Editor's introduction to the first edition
These thirteen plays offer guidance as direct and soul-elevating as that given by a Guru to one of his close disciples. Indeed these are dramatised teachings of a great spiritual Master, Sri Chinmoy, who teaches in many ways, but most revealingly through personal communication. Even though the one-to-one equation cannot be present in a book, the demands on disciples as stated in the plays indicate his concern with personal action and understanding as vitally necessary to spiritual well-being and progress.Although these plays are only fragments of a total teaching which includes as its means of expression poems, essays, short stories, lectures, songs, music, philosophic articles, questions and answers, aphorisms, all in prodigious quantity and soul-elevating quality, the impact of the teaching is heightened by the play form. And these fragments are connected to Sri Chinmoy’s total teaching by his sure knowledge of what is necessary for God-realisation and God-manifestation. Anyone who has close contact with Sri Chinmoy understands that this observation is an understatement. There is never a false note sung by this Singer of the Song Divine. He is all-compassion, all-wisdom, all-love, all-power and bliss.
His handling of the play form allows no superfluity. All is exposed and concentrated as though on an operating table by a master surgeon. It is a matter of life or death of the spirit. If you choose life the plays suggest specific choices:
First, to raise your prayer to the highest:
Illumination has to take place on earth, in you, in each individual in the entire world.
Think only of the present. It is today that you have to aspire."
... to lead a most disciplined life ... to control all my senses.
... to give everything that I have and everything that I am ...
... to face your inner weaknesses and conquer them.
... when one plays for the world, one gets what he wants: appreciation, admiration, flattery. But when one plays for God, the Absolute, one gets God’s boundless Grace.
... he who accepts the life of renunciation must not mix with women, wealth or worldly possessions.
It is today that you have to conquer all your desires."
The reader’s inner vision can connect the teachings of the plays to the whole body of Sri Chinmoy’s work, and especially to the reader’s own life. The guidance contained in the plays can then carry on God’s play in earnest for the general reader as well as carry on the continuing saga of those of us already caught in Sri Chinmoy’s spiritual net.
