Questions and answers on the moon and the Pole Star

Question: What is the significance of meditating on the new moon and meditating on the full moon?

Sri Chinmoy: When you meditate on the full moon, feel that your consciousness is fully blossomed inside you. The lotus has many petals. So think of a lotus fully blossomed inside you. You can appreciate the beauty of the fully-blossomed lotus. When you meditate on the new moon, at that time you have to feel that one petal has opened, and there are many more petals to be blossomed. Here again you get joy because when one petal of a flower is blossomed, you have the hope that tomorrow another petal will open, and the day after tomorrow, another. In that way you will see the gradual progress. Once you see some progress you feel it will soon be complete. The full moon gives you joy from completion, and the new moon gives you joy from seeing gradual progress.

From the spiritual point of view the full moon has two aspects. One aspect is connected with the Mother Earth. Another aspect is connected with the Father Sun. The one that is connected with Mother Earth very often gives a sad feeling. It shows depression or frustration. The sadness, frustration and destruction which we get from earth we will see in that aspect of the moon. Sometimes you will see the consciousness of a grandmother who is very disturbed when the grandchildren are all unruly. This earth aspect of the moon is like that.

The aspect that is connected with the Father Sun is dynamic and brilliant. The potentiality of the sun is hiding there. We know that the moon actually has no existence of its own. The sun’s dynamic aspect the moon captures or embodies; because of the sun it shines. When you see occultly, you will see that the dynamic aspect of the moon offers beauty to the whole world.

In the Bahamas I once saw the full moon very low, as if it were touching the sea. You cannot imagine how sad it looked! The world’s worst sad woman would not have as sad a face as the moon had. This was the full moon identifying itself with Mother Earth to such an extent that all the sorrows and sufferings of earth entered into it.

Then again, the moon can be a victim to some forces which are not divine. Some forces get malicious pleasure from creating wrong movements in the moon. The moon is very beautiful to look at, so what do these forces do? When some spiritual seekers have reached a very high stage of consciousness, if they have conquered worldly temptation and lower vital forces and they are going beyond the earth consciousness, at that time some stupid cosmic gods or some hostile forces create most beautiful, tangible women who dance upon the moon in a most undivine way. Some of these women come from the celestial worlds. Some come from the lower vital. You can say they are nymphs. We call them apsaras. When they dance, many aspirants fall, but some do not. While they are seeing all these undivine dances, some people are well protected, and some have already gone far beyond. The moon becomes a victim to these forces. To the sun they cannot do this, for the sun will immediately burn them to ashes. But the moon is not strong enough. They capture the moon.

When I was 13 years old one night I was meditating at 2:30 in a garden in front of my house, going far beyond the moon. All of a sudden the most beautiful women appeared. They were about to start dancing when I saw my family deity, Mother Kali, appear and cut them into pieces with her sword. A very radiant sword cut them at the throat. Then she said to me, “I know, my son, that you won’t be tempted, but I don’t want these forces to appear in your life.” A mother is a mother. A mother does not want any kind of temptation-force to attack her son. And my Mother Kali was so kind to this son that she wanted her son to go far beyond her. That shows that she is a good mother. A bad mother will be jealous of her daughter, or a bad father jealous of his son.

This was my experience with the undivine forces in the moon world, but I have seen that many, many seekers have fallen because of this experience. They have been conquered by the temptation-forces in the moon world. Temptation is not as strong here in the ordinary world as it is in the moon world, when hostile forces or jealous cosmic gods do not want the seekers to go beyond that world.