Part V — Questions and answers: University of Nevada

Question: How can one know the God inside himself without becoming confused by the mind?

Sri Chinmoy: I am glad you have come to realise the limitations of the mind and the confusion it creates. Our philosophy is the philosophy of the heart, for the heart accepts and becomes one with reality in its pristine form. If you live in the mind, you will always be confused. This moment the mind accepts reality, and the next moment it rejects reality as something unreal. The mind that I am speaking of is the physical mind, the mind which is in the physical body and which is constantly seeking satisfaction in and through the physical. But there is also a higher mind, which we call the illumined mind. This illumined mind is ours when the heart offers light from the soul to the mind, and the mind accepts the light devotedly and soulfully. But until the mind becomes illumined, nothing will be lost or destroyed if the seeker tries to separate his mind from the aspiring consciousness of the heart.

For the time being the seeker knows that he has two rooms — one is the mind room, the other is the heart room. Unfortunately, in the mind room there is no light. If the seeker remains there all the time, there is no guarantee that one day he will be illumined. But if the seeker enters into the heart room and stays there for a few months or a few years, then his entire being will be surcharged with light. Then, when he is convinced that his inner being is surcharged with light, he can enter into the mind room with his inner light and illumine the darkness there. The mind also has to be illumined at the proper hour, but right now we have to pay all attention to the aspiring heart. And because God does not want a seeker to remain imperfect in any part of his being, from the aspiring heart, the illumining heart, we have to bring light slowly, steadily and unerringly into the limited, doubting, suspicious earth-bound mind. Then all confusion there disappears and the earth-bound mind becomes the Heaven-free mind, the illumined mind.