Is spirituality man's birthright?¹

Birth is the soulful creation of God's Vision. This very birth is nothing short of cremation when it is wanting in mounting aspiration as the years advance upon the individual soul.

Man is God's spontaneous revelation. Man is God's colossal pride. Man is the song of God's glowing fulfilment.

Spirituality is the breath of God and the life of man. Spirituality tells man what God truly is and what man can unmistakably be.

"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul." — Splendid is this mighty utterance of Thoreau. Now we have to know what the real necessities of the soul are. The soul's necessities are human aspiration and human liberation. The soul never can be nourished without human aspiration. The soul never can be fulfilled without human liberation.

Is spirituality man's birthright? The answer is in the loftiest affirmative. The modern world with its rank atheism, stark sophistication and wild snobbery tells us that a spiritual person is a monkey without a tail, a donkey that brays day in and day out. Indeed, a spiritual person is an object of merciless ridicule. He is a matchless fool. But once and for all, I wish the modern world to see eye to eye with Winston Churchill. This great man had undoubtedly a sound mind. He said: “The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” Now the fool in me has something to offer to you present here, and the world at large.

True, spirituality is the birthright of each human being on earth. But if somebody consciously and deliberately criticises the message of spirituality, misuses the power of spirituality, abuses the capacity of spirituality and ignores the living reality of spirituality, to say the least, certainly he cannot dare to say that spirituality is his birthright.

Needless to say that a spiritual figure knows what the right thing is. He also knows the right time and the right people — disciples. To him, the only right thing in the spiritual life is constant aspiration, the only right time is NOW and not the beckoning hands of the far-distant future. And the right people are those who do not have an iota of blighted doubt that God can be seen, felt and realised and that each human being will eventually grow into God's transcendental Vision and His absolute Reality. What Lincoln says is most applicable to a genuine aspirant. He says: "I am not concerned whether God is on my side or not, but I am concerned whether I am on God's side."

Time is precious. Even a child of yesterday does not have time to eat a piece of candy when it is offered by his mother. Let us not waste time. Let us try to determine as fast as we can, what is right and then who is right? To be right, always right, is abundantly more difficult than to be the President of a nation. To be right, spiritually right, is infinitely more difficult than to be the sole Monarch of the entire world.

What is right? Self-discipline. What is right? Self-discovery. Who is right? A man of self-discipline. Who is right? A self-discoverer.

In the spiritual life an aspirant has to know that it makes a difference whether the inner world and the outer world run abreast or not. He sees that these two worlds are like the North pole and the South pole, infinitely apart. He has now to split the difference between these two worlds on the strength of his aspiration's oneness with the inner world and on the strength of his soulful concern for the outer world. To his widest surprise, he will soon discover that the outer world and the inner world are the obverse and the reverse of God, the Golden Truth.

Finally if he feeds his Aspiration-Tree with his implicit love, sterling devotion and unconditional surrender to God, the Supreme Pilot, God Himself will grow and preserve the Realisation-Tree in the aspirant's devoted life and liberated soul through Eternity.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol. 4, No. 7, 27 Feb. 1969, AUM Centre Press, 1969
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