Question: How can we meditate twenty-four hours a day?

Sri Chinmoy: Nobody can meditate twenty-four hours a day. If you are always meditating, who will run your shop? People will come to buy your merchandise, and you will not be interested. So how are you going to sustain and manage your life if you are seated at one place twenty-four hours daily? First of all, you cannot constantly sit and meditate. It is impossible; you would die. Second, the world demands your attention and concern.

Your question should be, “How is it possible for us to have constant aspiration?” Constant aspiration you can have in each activity. Right now you are meditating here. From here you will go home and eat. When you are eating, instead of thinking of the outer world, you can meditate, or think of your Master. You can think of love, purest love, and how you can love the whole world. You can think of devotion and how you can devote your whole life to your Inner Pilot. You can think of surrender and how you can surrender your ignorant life to God. When you harbour these divine thoughts in your mind instead of undivine, silly thoughts, worldly thoughts, then what are you doing? You are meditating. People will think that you are doing nothing but eating. But you are doing something infinitely more significant.

Like this you can constantly aspire while you are in the store. It is not the money you get from the customer that is important. You are giving what you have and the customer is giving you what he has. But while you are giving, you have to feel that you are offering the light that you have in the form of the things you sell. And when a person gives you a five-dollar bill or a ten-dollar bill, don’t think of it as money, but think that that person is giving you light. Then your light and his light become one and when you are conducting your business in light — in your light and his light — you are aspiring.

In each activity you can bring down light and this light is the highest form of aspiration. Whatever you do, see the divine part, not the human part or earthly part, in your action. In this way you can constantly meditate for twenty-four hours. While you are talking and moving about, ask yourself what your attitude is, where your consciousness lies. Where your consciousness lies is of paramount importance. If you want to be totally conscious of the Highest even in your deep sleep, you can have this capacity if you constantly aspire twenty-four hours a day. The opportunity to aspire is given in and through each activity of yours. In each of your actions you can aspire.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Meditation: God's Blessing-Assurance, Agni Press, 1974
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