Meditation mantras are extremely popular with people at our classes, because it allows people to involve immediately. These recordings are arranged so that you can sing along with the music.

Aum Govindaya Nama (protection):

Aum Rudraya Nama (transformation):

Aum Aparajitaya Nama (invincibility):

Aum Amritaya Nama (nectar-delight):

Aum Shanti Supreme Beloved (inner and outer peace):

(source: www.radiosrichinmoy.org)

Meditation Podcast: The Vastness of the Sky

This guided meditation is a visualization of the sky, inviting you to identify with vastness. Voice: Jacky Spears. Music: Parichayaka Hammerl

Sri Chinmoy spoke about the quality of vastness in meditation:

If we can feel the existence of the vast ocean or the vast sky inside us, then we will find ourselves growing into this vastness. Meditation means our conscious growth in the infinite. In meditation, the mind becomes calm and silent and we consciously allow ourselves to be nurtured and nourished by Infinity itself. Meditation is our conscious awareness of the Vast, and from this point of our meditation we grow into the Vastness itself.

The following exercises are taken from Sri Chinmoy’s book Meditation

1. Breathing in peace and joy.

Each time you breathe in, try to feel that you are bringing infinite peace into your body. The opposite of peace is restlessness. When you breathe out, try to feel that you are expelling the restlessness within you and also the restlessness that you see all around you. When you breathe this way, you will find restlessness leaving you.

After practising this a few times, please try to feel that you are breathing in power from the universe, and when you exhale, feel that all your fear is coming out of your body.

After doing this a few times, try to feel that you are breathing in infinite joy and breathing out sorrow, suffering and melancholy.

2. Cosmic energy.

Feel that you are breathing in not air but cosmic energy. Feel that tremendous cosmic energy is entering into you with each breath, and that you are going to use it to purify your body, vital, mind and heart. Feel that there is not a single place in your being that is not being occupied by the flow of cosmic energy. It is flowing like a river inside you, washing and purifying your entire being.

Then, when you breathe out, feel that you are breathing out all the rubbish inside you — all your undivine thoughts, obscure ideas and impure actions. Anything inside your system that you call undivine, anything that you do not want to claim as your own, feel that you are exhaling.

3. The dot

If you want to develop the power of concentration, then here is an exercise you can try. First wash your face and eyes properly with cold water. Then make a black dot on the wall at eye level. Stand facing the dot, about ten inches away, and concentrate on it.

After a few minutes, try to feel that when you are breathing in, your breath is actually coming from the dot, and that the dot is also breathing in, getting its breath from you. Try to feel that there are two persons: you and the black dot. Your breath is coming from the dot and its breath is coming from you.

In ten minutes, if your concentration is very powerful, you will feel that your soul has left you and entered into the black dot on the wall.

At this time try to feel that you and your soul are conversing. Your soul is taking you into the soul’s world for realisation, and you are bringing the soul into the physical world for manifestation.

In this way you can develop your power of concentration very easily. But this method has to be practised. There are many things which are very easy with practice, but just because we do not practise them we do not get the result.

4. Becoming the soul

In order to purify your mind, the best thing to do is to feel every day for a few minutes during your meditation that you have no mind. Start by saying to yourself, “I have no mind, what I have is the heart.” Repeat this phrase 7 times out loud, and then in silence. Meditate on that reality.

Then after some time, say, “I do not have a heart. What I have is the soul.” Repeat this phrase 7 times out loud, and then in silence. Meditate on that reality. When you say, “I have the soul,” at that time you will be flooded with purity.

But again you have to go deeper and farther. So after some time, repeat the phrase “Not only do I have the soul, I am the
soul.” At that time, imagine the most beautiful child you have ever seen, and feel that your soul is infinitely more beautiful than that child. Repeat this phrase 7 times out loud, and then in silence.

The moment you can say and feel, “I am the soul,” and meditate on this truth, your soul’s infinite purity will enter into your heart. Then, from the heart, the infinite purity will enter into your mind. When you can truly feel that you are only the soul, the soul will purify your mind.

(adapted from Sri Chinmoy’s book “Meditation”)

5. The heart-rose

Kindly imagine a flower inside your heart. Suppose you prefer a rose. Imagine that the rose is not fully blossomed; it is still a bud. After you have meditated for two or three minutes, please try to imagine that petal by petal the flower is blossoming. See and feel the flower blossoming petal by petal inside your heart. Then, after five minutes, try to feel that there is no heart at all; there is only a flower inside you called ‘heart’. You do not have a heart, but only a flower. The flower has become your heart or your heart has become a flower.

After seven or eight minutes, please feel that this flower-heart has covered your whole body. Your body is no longer here; from your head to your feet you can feel the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your feet, immediately you experience the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your knee, you experience the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your hand, you experience the fragrance of a rose. Everywhere the beauty, fragrance and purity of the rose have permeated your entire body.

(from the book ‘Meditation: man-perfection in God-satisfaction’ by Sri Chinmoy)