Introduction by the editor

All times may legitimately lay claim to call themselves extreme, for in all times human beings respond by extreme means to the brutal or brutish lives of their contemporaries. In our own world extreme forms are not wanting; and in the spiritual life, no less than in the political, we are subjected to conflicting calls — calls to a radical inwardness advising contempt for the world, or to apocalyptic militancy urging vehement means for the ends of peace. All days may seem like the last days.

At such times one looks to persons and to institutions which unify, which hold to a center, call to a centering, and offer our disparate selves a chance for peace. That peace, however, may appear chimerical, for political settlements are ever precarious, and in our inner lives multiple allegiances make coherence hard: "the center cannot hold." The yogis who urge that peace within yields peace without seem irreconcilable with the political visionaries who assure us that peace without permits peace within. One senses that both are right, but one looks in vain for spirits wise enough to harmonise both perspectives and lead us home.

In the light of such a predicament, the appearance of this modest book is an event of some moment. It indicates that a unique alliance has been formed: a man of the center and an institution of the center brought into mutually enriching contact with one another. The man is Sri Chinmoy, a spiritual Master of the highest attainment; the institution is the United Nations, doggedly pursuing its mandate to make our fractured world whole. For the past two years, in the lecture hall and the chapel, Sri Chinmoy has been pouring his energy and grace into the United Nations, and, as he says in one of his talks, "trying to throw light on love in today's world." Light and Love: these are the two best words to introduce him.

These essays are transcriptions of talks given from April, 1970 through October, 1972 in the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium. These talks were open to all members of the United Nations and were attended by a diverse gathering of its constituents. By circumstance as well as by the eminence of his spiritual achievement, Sri Chinmoy is uniquely suited to take a position at the United Nations. His spiritual mission is essentially international, with centres established across the United States, in Puerto Rico, Scotland, London, Zurich, France and in Canada. From the outset his work has been dedicated to the resolution of apparent contraries, to the reciprocity of strengths:

He sees each nation as possessing a soul and having unique contributions to make to a community of nations, and it is for this reason that he values the United Nations, and sees it as a "chosen instrument of God."

What may strike a reader of this book most forcibly is something unexpected: a kind of underlying practicality. These essays are no effusions of idealism; the spirit behind these words has looked upon the predicaments of the world with a luminous eye and sees solutions. In his view the United Nations is the outward and visible form of a means for hope we have at our disposal:

But the United Nations cannot bring us to an inner peace. Here a most practical note is sounded: this has all the candor of common sense. Moreover, this passage raises a question, central to the book and to its deep consoling wisdom for us, can we really aspire to achieve "abiding peace and illumining fulfilment"? Admitting how provisional our arbitration, can there be anything like an all-encompassing peace? What does Sri Chinmoy mean by peace, and where may we seek it?

Sri Chinmoy sees man as a peace-seeker not because man is necessarily idealistic, but because man recognizes that only in peace will he be able to satisfy himself.

Man seeks peace because he needs peace desperately. Man welcomes peace because it is in peace alone that he can have his own true achievement and fulfilment.

This pursuit of peace is the central human aspiration, though we may think that deeper in us lies the search to be creative, or to fulfil our responsibilities to the world, or to live a righteous life. But these are all tributaries to the principal flow. In Sri Chinmoy's terms "spirituality" is quintessentially our aspiration for peace; "Yoga," the pursuit of union, of oneness, is the practice of this pursuit.

However, we may still feel the need for a more practical approach. Let us accept as a given this definition of our true needs, what then is the connection between the peace we might desire for the world and the peace we might desire for ourselves? What is the process of attainment? "World peace will begin when the so-called human expectation ends." It would appear here as if we were being asked to throw the reins on the withers and trust the horse to take us home. And in truth, something like this is required, for we are being asked to recognise that our efforts are bringing us no closer to what we seek; it is as if we were out of touch with what is most natural in us.

What happens when we try to love the world or when we attempt to fulfil our responsibility to the world? We try to possess and bind the world, and while we are doing this we see that we have already been bound and possessed by the world ….

How can we fulfil all our responsibilities? We have tried in human ways, but we have failed. We think of the world with good thoughts and ideas, but the world remains exactly the same as it was yesterday. We love the world, but the world still remains full of cruelty and hatred. And why does all this happen? It is because we have not yet pleased our Inner Pilot, the One we have to please first…. Unless and until we have pleased the Inner Pilot, the world will always remain a battlefield where the soldiers of fear, doubt, anxiety, worry, imperfection, limitation and bondage will fight; and consciously or unconsciously we will play with these undivine soldiers ….

The fruit of our human expectation is always the same; continually we come up against ourselves. Human expectation is frustration. Sri Chinmoy points us within, to an internal guidance system, to the Inner Pilot, "the inner voice." It is the source of truth in us; it is our divine life. To reach it, to discern it, Sri Chinmoy urges us to a "transcendence of human ego." Still, reading these words, we might again ask for practical help. How might one learn to hear a sound one has never heard before? How does one learn to look within? One begins personally to look for a teacher; politically one turns towards an institution like the United Nations. Outwardly one practises patiently the intricacies of mediation; inwardly one may begin to practise meditation.

Meditation is, among other ways of describing it, a learning to listen for the inner voice, a practice in discerning the selfish from the selfless. We are called to transcend our egos; "meditation is self-transcendence." It is the way we grow into who we really are. It need not be done at an altar or in ritual, but implicitly meditation is a form of dedication, and dedication an act of meditation.

Thus in Sri Chinmoy's terms, meditation is action, a form of peace-making. Meditation is service to the true spirit in ourselves and the acknowledgement of that spirit as one and the same within everyone. Over the rim of the ego rises the discovery of who we really are: At this astonishing point, we discover our capacity for peace, inner and outer, for we have recovered a primary, a unitary relationship with the world. We are at peace.

Feeling the truth of this oneness, we will inevitably move to a collective sense of our mission on this small round planet. We will no longer be gripped by the desperation to control, to compete, or to surpass. The play with the undivine soldiers can end in the light of our interconnectedness:

Another man fully immersed in the experience of oneness, Swami Vivekananda, wrote at the beginning of this century: Sri Chinmoy is such a man. It may be hard at first for us to believe what he tells us about ourselves. Our culture, after all, has led us to imagine God as separate, hidden, perhaps even dead. Here once again we are asked to open ourselves to the radical hope, the root truth, that, God not only exists, but exists for us, in us and as us. We have forgotten how to be merciful to ourselves; continually we exile ourselves from God's loving presence within us; we attempt to navigate without a pilot. We perpetuate our confusion. "We are little worlds made cunningly," John Donne said of us, and indeed we are the world in miniature. Nothing can be more practical then than this work for peace. Says yet another spiritual Master: —Peter Pitzele Assistant Professor of English Harvard University November 23, 1972