Question: I try to keep my mind from wandering so much during meditation, but I have very little success.

Sri Chinmoy: You are not exercising the capacity of your heart; you are only exercising the mind's power. Very often when I am concentrating on you, I see that your mind is rotating like a wheel. When the mind rotates, it is very difficult for the Supreme to act in your mind. But when your heart aspires even for a second, the Supreme opens up the door.

A few months ago when I was going to Washington by bus, three times while I was concentrating on you I saw your heart fully open. You were receiving all the blessings of the Supreme — Light, Peace, Bliss. But soon after that, you started trying to aspire with your mind and, the moment you started, you disappeared, you totally vanished from my consciousness.

From now on, please try to feel that you do not have a mind at all. When you feel that you do not have a mind, it does not mean that you are a brute or an animal. No! The mind is not necessary because you have a superior weapon called the heart. If you can stay in your heart even for five minutes, even if you do not pray or meditate, your consciousness will be raised. The heart is your abode, not the mind. If you stay in the heart, you will feel peace, light and all that you need.

The heart is like a fountain of peace, joy and love. You can sit at the base of the fountain and just enjoy. There is no need to pray to the Supreme to give you this, that, or anything else, for you will get all the things that you want and infinitely more from this fountain. But you will get them in the way the Supreme wants to give them. If you can please the Supreme by staying always in the presence of this fountain you will see that your desires are fulfilled most luminously. They may be the same desires you have always had, but they will be touched on a very high level with luminosity. Before they are fulfilled, the Supreme will transform each desire into aspiration with His Light.

When God transforms your desires into aspiration, you will see that you have become that aspiration itself. You can have that aspiration only in the heart and the soul, and not in the mind. If you go beyond the mind, you can also have the same aspiration. But you will never have it if you stay in the mind. The mind is really a dense jungle for most of us. Only in the heart will we find the sea of Peace and Bliss, and from there Light radiates.

I hope all of you meditate at home. Even if you do not get immediate results, please do not be disheartened or discouraged. To pass our school examinations, we have to study for years. But meditation is the examination of our body, vital, mind, heart and soul. When we pass this examination we have learned everything, whereas for the school examination we need only a very limited knowledge. For this vast inner knowledge we have to study. Our study is our sincere prayer and meditation. Sincerity plays a great part. If we meditate with intense sincerity even for two minutes, that is better than sitting in so-called meditation for two hours and thinking of our children, our friends, our enemies, our jobs and what not.

In India there are village women who say, "We meditate for six or eight hours every day. But God is so unkind, He never listens to our prayers." But what do they really do? They start meditation, and then they begin thinking of their cow. The cow is grazing and they wonder if it is entering into somebody else's territory and if it will be beaten. Their minds are roaming in the world of imagination, and then they say, "I have meditated for so many hours." But how many times did they even think of God, let alone feel God's Presence in their heart? The whole time they were uttering God's Name, but they were thinking of their cow or of some other trivial thing. What kind of result can anyone expect from this kind of meditation?

If we can remain for five minutes without any thought in our minds, divine or undivine, good or bad, then we immediately get the reflection of our soul. The soul represents our divine perfection both in our outer and in our inner life. Through pure meditation without thought, we become able to reflect our inner divinity.