Psychic power and will-power
This lecture was given by Sri Chinmoy on 8 October 1976 at the Loeb Student Center of New York University in New York.Psychic power and will-power
AUM. I wish to offer a short talk to you on psychic power and will-power, but before I do, I wish to make a fervent request to all of you. That is, to make a sincere attempt to become one with the psychic power-consciousness and the will-power-consciousness. We shall meditate together and this meditation will be founded on our spiritual imagination. For a few seconds or for a minute or so we shall try to imagine inside the very depth of our heart, the golden dawn. We shall imagine the golden dawn. This golden dawn is nothing short of our psychic power-consciousness.All present try to meditate on the golden dawn with Sri Chinmoy.
AUM. Now let us meditate on our forehead. Let us imagine that it is now midday. It is twelve o’clock and the sun is very, very bright. It is a blazing sun inside our forehead, in between the eyebrows but slightly above. There burns a blazing sun and it is twelve o’clock noon. This is for our identification with the will-power consciousness.
Seekers present join Sri Chinmoy in meditating on this blazing sun.
We have meditated on the psychic power consciousness by imagining the golden dawn inside the very depth of our hearts. We have meditated on the will-power consciousness by imagining the blazing sun, the midday sun, inside our forehead, inside our third eye.
Now I wish to give a short talk on psychic power and will-power. Psychic power is the power of our aspiring heart. We have a human heart which is just a muscle, and we have a spiritual heart which is an aspiration centre. When we use the term aspiring heart, we refer to our spiritual heart. So psychic power is the power of our spiritual heart which is within us, in the very depth of our human heart. Will-power is the power of our daring mind, the mind proper that is inside our head. It constantly challenges reality to bring about perfection in reality or to get satisfaction from reality.
Psychic power is the power of oneness, conscious oneness, constant oneness, illumining oneness and fulfilling oneness. It is oneness with others, oneness with many and oneness with all. It is oneness with Infinity.
Will-power is the power of newness: conscious newness and continuous newness, newness in thought, newness in deed, newness in dream, newness in reality.
Psychic power is a friendship-power. It awakens the friend in all. It sees no enemies around it, only friends. It looks around and sees nothing but friendship. Friendship reigns supreme.
Will-power quite often plays the role of a leader. Consciously or deliberately it manifests itself through leadership. Again it very often unconsciously plays the role of a leader and subsequently does not know what its objective was, i.e. whether it was perfection or satisfaction, illumination or salvation. It totally forgets about the objective because it made an unconscious effort. So in a broad sense, psychic power is friendship and willpower is leadership.
Psychic power is the truth-power that ultimately prevails. India’s motto runs, Satyameva jayate: “Truth alone prevails;” nanritam: “not falsehood.” Psychic power always feels the necessity of truth-realisation. It feels that if it can identify itself with the Ultimate Truth, then it will last forever, as the Truth itself will last.
Will-power is constantly daring, challenging, becoming and fulfilling the reality the way it feels the reality has to be manifested and fulfilled. Sometimes before it exercises its power, it enters deep within to get inner light. But quite often, by dint of the force accumulated inside the mind, inside the brain, inside the forehead or inside the third eye, it exercises its own capacity or reality. This is what will-power does.
Psychic power is our soulful oneness, oneness with the Source, oneness with God’s Silence-Reality, oneness with God’s Sound-Reality. It is oneness with what God has and what God is. This oneness we have felt and heard in the supreme utterance of the Saviour Christ: “I and my Father are one.” This lofty, supreme utterance was founded on the Christ’s soulful identification or oneness with his Heavenly Father. This is the psychic power that expressed, revealed or manifested the supreme reality. Then again, the Christ exercised will-power boldly, unfalteringly, unmistakably, with utmost inner conviction, when he declared: “I am the Way and I am the Goal.”
Psychic power is the blossoming flower of our consciousness. Inside us there is a gratitude-flower. This gratitude-flower slowly, steadily and unerringly blossoms, and the world devotedly, sincerely and unreservedly enjoys the beauty and fragrance of the gratitude-flower that is blossoming within us.
