Question: How can one still one's mind in meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Try to breathe in as slowly and as quietly as possible, so that if you place a tiny thread right in front of your nose it will not even move. Then you will see that your meditation is going to be deep and your mind will be very calm and quiet.

Then, imagine something very vast, and calm and quiet. When you start meditating, feel that inside you is a vast ocean and that you have dived deep within. There at the bottom it is all tranquility, tranquility’s flood.

The most important thing is practice. Today your mind acts like a monkey. This restless mind is knocking all the time at your heart’s door and disturbing the poise of the heart. In this world everybody has pride, vanity and self-esteem. So if you keep your heart’s door closed each time the mind comes, if you do not pay any attention to the mind, then after some time the mind will find it beneath its dignity to bother you. I have seen where my disciples did not open their heart’s door when the mind started knocking. They did not give a response from the heart, and the heart remained unperturbed. The heart opened its door wide only to the soul’s Light, and listened only to the dictates of the soul.

Thought is from the mental world. But you also have the heart, the identification-world. When you remain in the heart, that means that you are identifying yourself with the soul. The soul is beyond ideas, beyond thought. Instead of concentrating on the mind proper, if you can focus all your concentration on the heart, then the reality that looms large inside the heart automatically gives you an access to the soul. If you concentrate and meditate on the reality that is inside the heart, this reality comes forward.

If you concentrate in the mind, naturally thought will come and bother you. But if you concentrate on the heart, then the problem is solved. So always try to meditate on the heart and try to bring the soul to the fore. The soul, which is a direct representative of God, is the eternal reality in us.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Experiences of the higher worlds, Agni Press, 1977
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/ehw