Table of Contents
Part I — Discourses
Part II — Interview on the Steve Powers Show, WMCA-AM Radio
- Steve Powers: I’d like to introduce you to a special guest. His name is Sri Chinmoy. I welcome you, Sri Chinmoy. My first question is: when did you feel that you wanted to devote your life to spirituality?
- Steve Powers: You are not an anti-intellectual as such, are you? You do believe in the intellect?
- Steve Powers: Many people get up in the morning, swallow a quick breakfast, run out of the house and go to their subway, get to work and get completely involved with everyday survival. And before the end of the day it's pretty tough to sit back and take a spiritual view of what's going on because you have to go out there and hustle. You have to earn a living. Is there a way of integrating the spiritual life into what we call the economic life?
- Steve Powers: Do you believe that God provides?
- Steve Power: Now, let us go to our phones. Good morning, you are live on WMCA.
- Steve Powers: When you say, Sri Chinmoy, that someone should look at his Guru as an instrument of God, are you saying that he should accept whatever the Guru tells him without question?
- Caller: If you learn peace and serenity from a Guru, you may have peace and serenity in your own mind and heart, but what do you do about people in the street who are not the same way?
- Caller: How do you know whether you are speaking to God or just speaking to yourself and saying it's God?
- Steve Powers: I think one of the callers was asking, in effect: if I become sensitive and mellow and spiritual, will I not get eaten up on the street by the sharks? Do you know what I mean by that?
- Steve Powers: One of the problems I think people have is that even if they pray and meditate or if they just try to be good, when they go out into the world they find there are people there just waiting to rip them off. They see no justice.
- Caller: I was brought up in my daily life to ask God to help me with the things that I wanted out of life. But I find that I don't have any of the things I wanted, and now God is asking me to do things for Him rather than to expect things from Him.
- Caller: I have tried for several years to become a more spiritual person in my own way, with very little knowledge of it. I had one or two experiences which have frightened me. I don't understand them and yet I believe in them. I would like to ask Sri Chinmoy how I could continue to further my knowledge and develop myself so that I could begin to experience more.
- Steve Powers: Sri Chinmoy, I know people who are most kind and gentle and yet have no belief in God. They seem to be fine human beings even though they have no interest in spirituality. From your point of view, do they need realisation of what you are talking about?
- Caller: I was trying to give some healing to my father who was not too well, and I felt some energy moving in my hands. Am I right to feel that this and other kinds of experiences that I’ve had may be coming from God?
- Steve Powers: If there is a healing power, why do we need specific methods in order to heal? In other words, let's assume that God is the Source and He is capable of healing whomever He wishes. Why do certain people feel that they have to go through a number of incantations, wave the hand over the disturbed area four times to the right, three times to the left and so on? Why these systems?
- Caller: I have intellectual pursuits, but I do believe in a very, very deep spiritual life and I have become much more of what I would call a human being. But the more you become that, the more you are eaten, as you said before, by the sharks, by the life around you. What is to be done?
- Caller: If God is all-loving, why does He permit suffering?
- Steve Powers: If I drop a hammer on your foot, will you feel suffering or will you feel delight?
- Caller: I recently made a decision to change my lifestyle and let my family and friends know I was living a spiritual life. Instantly I was besieged with a barrage of complaints and criticisms.
- Caller: I had a deeper study of religion for about seven years, which gave me a closer relationship to God. I tried to see the good in everyone around me, always to see them as God, as spiritual beings, as good children. At this time I lost a son in an accident. How am I supposed to accept this in my life? Is it God's plan, or is this my reward for being good?
Part III — Questions and answers
- Question: What is the best way to be in a divine consciousness when we are working very hard?
- Question: What is the difference between determination and will-power?
- Question: Is there a difference between 'will' and 'will-power'?
- Question: How can we get will-power from determination?
- Question: How can I best inspire others to lead a spiritual life?
- Question: Guru, when you want to express the divine music of the Beyond, do you feel that the instruments that you play — such as esraj and flute — convey properly what you want to convey?
- Question: Will the inner music ever be heard outwardly on earth?
- Question: I know it helps my meditation to have an inner cry, but when I have the inner cry I always feel that I can cry more.
- Question: Guru, whenever a really spiritual or devoted feeling comes to me, I always sneeze. This breaks the mood completely and I never regain it.
- Question: I take the vibration of other people easily. How can I transform this into a divine quality?
- Question: Why can't we get up in the morning?
- Question: Is that why it is harder to get up after you have been asleep for a longer time? Sometimes when I sleep for only a short time it is easier to get up.
- Question: Are there certain times in the day when you should not sleep?
- Question: If we slept for two or three hours at night and then got up for a half hour and read your books or meditated and prayed and then went back to sleep, would that be better?
