AUM — Vol.II-2, No. 8, 27 August 1975

Independence Day Message¹

Mother India’s Independence-Height revealed to the aspiring earth-consciousness the illumining Vision of the Soul’s Light and the fulfilling Reality of the Soul’s Delight.

India’s aspiration-heart is the Beauty of world-promise. India’s realisation-life is the Duty for world-progress,

National Day of Prayer observance at the United Nations²

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of those commemorating National Prayer Day with a service at the United Nations Church Center this coming Thursday, I would like to offer you our soulful gratitude for the lofty inspiration and illumining encouragement you have offered to America to observe a National Day of Prayer.

According to my inner feelings, America as a nation stands in the vanguard of fulfilling achievements precisely because its very being was founded on self-giving prayers.

The humble service we are holding this week will combine the efforts of the Council of Churches of New York City, the New York Bicentennial Corporation, religious leaders of many faiths and the United Nations Meditation Group. Our devoted prayers will be with you, the supreme Pilot of the supreme Country.

Sri Chinmoy

United Nations Meditation Group

Questions asked by Dulal, President of the New York Sri Chinmoy Centre

Question: What is the best way to achieve oneness?

Question: What is the difference between being dogmatic and divine about one's principles?

Question: Will self-realisation fulfil my life?

Question: How can I best learn from my mistakes?

Question: How can life become more real?

Question: Is my soul's will the same as God's Will?

Question: Is the best way to teach through example?

Question: Can pleasure ever be pure?

Question: Can one completely surrender to God and still be responsible to worldly needs and demands?

Question: How can man's suffering be transformed into joy?

Question: Does it ever help to complain?

Question: What is the highest knowledge?

Question: How can I enter into the Garden of Love-Light?

Question: What does Guru mean when he says, "Go deep within"?

Question: Is having faith the perfect answer to all questions?

Question: Can the soul also experience ignorance?

Question: Is desirelessness essential for self-illumination?

Question: What is the essence of man?

Question: What is the soul's secret?

Question: How can I be more creative?

Love, service and transformation³

Outer peace is a mutual compromise. Two individuals or two nations find no better way to bring about some harmony; therefore, they resort to compromise. There is no inner satisfaction here, but just because two individuals have to stay together on earth, they feel that there is no other way. If they have to live on earth, then they have to resort to compromise. But inner joy, inner satisfaction, inner peace remain a far cry.

Inner peace is a mutual sacrifice. This sacrifice is founded upon conscious awareness of one’s reality. In this sacrifice the one finds fulfilment in the many and the many find fulfilment in the one. On the strength of their inner oneness, two individuals on the outer plane make a sacrifice. But when they dive deep within, they feel that there is no such thing as sacrifice. It is the supreme necessity in both of them to please, to satisfy and to fulfil each other.

Outer joy is nothing more than pleasure, pleasure-life. This pleasure-life is followed by depression and frustration-life; and what looms large in depression and frustration is destruction.

Inner joy is spontaneous satisfaction. This satisfaction we discover in the heart of universal oneness. In order to have inner joy we have to give up the desire-life and enter into the domain of aspiration-life. Only in aspiration-life can we discover the heart of universal oneness.

Outer faith is nothing more than a rope of sand; it crumbles in the twinkling of an eye. With outer faith we cannot sing the everlasting song of the Absolute Supreme. Only in the everlasting things can the Supreme, the Absolute in us, sing His transcendental, universal Song.

Inner faith is our divine conviction. Inner faith makes us realise that we are of God — that we have a source and our source is God — and also, that we are in God and we are for God. When we discover that we are of God, we feel that our life has meaning, our life has made a promise to God. Our human life, both individual and collective, must fulfil that promise. And what is that promise? That promise is to manifest God here on earth in God’s own way. We are in God. What does this mean? It means that we have accepted God’s cosmic Lila, His divine Game. We want to participate in His cosmic Game. God the eternal Player invites us and inspires us to play the Game, the eternal Game.

While playing the Game we will enjoy peace, bliss and satisfaction in boundless measure. We are for God. What does this mean? It means that we have become supremely chosen instruments of God and He is manifesting Himself in an unprecedented manner in and through us. He is manifesting His Divinity, His Eternity, His Infinity and His Reality in and through us on earth.

Each human being has three natures: the animal, the human and the divine. The animal in us is nothing short of immediate destruction. The human in us is give and take, or possess and be possessed. The divine in us is self-giving, and self-giving eventually is transformed into God-becoming. The divine in us grows, glows and flows. When it grows, it grows into the transcendental Consciousness, the transcendental Height. When it glows, it covers the length and breadth of the world. It finds its existence in the entire universe. And when the divine in us flows, it flows in Eternity. Eternity and the divine Love flow together.

Transformation, service and love. What is transformation? Transformation is the unlearning of the things that ignorance has taught us. This ignorance had a favourite student. That student was mind — the physical mind, not the higher mind or the illumined mind. The gross physical mind has taught the individual quite a few things which he now wants to unlearn. The sooner he can unlearn the teachings of ignorance, the sooner his transformation, the transformation of his entire being, will take place.

