So many of our problems and shortcomings arise from impurity in our mind and vital. Lack of purity in our thoughts, feelings and perceptions leads to confusion, misunderstanding and suffering. Yet searching for purity in our mind and vital is a fool’s errand, doomed to disappointment.

Purity cannot be conjured, manufactured or willed into existence; it cannot arise from thinking about or merely wishing for it. For the mind and vital to experience and acquire purity, they must open themselves to purity’s source – the light of meditation flowing from our spiritual heart and soul.

Purity is at once soft, gentle, sweet – and the most powerful of all qualities.

Purity and light are inter-expressive: purity is the breath of light, light the face of purity.
Because many of us find it difficult to conceptualise or visualise purity, we may find ourselves all at sea when we are urged to invoke or meditate on purity. It is simpler for many, to invoke and meditate instead on light: when light appears in our meditation, it invariably comes arm in arm with purity.

All that is impure within us – limited and limiting thoughts, feelings, weaknesses, problems – can and must be expunged by the twin spiritual detergents, light and purity.

Sri Chinmoy offers a beautiful, powerful meditation to achieve this:

“Please try to feel a white column of light coming up from your heart centre. Imagine that this white column of light has pierced the top of your head and is stationed three inches above you. Now you can start meditating. After a while try to feel that you are nothing other than that light. Feel that it is absolutely your own existence. When you feel it as your own existence, all your problems will be unmistakably solved.”
– Sri Chinmoy