We know it is important to remain calm and quiet for some time after meditation, to allow the peace, light and bliss we have experienced to settle, be absorbed and take root in our consciousness. It is best to not speak, eat a meal or engage the mind in complex tasks for a while. Instead, read spiritual books, listen to spiritual music or enjoy some gentle exercise.
Yet assimilation starts during meditation itself. If we feel we are a spectator in our meditation, we will never assimilate our experiences, for we will feel them to be separate from ourselves, something foreign which can be lost or taken away. Only when we see ourselves in our experience, when we can claim our experience as our own deeper and true self, can assimilation be permanent.
What quality do we need to cultivate, to develop this capacity for identification, and hence, assimilation? Sri Chinmoy speaks of the primary role of gratitude in our hearts:
“I ask my disciples to assimilate the Peace, Light and Bliss they get during their meditation. Unless and until it has been assimilated, there is no guarantee that it will come back again or that it will remain permanently in the system.
“Assimilation means conscious, consecrated oneness with the Source, conscious and consecrated oneness with the Source. We receive something, and then we have to think of the Source. Where did it come from? It did not come from you; it came from the Source. And then you have to feel your absolute oneness with the Source, and this oneness you can establish on the strength of your gratitude-heart, a grateful heart. So, when your grateful heart has become inseparably one with the Source, then assimilation has taken place.”
– Sri Chinmoy
No matter how tasty it is, if food is not properly digested, we derive no energy or nourishment from it; even so, if the peace, light and bliss we experience in meditation are not assimilated, they will simply evaporate and our meditation will not have any lasting benefit.
Just as there are both inner and outer steps that help us to prepare for meditation, so there are several inner and outer factors which help us assimilate our meditation.
Outwardly, the simplest, safest and surest way to assimilate our meditation, is to remain in silence for some time. During this silence, our subtle nerves are absorbing and being nourished by our inner experience: the moment we open our mouth and start talking, or listen to someone else, our mind is engaged and we are drawn away from the subtle, sweet, soft realm of the heart. During this time, we can read spiritual writings, listen to spiritual music, hum quietly to ourselves or go for a gentle walk somewhere quiet. Then when we do talk, it should initially be spiritually focussed, not discussion of mundane, disturbing or complex matters.
While it is not harmful to take some fruit or a light drink, we should not eat a proper meal for at least an hour after meditation, as the process of physical digestion drains our energy and dulls our subtle sensitivity.
As for the inner approach to assimilation, in addition to consciously cultivating gratitude and treasuring our experiences, Sri Chinmoy gave this very clear and simple advice:
“You can assimilate all the beautiful experiences only by increasing, deliberately increasing, joy in the heart, joy in the mind, joy in the vital, joy in the physical — always joy, joy, joy! Joy is the answer to help you assimilate.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To do anything well, requires our preparation. Whether climbing a mountain, sitting for an exam, baking a pie, driving to the beach, or even going to bed, we need to make suitable preparations in both our outer environment and inner focus.
Meditation is an inner journey, so our preparation involves reorienting our consciousness away from its usual absorption in the outer world, and towards the inner.
Take a shower or a proper wash to give you the feeling of a fresh start. Wear light-coloured, loose-fitting clothing. Choose a place where you can be alone, quiet, undisturbed and undistracted by outer influences and obligations such as work, family and friends. Switch off and put away all devices with a wifi or phone connection. Use a candle, flowers and incense if these objects inspire you – anything which will reflect back to you the qualities we need in ourselves for meditation – simplicity, purity, beauty and sincerity.
Because digestion takes so much energy and dulls our subtle nerves, it is best to avoid eating anything substantial for a few hours prior to meditating.
We cannot just discard our outer consciousness like taking off a coat: it takes time for the waves of outer thoughts and preoccupations to subside. Spend some time in quiet without talking: read, sing or listen to spiritual music, all the while our mind is receding and our heart gently opening.
It is pointless to set off without a clear purpose and objective. An archer will never hit the target without first taking aim. First take careful aim, then shoot. After sitting to meditate, take a minute to preview the ideal meditation you are about to enter into. Prepare your defences against rogue thoughts and distractions, and set your sights clearly on your goal.
We want to have everything, and we want to be perfect. We sometimes expect that we should be able to have everything and be perfect for the asking. Indeed, many of us take up meditation with the idea that its practice will enable us to attain perfection, while experiencing and possessing everything we fancy.
Unfortunately, our desire for perfection and our desire to have and possess whatever we want, are almost always on an unseen collision course. The desire to have everything arises from our lower, finite self; whereas perfection is the exclusive prerogative of our higher, infinite self. Our lower self sees its own desire-fulfillment and perfection as one and the same; while our higher self knows perfection can flow only from our emancipation from desire-indulgence.
