For this weeks meditation exercise, we move to the realm of creative visualisations – using our imagination to create a reality that inspires the mind and brings forward the inner propensities. This is not the act of day-dreaming or creating false realities, but rather the act of bringing forward realities that already exist within us.

Sri Chinmoy's words:

Kindly imagine a flower inside your heart, a rose. Feel that the rose is not fully blossomed; it is in a bud form. After you have meditated for two or three minutes, please try to imagine that petal by petal the rose is blossoming. See and feel the rose 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 the flower-heart or heart-flower has covered your whole body. Your body is no longer here; from your head to your feet you feel the fragrance of the rose. If you look at your feet, immediately you feel the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your knee, you feel the fragrance of a rose. If you look at your head, you feel the fragrance of a rose. Everywhere you feel the rose. The beauty and the fragrance and the light of the rose have permeated your whole body.

When you feel from your head to your feet that you have become only the beauty, fragrance, light and delight of the rose, then you are ready to place yourself at the Feet of the Beloved Supreme, who is my Guru, your Guru, everybody's Guru. You feel, "Lord Supreme, now I place myself at Your Feet." Then your meditation is over. (Source)

Question: When we imagine something, is that a mental process?

Sri Chinmoy: Imagination is not mental hallucination. Hallucinations come from the subconscious plane. This subconscious plane can be in the mind, it can be in the vital or it can be in the gross physical. But when you imagine, there already reality exists. There would have been no scientific discoveries if there had been no imagination. Imagination itself is a reality, but you have to be in the flow of imagination.  >>  Read more

Do not discard imagination
Imagination is a solid power;
Imagination is a reality
In the higher worlds.
   – Sri Chinmoy