Question: What is the best way to develop inner vigilance?

Sri Chinmoy: Inner vigilance for human beings is the vigilance of thought. Then comes the vigilance of will. While we are in the physical mind, earthbound mind, we have to watch each thought during our waking hours. Is it progressive, or is it regressive? Is it creative, or is it destructive?

If you can get one progressive thought each day, then soon you will be surrounded by a family of progressive thoughts. Today if you have got one progressive thought, that progressive thought will keep you alert. It will not allow you to bring in a negative thought. Tomorrow you try to get another progressive thought. Like that you collect twenty progressive thoughts. These progressive thoughts have the inner urge to push you forward or to pull you forward. And while they are pulling and pushing you forward toward the goal, you cannot remain asleep. You have to be alert, because something is pushing you or pulling you. Something that is good, something that is progressive, is urging you toward your goal.

Now you are usually in the mental plane. But there is also a psychic plane. In the psychic plane, the heart plane, there is something called will. In the psychic plane every day we have to strengthen our will. We have to imagine that we have sown a seed inside our heart, where there is fertile soil. Now we are watering it. How? With our purity. By every day increasing our purity in thought and our purity in action, we are watering it. Then we are watching to see if anything is happening. In a few days or a few weeks or a few months it germinates. We continue to watch it, and we see a tiny plant. With tremendous fondness we are watching the progress of a tiny seed, how it is becoming a strong young plant, and then a huge tree. While we are watching, our soul is strengthening our inner adamantine will.

So how can you be vigilant? First sow the seed, and then watch it constantly and lovingly. If your duty is to watch, then automatically you must be vigilant. This is done in the heart plane. The other method is in the mental plane — every day to have one new progressive thought which will pull you forward and forward and forward.