Service. Whom do we serve? The human in others or the human in us? We do not serve the human in others or the human in ourselves. We serve the divine in others, the Supreme in others. And the Supreme in others is the same Supreme who abides in us. When we serve the Supreme in others consciously, soulfully, devotedly and unconditionally, we feel a kind of expansion. In this expansion we feel that we are no longer for an individual, but for all. United we are singing, playing, dancing in God’s Garden. Human service is performed under compulsion. The human in us does not use the term ‘service’; it immediately uses the term ‘help’. But when the human in us thinks that it is offering help, the divine in us knows that this is a mistake. The divine in us serves the Supreme, the Absolute Supreme. The Absolute Supreme does not need help; He has and He is everything. He is Infinity, He is Eternity and He is Immortality. But when we serve Him, our humility grows, our spontaneous divinity grows. We feel that we are tiny drops in the ocean, insignificant, infinitesimal drops. But when we enter into the ocean, when even the tiniest possible drops lose their personality and individuality, they become the infinite ocean itself. So it is through our service, devoted service, that we consciously grow into the Vast, into Infinity’s Light and Delight.

Love. Why do we love? We love because our Source, He who created us, has taught us one supremely significant thing: love. He has infinite Love; He is infinite, eternal Love. This is what He has taught the soul in us, and the soul in us tries to bring this teaching always to the fore. The Supreme is the only teacher with only one subject, and that subject is love. Just because He is all Love, He is our dearest, He is our sweetest, He is our All. And because we want to love Him for the sake of love alone, without asking Him for any recompense, He feels that we are His chosen instruments.

Love is the greatest power, the most powerful power in us. But it is divine love that is most powerful, not human love. When a seeker enters into the spiritual life, he feels within and without him a flood of love. And when he feels this love, he consciously tries to dedicate himself to the Source. He sees and feels that he is becoming consciously and constantly the perfect embodiment of God the eternal Truth, God the eternal Light and God the eternal Delight.

Each individual seeker here and elsewhere is God’s conscious representative on earth. A seeker is he who knows that ignorance-life is not the answer. Aspiration-life, which is the life of love divine within us — love of God, love of truth, love of light — can be the only answer. A seeker may not be consciously aware of the truth that he is infinitely higher than those who are unaspiring. Even if he is aware of what he is and who he is, he may not fully manifest what he has and what he is within. For the manifestation of his inner divinity he has to aspire, constantly aspire and become the ceaseless, ever-mounting flame. The flame right now is within him, but there shall come a time when he has to grow into the flame itself. Once the seeker becomes the burning, glowing and illumining flame, the Absolute Supreme manifests Himself in and through this ever-mounting flame. And in this ever-mounting flame the seeker discovers not only his self-transcendence but also God’s Self-transcendence. He and his eternal Beloved together are transcending, constantly transcending the height of Eternity’s experience, Eternity’s realisation.

God-Questions answered by Sri Chinmoy

Question: Does God have false teeth?

Question: What does God do in His spare time?

Question: Why does God tease me?

Question: What kind of clock does God use?

Question: How does God wake up in the morning?

Question: What colour are God's Eyes?

Question: Does God like cities?

Question: Why does God sometimes seem so serious?

Question: What does God do when He starts to gain extra weight?

Question: Why does God like ice cream so much, both for Himself and for His children?

Question: Which does God like better: a tropical or a cold climate?

Question: Does God get tired from signing initials on all His creations?

Question: Why does God love me?

Question: Does God ever laugh at Himself?

Question: How many Sanatans did God create?

Question: God is a tree; how many leaves does He have?

Sri Chinmoy's family on Jharna-Kala

A Veritable Feast for the Eyes: Sri Chinmoy’s Art

The Supreme who is the machine-mover in every heart is the Real Artist who inspires every artist with vision. Those who are open to Him and are in direct contact with Him through their soul can be rightly guided by Him. Their creations then do not remain their limited ego’s creation. With the tinge of cosmic Beauty they become cosmic.

The Supreme Artist is an eternal Boy. He is the Dancer Nataraj, whose every movement of foot is an indication of rhythm, expressing manifestation from the unmanifest, preservation and dissolution. He is the Musician whose flute constantly vibrates and is behind all happenings. He is the Poet whose poetry is the universe. He is the Architect, the Mechanic who gives shape to all wonders and impossibilities.

In the human artist Sri Chinmoy, the Divine Artist as a playful boy plays and plays with his brush and colour on paper (or wall) as He does in dusk and dawn, on the sky. Like the Supreme, his Inner Pilot, Sri Chinmoy does not need any plan, nor the help of any scale or instrument to measure the length and breadth of anything to make it appear as real. The earliest poet, Valmiki, saw something in his inner consciousness and wrote the life of Rama in poetry. Rama came afterwards only to live like that and make the epic real. Here also, Sri Chinmoy gives shape to his inner consciousness through forms with brush and colour and the artists find that they have become works of real Art.

