Question: How does one learn to concentrate on the heart?

Sri Chinmoy: If you can concentrate on the tip of your finger, you can also concentrate on your heart. As you concentrate on anything — a picture, a candle, a flame, any material object — so also can you concentrate on the heart. You may close your eyes or look at a wall, but all the time you are thinking of the heart as a dear friend of yours. When this thinking becomes most intense, when it absorbs your entire attention, then you have gone beyond the ordinary way of thinking and entered into concentration. You cannot look physically at your spiritual heart, but you can focus all your attention on it. Then gradually, the power of your concentration enters into the heart and takes you completely out of the realm of the mind.

If you do not have purity in abundant measure, the best thing to do is to invoke purity first, then concentrate on the heart. If the heart is impure, if countless earthly desires are in possession of the heart, then no matter how sincerely you concentrate on the heart you will not be successful in your inner life. Purity plays a most important role in the spiritual life. Purity does not mean having a clean body. Purity is the feeling of having a living shrine deep in the inmost recesses of your heart. When you feel the divine presence of an inner shrine, automatically you are purified. At that time the concentration on the heart will be most effective, and when you can concentrate effectively, you are bound to become conscious of the spiritual heart within you.

When your concentration is good, then try to meditate. Meditation does not have to be in the head. As with concentration, you can also meditate anywhere. You can easily meditate in your heart. Once your meditation has become deep, once you have the capacity to have free access to your spiritual heart, then it will be quite easy for you to reach your spiritual heart.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Mind-confusion and heart-illumination, part 2, Agni Press, 1974
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