Question: Will you accept me as your student?

Sri Chinmoy: May I tell you what our path is, so that you can be more convinced of what you are jumping into. Our path is the path of love, devotion and surrender. We love God, we devote ourselves to God and we surrender our will to God's Will.

This is the approach that we follow in our path. This is the realisation that I have had and am trying to share with my students. We have about fifty Centres all over the world and my students and I are trying to share with the aspiring souls the experience of love divine, devotion divine and surrender divine.

We feel that love, devotion and surrender are the three rungs in our ladder of evolution. We start with divine love. In human love we notice that we try to possess others; but before we possess, we are possessed. There is no sense of satisfaction either in possessing or in being possessed. While we are possessing we are only limiting our capacity; we are binding our reality. But in the divine love we constantly expand our reality. From the finite we try to enter into the infinite. Constant expansion is the message of divine love.

In the ordinary life, if we love someone we spend time with that person and devote ourselves to him. But since we love God, it is to God that we have to devote ourselves, to God alone. We feel that there is nothing on earth which can be as sweet or as fulfilling as devoted service to God in seeking to devote ourselves to God, we come to realise that at times we serve Him according to our own understanding, according to our own light. We feel that if we do this, then God will be pleased with us; if we do that, then God will not be pleased with us. Finally, we come to realise that we know next to nothing about God's operation in and through us. At that time we surrender our will to God's Will. We tell God, "Lord, You guide our will. You manifest Yourself in and through us. We want only to be receptive." So we sing the song of receptivity. Our heart becomes full of receptivity and God offers His Capacity — which is Infinity, Eternity and Immortality — to our devoted, loving receptivity.

This surrender is not forced upon us. A slave surrenders to his master out of compulsion. He is at the beck and call of his master; he is at the very mercy of his master. But in God's case, He does not treat us in that way. He shows us His infinite Compassion. He is eternally kind. It is we who have the hunger for His Nectar, His Ambrosia, and we feel that if we can surrender our will to His Will, then we can accelerate our progress.

We have quite a few things to do on earth. We have not one goal, but three successive goals on earth. Our first goal is to realise God. Our second goal is to reveal Him in our action, in our dedicated service. And our third goal is to manifest Him in our life here on earth. It takes such a long time to reach even our first goal, God-realisation. Therefore, we feel that if there is a sunlit path, a shorter path, we want to walk along it. This sunlit path is the path of the heart. When the heart accepts something or someone, it accepts on the strength of its identification. And this identification eventually is transformed into inseparable oneness. When we become one with our Inner Pilot, His Will is executed in and through us. At that time, we feel real satisfaction. There is no other way of achieving real satisfaction other than by fulfilling Him in His own way. Here on earth and there in Heaven, we exist only for one thing: satisfaction. And our satisfaction comes only from God's satisfaction.

This is our path: love, devotion and surrender. If you wish to follow our path, I will wholeheartedly welcome you to our little spiritual family.