Sri Chinmoy addressed this predicament when asked: “What keeps us from attaining perfection?”
“What keeps us from attaining perfection? It is our self-indulgence. In self-indulgence we feel that there is something absolutely necessary in our life, and that is pleasure. When we cry for pleasure and want to remain in pleasure, to become pleasure itself, perfection is a far cry. But when we cry for divine Joy, Delight, Bliss, at that time we enter into the ocean of perfection. If we cry continuously, we learn how to swim in the sea of perfection.
“When we have an inner cry for Delight, we jump into the sea of perfection. This is the first step. But when this inner cry becomes constant, we swim in the sea of perfection. When we keep Joy and Delight as our goal, perfection automatically grows in us, and slowly, steadily we become the sea of perfection. But, what now keeps us from perfection is our fondness for pleasure-life and our indulgence in pleasure-life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Consciousness is expressed in myriad forms and levels. Each level is its own realm of being. From each level of consciousness to the next is a progression, an evolution. From stone to plant consciousness, from plant to animal, from animal to human, each level is a preparation, containing within itself the seeds or precursor of the next, just as the caterpillar embodies the future butterfly.
Between one level and the next, there is no greater leap than from the human to the divine, for here is the leap from the finite to the infinite, from semi-consciousness to super-consciousness, from bondage to liberation. As humans, we prefigure the divine. So, how are we to expedite this leap of evolution, how to embrace and blossom into the divine within?
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“Constantly you have to cry deep within yourself. Then you will see that your human consciousness is bathing in the sea of the divine consciousness. You have to feel the necessity of the divine consciousness inside you and around you. And you have to know that the human consciousness, which you represent right now, is not the goal. If you are totally dissatisfied with the human consciousness, then you have moved one step forward towards your goal. If you feel that the human life has disappointed and deserted you and that the divine life alone can fulfil you, then only the divine consciousness can enter into you. And when the divine consciousness enters into you, then you will feel that this divine consciousness will not negate your human consciousness. On the contrary, it will transform the human consciousness. It does not reject; it does not cast aside anything human. It purifies and illumines the human consciousness and transforms it into its own divine consciousness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
This final part of our series on “The Inner Cry”, comprises Sri Chinmoy’s answers to two questions, and two poems. Both questions concern the process and requirements to progress from our present ignorance to our future perfection.
Firstly, Sri Chinmoy was asked: “What is your process for enlightenment and what do you ask of your disciples?”
Sri Chinmoy came straight to the point, reducing his entire teaching to a single requirement: “There is only one thing that I ask of my disciples: to aspire. By aspiration we mean inner cry. We cry for name and fame in the outer world, but in the inner world we cry for peace, light and bliss in infinite measure. So I ask my disciples to cry inwardly to achieve peace, light and bliss and to grow into peace, light and bliss.”
– Sri Chinmoy
On another occasion, Sri Chinmoy was asked: “You call us ‘seekers’! What has been lost?”
Sri Chinmoy replied:
“What has been lost? Our conscious oneness with the Absolute Supreme has been lost. Through our inner search we are trying to gain or regain our conscious inseparable oneness with Him. We are seeking for Truth and Light. Once upon a time, we were possessors of this infinite Truth and Light. But unfortunately, we made friends with ignorance-night and lost our inseparable oneness with Infinity’s Light and Bliss. It is through conscious seeking — our conscious inner search and inner mounting cry — that at God’s choice Hour we shall once again get back our inner wealth.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Two final poems:
“The outer smile
Is beautiful.
The inner cry
Is infinitely more beautiful
And blissful.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“What illumines my mind?
My inner faith.
What liberates my heart?
My inner sincerity.
What immortalises my life?
My inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“A moment of inner cry is a day of outer prosperity.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In our outer lives, prosperity is associated with material wealth and riches, popularity and power, comfort and luxury, abundance, wellbeing, winning, high achievement and success in any field. Yet outer prosperity is fleeting, meaningless, unsustainable and unfulfilling if it does not flow from a sincere inner cry. An inner cry is the only reliable guarantor of prosperity’s integrity and longevity.
Beyond prosperity, what we all yearn for, is satisfaction. Satisfaction is the Holy Grail of human longing, embracing our inner and outer existence. There is nothing we want or need more, than to be truly satisfied in all our being.
From where, then, and how does satisfaction arise? On what does it depend?
