Russell Wilson: Do you advocate meditating with the eyes open or closed?

Sri Chinmoy: The eyes should be half open. If you keep your eyes wide open, there is often tremendous tension. If you keep your eyes closed, on the other hand, you may fool yourself. You may think you are meditating when actually you are in the world of lethargy and sleep. You may think that you have meditated for ten minutes when most of that time you have been asleep. It is not that you have to meditate for a set amount of time. No! What is important is to meditate until you get peace of mind, until you feel that love, joy and purity have entered into your system and filled it to the brim.

If you keep your eyes half open, you are in control of both the inner world and the outer world. Half your consciousness is in the inner world and half is in the outer world. This is called the meditation of the lion. I tell my students to meditate with their eyes half open so that they can communicate perfectly with both worlds. This is the safest way.