Question: When you are meditating on us and I am looking at you, I think perhaps I should try to be as humble, pure and receptive as possible. Is that right, or should I just forget about all this and keep my mind open?

Sri Chinmoy: It depends on the individual. If the individual is a student of mine, or a disciple of mine — that is to say, someone who has consciously given the responsibility for his spiritual life to me — if he becomes humble to me, if he becomes polite and very devoted, then he will get the utmost from me. If he is arrogant, stubborn and haughty, however, naturally he will not be able to receive anything from me.

Right now you are coming to the New York Centre, so you can consider yourself a student of mine. In your case, when you offer your humility, please feel that this humility is not touching my human personality. Feel that this humility is entering into the Supreme in me, who deserves everything from you. I am not anybody’s Guru. Your Guru, your Master, is God. Your real Master is inside me. My Master, my real Master, is inside you. Just because I have the inner light and inner wisdom, when you enter into me, I try to bring your aspiring soul to the fore. When you have a devoted feeling towards me, you become one with me and get what I have. I lived a life of spiritual discipline for twenty years in an ashram, and the inner peace, the inner light, the inner wisdom that I have gained, I offer to you.

In the beginning, when you are a student, it is better always to enter into the teacher’s heart consciously and with humility. This humility is not humiliation. When somebody is humiliated, he is crushed; but humility is a feeling of total oneness. You feel that you are absolutely one with me because God is the Lord of everything, the Cause of All. I am not superior and you are not inferior. But with humility you can establish your oneness with me with the utmost sweetness. Try with your humility, softness, sweetness, divine love, to enter into me and feel your existence inside me. Once you enter into me, then it is my problem, my duty, my responsibility, to give you what you need by the Grace of the Supreme.

Some individuals come here just to get inner peace or inner joy. They are not my students; they have not given me the responsibility for their lives, and I have not taken the responsibility. In their case, what they should do when they look at me is forget about everything and make their mind absolutely calm, quiet and vacant — like an empty vessel — and not allow anything to enter into it during meditation. If they keep in their mind-vessel fears, worries, doubts and so forth, the vessel will be full. Then what can I do? The vessel has to be emptied so that I can fill it with divine peace, love, joy and harmony.

When the vessel is empty, divine thoughts can enter into the individual aspirant and grow. When the vessel is full to the brim with divine thoughts, ultimately it will open the door to divine Peace and Light.

This is to be done by those who are not my students, who just come here once a week and who want to have a little peace and nothing else. But those who want to have infinite Peace, infinite Light and infinite Bliss, those who really want to realise the Highest on earth, have to follow a spiritual path. I have a path; so do other spiritual Masters. Each Master has a path of his own, and ultimately, each path leads to the same goal. All roads lead to Rome but one has to follow one road. Those meditating here who are not my students eventually will feel the necessity for a spiritual Master. Here I am giving them inspiration. Then, when they are inspired, when they want to go to the end of the road, to the ultimate Goal, they will try to get a teacher of their own. At that time, their spiritual Master will tell them what they should and should not do.