“Our true satisfaction
Entirely depends
On our own sincere inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry is the source and sustenance of all satisfaction in our life. If we are without an inner cry, then what is there to satisfy? For us to feel and achieve satisfaction, something must be satisfied. What is that something? Our inner cry.
“You can never reach complete satisfaction
In your heavenward journey
Without your heart’s aspiration-cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry envisions our goal, takes aim at the goal, sponsors and guides our journey and ultimately unites us with our satisfaction-goal. Our inner cry is the spark that ignites our aspiration, the fuel that inspires our meditation and the vehicle that carries us to our satisfaction.
Satisfaction is not a final or static state: lasting satisfaction must ever grow, deepen and expand. Lasting satisfaction can flow only from an ever-fresh and continually transcending inner cry.
“My satisfaction-peace
Is not the success
Of my outer smile
But the progress
Of my inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
This is an abridged version of a story by Sri Chinmoy:
“Master, please help me,” said the young man. “For two weeks, I have hardly been able to sleep. I wake up with a desperate feeling in my heart. I feel that I am in desperate need of spirituality. I have tried in vain to understand this feeling. Can you help me?”
The Master replied, “You are crying for the fulfilment of your inner cry. It is not with the mind that you are crying; you are crying from the inmost recesses of your heart. The inner heart has infinite capacity. It is not limited like the mind. One does not approach the highest Truth with the mind.”
“Why am I feeling this cry, Master? What am I really crying for?”
“When we cry deep within,” the Master said, “it is because we feel the necessity of Peace, Light and Bliss. When we have this kind of inner cry, then these qualities either come to the fore from within or descend from above. We can develop the inner cry by giving more importance to what we really need in our life. When we give importance to our true necessity, then automatically our inner cry, our inner sincerity, is bound to increase. The more we feel that we desperately need Peace, Light and Bliss, the sooner our inner cry increases.”
“How can we fulfil this necessity?” asked the seeker.
“In the outer world, when we are hungry we try to fulfil our hunger. Similarly, in the spiritual life when we are really hungry for Peace, Light and Bliss, we will go to a spiritual Master who can fulfil our hunger. First of all he will increase our inner hunger and then he will fulfil it.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“In your outer life
Never
Be sparing in smiling.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Crying and smiling are generally considered to be opposites, and mutually exclusive – we cry when we are sad; we smile when we are happy. And some might consider that an emphasis on the inner cry in our spiritual life, might be reflected in a seriousness or sternness, if not sadness, in our outer expression. Yet in this poem, Sri Chinmoy is advocating at once, an unstinting inner cry alongside an unstinting outer smile.
Crying and smiling are only opposites in our superficial emotions. In the spiritual realm they are twins, intimately connected. In another poem, Sri Chinmoy states succinctly:
“The inner cries
Activate
The outer smiles.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Fleeting pleasure may evoke an outer smile, but this smile will not last. Only true happiness can produce a genuine, lasting smile, and true happiness can only be found within. It has to be searched and cried for. A genuine outer smile thus flows from, indeed cannot exist without a sincere inner cry.
“An inner cry
Is a brighter smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The inner cry and outer smile and not merely related, they are the two faces of one coin, inseparable:
“Each inner cry
Is indeed
A hope-strengthening
God-Smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry and outer smile are God’s representatives within us, and our direct connection with God.
“When my inner cry is pure
God’s outer Smile is sure.
My ascending cry
And
God’s descending Smile
Inseparable
Ever shall remain.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Finally, Sri Chinmoy reveals the secret roles of the outer smile and inner cry:
“With our outer smile we touch the Feet of God.
With our inner cry we become the Crown of God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Sometimes, despite our efforts in meditation, we feel a sense of barrenness in our life; a lack of excitement, joy, purpose, colour, light, interest, motivation, inspiration and even hope. This feeling can be fleeting, or it can set in and permeate our consciousness; it may lead to us becoming lethargic, irritable, sarcastic, careless, callous or depressed. If not remedied, this barrenness can estrange us from our heart, and eventually compel us to give up meditation and the spiritual life altogether. Fortunately, there is a remedy, close to hand. Our inner cry expels barrenness and shields us from its future return.
Sri Chinmoy wrote:
“If you feel barren inside the physical, the vital or the physical mind, that is a real problem. You have to try to get rid of this barrenness. You have to cry like a child and dig, dig, dig deep within yourself for God’s Compassion. Barrenness can be got rid of only by a constant inner cry. You need a higher life, a better life, something that will really satisfy you. This need is not desire; it is the longing to be something good, to become something divine and to please God in God’s own Way. If you cry and cry while digging and digging, you are bound to feel God’s Compassion from above.
