye and see the light, enter into the light, grow into the light. You will see that this light has given birth to purity. If you cherish the past, if you constantly dig up the grave of the past, you will only find obscurity and impurity. Run toward the light. Concentrate on the third eye, the Ajna Chakra, and you will see only light around you, before you and within you. Purity is there, within the light that you envision and the light that you are growing into.

[to be continued]