What is meditation? 

Essentially meditation is a tool to raise our consciousness or awareness, and in doing so allows us a  freer access to the qualities of peace, love,  joy, truth and light.  Generally speaking, any form of this practice will involve quieting the mind.  This can be done through various techniques involving  breath work, visualization, chanting and more.  When we develop the capacity to quiet our mind, we can bring our awareness or consciousness to other parts of our being.  In this particular form of meditation, Sri Chinmoy recommends concentrating on the spiritual heart, the where we find peace, love, joy and bliss in infinite measure. 

 According to Sri Chinmoy, “Meditation is the invocation of some higher force or higher reality into the lower part of our existence. The higher and lower parts are both ours, but the higher realities which we try to bring down during meditation are conscious of their oneness with God, whereas the lower realities in us are not aware of it. When we meditate, we invoke the higher realities to enter into the lower realities and make them feel that they also belong to God. So meditation is the invocation of our higher part into our lower part in order to illumine and convince the lower that it can also eventually be as good, as divine, as perfect as the higher in us, provided it receives the light that is descending from above. Then, when the lower realities are illumined properly, they will be able to claim God the same way the higher realities claim God.”  Sri Chinmoy, Sri Chinmoy speaks, part 5, Agni Press, 1976