The inner promise¹

The inner promise. The inner promise is a seeker’s inner progress. This progress inspires him, energises him and helps him to please God in God’s own way. The outer promise we make quite often, but the inner promise we make once or twice, not more, during our life’s span. The outer promise we make, but the inner promise we keep — we try to live up to it. Finally, we try to manifest this inner promise on earth. The outer promise we make to ignorance, to teeming ignorance, but the inner promise we make to God. Our outer promise is to torture the world either consciously or unconsciously or try to destroy the world. Change the face of the world and fulfil the world with the Divine Will, this is our inner promise that we have made to God.

Now, there are three steps, significant steps, to this inner promise. God is to be seen, God is to be felt and finally, God is to be realised. To see God we have to be far, far away from the snares of darkness and ignorance. To feel God, we have to live in the domain and realm of aspiration — the mounting flame within us. To realise God, we have to grow into divine and constant and supreme surrender.

After we have attained to God-realisation, there are two most significant steps, two more significant promises we have to make. These promises are God-revelation and God-manifestation. God-revelation is the promise made by the God-realised souls on the strength of their unconditional concern for suffering humanity. And God-manifestation is the unconditional promise of the God-realised souls to love mankind unconditionally and to manifest the Reality of Divinity here on earth.

In our day to day life, we see a child making promises to his mother. He won’t tell a lie. He won’t do anything wrong. But unfortunately, he tells lies, he makes mistakes and so forth. But the mother has boundless patience. She feels that sooner or later her child will tell the truth and will do everything right. Then, as a young boy, a teenager, he does quite a few things wrong and he promises to his parents that he will not do them anymore. Unfortunately he fails to keep his promise. But his parents have the capacity to forgive him. They feel that either today or tomorrow he will turn a new leaf. This is the inner confidence that they have on their son.

So in the spiritual life also, many people, many seekers make an inner promise, an inner commitment. They say that they will enter into the spiritual life, they will give real importance to the life of purity, life of aspiration, life of realisation, but unfortunately they fail to fulfil their promise. Nevertheless, God’s boundless compassion never leaves them. God, with His adamantine Will and with His vision of the ever-transcending beyond, sees that these seekers will sooner or later enter into the right path and they will walk, march, run towards the destined goal.

And then there are some advanced seekers who have made considerable progress in their inner life and who have made a promise to their own inner beings and to God that they will not give up their spiritual quest or journey unless and until they have realised God. God-realisation is their sole aim. As ill-luck would have it, after having some higher experiences, they do not want to march farther. They feel that these experiences that they have already acquired are more than enough, at least for this life. So they don’t want to go any farther. God-realisation at that point they do not need or they do not want. So God-realisation remains a far cry for them. But God knew that with utmost sincerity these seekers entered into the spiritual life and they have made considerable progress, but now they don’t want to run towards their destined goal. They don’t want to reach the farthest end of the golden shore. God again with His boundless compassion, observes the situation and tells the seekers, “Look, you will never be fulfilled. You will never see the face of satisfaction until you have seen the golden shore. You have not fulfilled your promise. But My promise to you is unconditional. I shall wait for you. I shall take you, carry you to the destined shore of the golden all at My choice hour. If you don’t want to run fast, faster, fastest, it is up to you, but you have to know that nobody on earth can remain unrealised, unfulfilled.” God says that this is the supreme decree. Each individual has to realise the highest Truth, but he who aspires will naturally reach the goal sooner than the others who are still in the world of sleep.

As human beings, most of us are extremely clever. We are clever, but we are not wise. We try to deceive others, human beings. Not only that — we go to the length of deceiving our Inner Pilot, God. In spite of knowing that we can never, never deceive the Inner Pilot, we unconsciously, sometimes consciously, deliberately try to deceive the Inner Pilot, God. We tell God, “Oh God, if You give us some inner wealth (that is to say, peace, light, bliss and so forth) we shall offer half of our peace, light and bliss to mankind. We shall not grab them all. We shall not use them all for ourselves.” It is just like saying to God, “If You give me a dollar, I will give half to mankind and only half I shall keep for myself.”

Now, God observes our sincerity. He examines the face of sincerity — whether we are really sincere or not. And what happens? God gives us peace, light, bliss, divine qualities to some extent and we feel that it was not according to our satisfaction. What do we do? Immediately we say, “Oh God, You have not given us the full amount, the full quantity. I wanted to have a dollar but You have given me half a dollar. You are very clever. You have already kept half a dollar for Yourself, that is to say, for humanity. So I cannot give humanity the peace, light, bliss that I already have, because I feel that You have not given me the full amount.”

How we try to deceive the divinity in humanity. Everybody here, here at this place, has something to offer — peace, light or bliss, sincerity, simplicity. There is nobody on earth who is not in a position to help the rest of mankind. This help, this service, if I can use the term service, can be offered by any individual here on earth. If somebody feels that he is more sincere than somebody else, then let his sincerity be shared with other persons. If somebody feels that he is pure, purer than somebody else, his neighbours or friends, let him share his purity. If somebody feels that he has aspiration, more aspiration than his friends or neighbours, let him share it. This is the promise that every moment we can make to God. And then we come to realise that every time when the soul enters into the field of creation and manifestation, the soul makes a most solemn promise to God, the Pilot Supreme, to try its utmost to reveal God here on earth. But unfortunately when the soul enters into the world, ignorance the sea tries to envelop the soul and our body, vital, mind and heart consciously or unconsciously get pleasure in identifying themselves with the ignorance-sea. But the soul is all-forgiving. It does not cast aside the body, vital, mind and heart. It has boundless patience.

If this body, vital, mind and heart identify themselves with the soul, then if they want to see the Truth with the soul’s eye — if that is their promise, if that is their only promise, inner promise, then the date of God-realisation, God-revelation and God manifestation on earth is not very far. Each individual can make a solemn promise to himself, to herself, to humanity at large. This is a promise of dedicated self-service. And when he fulfils his inner promise, God fulfils His highest promise of absolute Perfection in and through the aspirant.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol. 6, No.10, 27 May 1971, AUM Centre Press, 1971
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