Question: Guru, how can we go deeper and deeper within to get out of the surface mind?

Sri Chinmoy: Every day you have to dig for some time, and then you become tired. So tomorrow again you dig. Every day you dig and every day you make a little progress. Then one day you get water. Inwardly also, if you want to reach Nectar, then you have to dig regularly. Here the digging apparatus is aspiration. The higher you go, the deeper you go. Aspiration is like a magnet. You go up and that magnet pulls you inward.

Three times a day you eat, so you can meditate at least three times a day also. And if you spend an hour for lunch, an hour for dinner, you can also spend an hour each time for meditation. This is what you feel. But you have to know that meditation is not like eating. If your mind is running all the time, you can spend hours and hours meditating, but you will make no progress. If you spend one hour trying to meditate, during that hour perhaps five minutes you can meditate well. But if you make up your mind that you will meditate only for five minutes, but meditate well, it does not happen. If you say, "I am selecting five minutes, and as soon as I enter into meditation, I will have a most sublime meditation," then usually this does not happen, especially not for the beginners.

So what all of you should try to do is this. If you are ready to meditate fifteen minutes, try to keep one hour aside. During that one hour, forty-five minutes you will spend only for preparation or for roaming in the world of fantasy. That is not the ideal thing, but that may be necessary if you are to have fifteen minutes of good meditation. But if you feel that you don't need forty-five minutes extra, that is very good. If you feel, "Once I start, I can run. I don't have to take a few preliminary starts," that is excellent. So, if it is necessary, you will take a few starts; and if it is not necessary, just from the beginning you shall cover the hundred-metre distance. You don't have to waste forty-five minutes in order to meditate for fifteen minutes.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The meditation-world, Agni Press, 1977
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