Question: How can the disciple gain the power of constant remembrance and unconditional surrender to the Will of the Supreme?

Sri Chinmoy: First let us take the power of remembrance. The power of remembrance we acquire only when we give importance to an object or a subject. When we are pinched with hunger, then we remember that there is something called food. Similarly, remembrance will come if there is real hunger. When a child is hungry, immediately he will cry to the mother for milk. His hunger is so acute; he can’t wait even for a second. So remembrance comes when we give due importance to the thing that we need.

Sometimes we say that we had something most important to do, but we forgot. But if we go deep within, we will see that the most important thing we have not forgotten. Only we do not pay adequate attention to it. Can there be anything more important in a spiritual person’s life than God? Can there be anything more significant, more meaningful and more fruitful than God? No. Then how is it that we forget God? Just because we do not give adequate importance to Him. When the body is hungry, we think of food but when the soul is hungry, we do not realise it. That is because we do not identify with the soul. But if we know how to identify ourselves with the soul, which is constantly hungry for the manifestation of divine light on earth, then we shall always remember the Supreme our eternal Guru. Always we are bound to remember.

The other thing is unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender we can make only when we develop the power of gratitude, only when we constantly feel the necessity of gratitude within us. Millions of people are not praying or meditating, but we are praying and meditating and trying to realise God. So each morning we have to be grateful that we are doing something that our friends and relatives are not doing. That means that there is somebody who is really kind and compassionate to us. If we can feel this, then we will see that automatically unconditional surrender will grow.

Many things we have tried in life but failed to accomplish. We may ask, “How is it that we have tried so sincerely, yet we have failed?” But we have to know that what we call sincerity may not be sincerity at all. We may try to do something out of greed or personal necessity, but this may not be the necessity of God. Again, there are many things that we have achieved, but we have not paid any attention to them.

Unconditional surrender grows like a mushroom if, every day early in the morning, we get up to pray and meditate. Who compels us to get up? It is our inner being. We feel an inner urge to get up to meditate in the morning while our neighbours are fast asleep. So for all that we have and all that we are right now, if we can make ourselves feel that it is due to God’s conscious benevolent Will, we will feel the gratitude-flower blossoming petal by petal inside our heart. And from this gratitude-power, unconditional surrender will come.