Will-power is the elephant-power that we feel within us and around us. This will-power we can use in a constructive way or in a destructive way. The sincere seekers, not to speak of the spiritual Masters, always use will-power in a constructive way. But the insincere seekers use this power in a destructive way. Psychic power is always used in a constructive way. It is the power of a little child. The psychic being acts as the soul’s representative on earth. It always tries to please the eternal Father in the Father’s own way; so it is constructive. But he who has will-power is, in terms of earthly years or in terms of evolution, like an adult. He may not ask his father how to operate, for he thinks and he feels that he knows how to deal with everything; that he knows the whole world. As a result, while he is using his will-power, he may make a himalayan blunder. Although he is using it for a constructive purpose, the result may be totally destructive.
Psychic power is softness, sweetness and forgiveness. But forgiveness is actually justice-light which operates in and through compassion-reality. This compassion-reality is the oneness-reality with the blind earth-consciousness. By virtue of his complete, constant and inseparable oneness with the world, the Christ said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But if an individual wants to challenge the world, wants to lord it over the world, wants to maintain supremacy all the time, then he will not walk along the road of sweetness, softness, kindness, affection and love, not to speak of forgiveness. No, he will always play the role of an autocrat, a dictator, a sovereign. He will try to identify himself with Caesar: “I came, I saw, I conquered,” or with Napoleon Bonaparte. With indomitable energy either he will try to conquer or devour the world.
Psychic power is the child-consciousness, the divine and immortal child-consciousness within us. This child-consciousness says to the Father Almighty: “Father, eternal Father, infinite Father, I love You and I need You. I love You only and I need You only…” The Almighty Father immediately says: “My child, you already have Me. You have Me in My entirety. You have My Vision, transcendental Vision. You have My Reality, universal Reality. Both My transcendental Vision and My universal Reality are all yours. You are part and parcel of their existence and they are part and parcel of your existence.”
Will-power is the adult consciousness within us. The adult says to his Father: “Father, I want You and I have You.” The Father says: “Are you sure that you have Me?” The son says: “Yes, I am sure.” The Father says: “Then prove it.” When the son can prove to the Father that he has got his Father and can claim his Father as his own, divinely, triumphantly and supremely, then the Father says: “Son, you are right. Now conquer ignorance. If you conquer ignorance, you will totally satisfy Me. This ignorance is the root cause of world perdition, world-destruction. I want My world to prosper, to grow and glow. Conquer world-ignorance.”
To the psychic-child consciousness the Father says: “My child, I have already told you that you have Me. Now claim Me here, there, everywhere; within and without, claim Me. If you only claim Me, that will be more than enough for you to satisfy Me in My own way. Just claim Me at every moment as your own, very own. That is what I want from you: your acceptance. And the moment you can claim Me soulfully, devotedly, unreservedly and unconditionally, you can become what I have and what I am. What I supremely am and what I eternally have, you shall become.”
Psychic power is the growing, glowing, illumining and fulfilling divinity within us. Will-power is the daring, challenging, marshalling, devouring, conquering, fulfilling and manifesting reality within us. These two powers can work together if they want to. If the younger brother and the older brother want to work together, then that is absolutely the right thing, the ideal thing. The older one will get softness, sweetness, kindness and all charming qualities from the younger one; and the younger one will get all dynamic and ignorance-challenging qualities from the older one. The younger one will get the capacity to manifest divinity on earth triumphantly along with the older one.
Let us call psychic power our eye-power and willpower our arm-power. With our eye-power we envision reality. This is undoubtedly a power of the highest order. Our arm-power is our strength, physical and otherwise. When we use our willpower, we want the reality to act in our own way. But our own way can easily become God’s way provided we exercise our eye-power and become one with God’s Will.
If we dive deep within before we use our willpower, then it can never be an obstacle, it can never be a hindrance. Far from it! Only we shall become one with God’s adamantine Will and God’s ever-transcending Reality. Will-power as such is not bad or discouraging. It depends on who uses it and how it is used. If the sincere seeker uses it on the strength of his oneness, in accordance with God’s Will, then will-power is a veritable blessing, instead of an unfortunate curse.
Psychic power right from the beginning plays the role of dependence, divine dependence on the loving, compassionate Will or guidance of his Beloved Father Supreme. In psychic power the question of making deplorable mistakes does not arise. This power is safe. The child feels that the Father, the Source, will always take care of him, will guide him, mould him, shape him, perfect him and satisfy him the way the Father eternally wants to.
