Questions and answers —- Guru in Puerto Rico

AUM 289-293. These questions were put to Sri Chinmoy on 12 July 1967 during one of the question periods held at the Aum Centre, Santurce, Puerto Rico where Guru spent six weeks last summer.

Question: Sometimes in my meditations, I come to think about the feeling of Eternity, you know. I come to feel that human beings have lived forever and will live forever. This feeling, instead of causing me pleasure and a good sensation, on the contrary causes me great anguish and pain. I feel then that I am all alone, that I am living a life of my own, different from everything. I feel that I have no world left, that by the power of my mind, I have destroyed the world and am alone by myself. This thought causes me a great deal of pain and I have wanted to mention this state of mind. I want to know if I am taking a wrong path.

Sri Chinmoy: When, in your meditation, you feel that you are lonely, alone, it is not actually the loneliness of the human being. At that time you get a glimpse of the SOLE. This Sole pervades all. We call it Brahman, the One without a second. When you feel that you are lonely, it is the sense of your unconscious oneness with the Absolute Oneness. But when the physical, the vital and the mind are not transformed to a considerable degree, they are afraid of this superloneliness. It is not actually loneliness, as I have said, it is the sense of the Oneness. You see the Reality: you are One pervading everything.

Now, what is actually happening in your meditation is that at times your aspiration, before it reaches its goal or before it finds its abode in the Goal, ceases. Your heart's mounting flames rises upward, but there are a few stops and breaks. If there were a gradual and continuous flight and if it were uninterrupted, then you would not feel the loneliness at the lower levels of your consciousness. Please try to keep your aspiration uninterrupted at all times. The inner runner must complete his race divine.

The infinite Eternity and the eternity that you are speaking of is in the motto of our Aum Centres: "Man is Infinity's Heart, Man is Eternity's Breath, Man is Immortality's Life.” The breath Eternity possesses is man. Most of us have had countless lives and some of us will have countless more. In your case, it is the divine realisation or the spiritual realisation that you need. One can attain the achievements of twenty incarnations in one lifetime provided one takes to spirituality in all sincerity and dedication and listens to one's spiritual guide most devotedly. Since you have the intense aspiration, you are accomplishing it successfully. That is why the spiritual masters say, "Take to the spiritual life and enter into the divine. This divine is your own infinite self. The sooner you start your journey, the better for you."

When you live the spiritual life, you live in Eternity. This Eternity does not present itself as a problem, but as an inspiration, encouragement, aspiration and illumination. It is Eternity that is constantly carrying us into the immortal Self and that immortal Self is our real Self.