“The more intense your inner cry for Light, Peace and Bliss, the larger your vessel becomes. Peace, Light and Bliss you have perfectly housed within you, for your heart-vessel is large. But when you cry, the vessel becomes larger and you feel that the qualities you have are not enough. At that moment your receptivity is increased, and you are bound to feel that God is bringing down more Peace, Light and Bliss into your system.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our Beloved Supreme, our Lord Absolute, our highest Self: by whatever words, Names, qualities or attributes we imagine, conceive of, or relate to God; whatever we believe, feel, know, or know that we do not know about God; whether we pray to, concentrate, meditate or contemplate on God – there is one need, one constant, one truth, one necessity – to answer our questions, fulfill our need, reveal and lead us to our goal
… our inner cry.
At the same time, if we can imagine that God has any need, and if we can imagine that God’s need is our love, devotion, surrender, service and conscious oneness with God and God’s Will, again there is one need, one constant, one truth, one necessity
… our inner cry.
For my sake, for God’s sake, for the sake of our mutual love and ever-blossoming oneness, my inner cry is everything.
Sri Chinmoy expresses this beautiful, profound, uplifting, liberating, exhilarating truth through numerous poems and songs that place my inner cry at the epicentre of my love for God, God’s love for me, my communion with God and our mutual journey towards our ultimate fulfilment:
“My heart’s inner cries
Are my very best presents
To my Lord Supreme.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“The same sublime Perfection-Truth
Is told and retold:
God treasures my sleepless inner cry —
His Ecstasy-Gold.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“My inner cries
And God’s outer Smiles
Mix together
And fulfil one another.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“If you can feel
That your heart’s inner cry
Is the only thing you have,
Then God will grant you
The thing He treasures most
In His own Life:
Sweetest Oneness-Satisfaction.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“God wants me.
I mean,
My life.
Gods needs me.
I mean,
My heart.
God loves me.
I mean,
My inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Someone remarked to Sri Chinmoy, that he was so concerned at work to please his boss, he would forget about his meditation and spiritual life.
Sri Chinmoy responded:
“The spiritual life is not a life of compromise. Either you accept God on His own terms or you accept the outer life on its terms; there is no in-between. You cannot be fifty per cent for God and fifty per cent for the ordinary, unaspiring world. If you try to compromise in that way, you are neither here nor there; you are finished.
“The things that you should take pride in are the very things that you are discarding because one of your co-workers may ridicule you or your boss may not promote you. If you do not value your own spirituality, your own divinity, then there will be nobody on earth to value it. You are not valuing your inner wealth. Your inner wealth is your real treasure, but you take it as only a grain of sand.
“Your inner treasure you have to cherish at every moment. At every moment you have to become your heart’s aspiring cry and your soul’s illumining smile. At every second you have to allow your inner cry to lead you, guide you, shape you and mould you. Your heart’s mounting inner cry wants to climb up to the highest height, but for the sake of outer success and outer comfort, you are destroying its upward flight. You are sacrificing and silencing your inner cry or throwing cold water on it. Your inner cry is like a ladder that will take you up, up, up; but you are not using the ladder. This is a most deplorable mistake that you will regret to the end of your life!”
– Sri Chinmoy
Living in a mind bound by time and space, we assume everything must age, must have a beginning and an end. How then, might we transcend the mind, how might we step beyond the progression of time into the eternal, where the very concept of age disappears?
Only one faculty of ours which is itself ageless, can take us beyond the mind, beyond time, beyond age, to where newness reigns supreme, as Sri Chinmoy writes:
“Is there anything that can never be old? Yes, there is something and that thing is my heart’s inner cry. This inner cry is ever new. Every day it assumes a new prayer-form, a new concentration-form, a new meditation-form. Every day it achieves something new from God. You may say that every day you can pray, but how can your prayer or meditation be new? But I wish to say that it is not only possible and practical, but inevitable.
“You may think Peace, Light, Bliss, Power and a few other attributes of God are enough for you. But I wish to say it is not true. God is infinite, and His attributes are infinite. So easily you can have an infinite variety of prayer, concentration and meditation. Each prayer can easily be new. Each concentration can easily be new. Each meditation can easily be new.
“Prayer defies age. Concentration defies age. Meditation defies age. Our inner cry is the mother and father of our prayer, concentration and meditation. So let us make friends with this inner cry. Let our body, vital, mind and heart make friends with this inner cry. With inner cry our entire existence, outer and inner, will become an ever new existence-reality, an ever new, ever fulfilling Dream of God in and through us.”
– Sri Chinmoy