As flowers in the garden of the earth and as stars in the garden of Heaven they bloom and give delight to the eyes. Flowers and stars and clouds at dawn and dusk are the Play of the Supreme Artist. Sri Chinmoy’s paintings also are his play with colour and beauty. We do not see the Inner Pilot, the machine-mover. We see only the man, the machine, and wonder how his fancy does so untiringly without thinking, spontaneously flowing continuously, like a fountain (jharna), without looking backward to see how far it has proceeded. It is due to his allowing his Inner Pilot to move him freely and to His Grace in choosing Sri Chinmoy as His perfect instrument to reveal to the world His Nature, the constant play of Delight with form and beauty. These paintings serve a veritable feast of light for the eyes.

From Chitta Ranjan Ghosh:

How to convey my feelings about Sri Chinmoy’s paintings! In the modern photographic age, where is the place of the painters? To paint a picture a painter may take hours, days, even years. But a photographer may take it in no time. But the photographer cannot take what is not there, whereas a painter can paint from his vision what is not outwardly visible. Sri Chinmoy has got vision and swiftness. Through his hand the Supreme Painter plays freely, so his paintings do not take time. But they are perfect, pleasing to the eyes and full of inspiration — something new for art lovers. Here we find some expressions of the unmanifest. His paintings call us and silently tell us, “Look at us, follow us! We shall take you beyond your limited consciousness of sorrow and suffering to the harmonious Heaven of delight.”

— Chitta Ranjan Ghosh

From Mano Ranjan Ghosh:

In eight months Sri Chinmoy has completed 27,000 paintings by the infinite Grace of the Supreme and the goddess Saraswati. Freud once said that to be creative is to be prodigious. In Sri Chinmoy’s paintings the Light and Wisdom of the Supreme has been manifested. His paintings display the unique play of a variety of colours. They have descended gracefully from a high spiritual world. To paint 27,000 paintings is indeed a difficult task, but it has been possible because the Supreme has given this capacity as a gift of blessingful Love. From time to time the Supreme acts in this way so that humanity receives light and delight from the spiritual life. Those who love divine art must see something new, beautiful, soulful and fruitful in Sri Chinmoy’s art. I pray to the Absolute Supreme that the general mass unreservedly appreciates these paintings, as they so richly deserve to be appreciated.

From Lily Rani Ghose:

Some people appreciate my youngest brother’s spirituality and philosophy, while others appreciate his poetry and music. Still others appreciate his art. And I appreciate and have always appreciated his simple, sincere, pure and childlike heart.

Sri Chinmoy honours New York's finest⁵

My dear police friends, my dear police brothers, I humbly bow to the divine peace-lovers in you. I soulfully bow to the divine harmony-distributors in you. Your hearts’ magnanimity tells the world that world-perfection entirely depends on a disciplined, honest and uncovetous life. True, the wrong-doers badly fail to appreciate you, but not only do we who are the seekers of the absolute Truth — who are crying for perfection-life in ourselves as well as in mankind — admire you and love you from the inmost recesses of our hearts, but also God Himself loves you incessantly and immeasurably for your sublime service-light to the entire humanity.

Your devoted lives long to cure the world malady, ignorance, completely and permanently. You unmistakably feel that the outer perfection-fruit is a gradual progress and transformation of the inner aspiration-seed. Your extraordinary dedicated service, your extraordinary experience-discovery is at once the world-illumining dream and the world-fulfilling reality.

Today’s world is wanting in peace — peace within and peace without. If we had listened to your soulful requests, if we had paid attention to your loving dictates, then today’s would have been a totally different world, a world of peace and harmony. The length and breadth of the world would have been inundated by infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. But the Absolute Supreme in you has infinite patience. He is exercising His infinite patience in and through you to awaken the divine in us, to illumine the human in us, and to transform the animal in us so that we all can be perfect instruments of our Eternal Father.

The Kingdom of Heaven need not and cannot remain always a far cry, provided each individual, each human being on earth listens to the soulful requests of our police friends and police brothers, whose very existence on earth is to see the face of peace and the face of harmony.

Finally, in the name of the Absolute Supreme and on behalf of the Jharna-Kala Gallery, to each police brother of my heart and soul I offer my ever-increasing gratitude, for you are doing the same thing I am doing as a spiritual seeker. I have been searching for peace, inner peace, for my students and for the world-community, and this very thing my police brothers are also doing in their own way. We are doing it according to the capacity that the Absolute Father has granted us and to our receptivity, each in a soulful way. So we are in the same boat sailing toward the Golden Shore, where there is no crime, no human shortcomings, no weakness, no bondage, no death; where Infinity’s Light, Eternity’s Concern and Immortality’s Life reign supreme.

Doctors' night at the Jharna-Kala Gallery⁶

My dear doctor brothers and my dear young and promising medical students, to you I offer my heart’s deepest love, which is founded upon our inner oneness, and I offer my pure gratitude-heart, for you are doing the same thing that I and my students are doing. You love life and we love life. A doctor is he who loves life, who loves God, the Life Eternal. I and my students also love God the Eternal Life, for we know that if we love God the Eternal Life, then only can we derive satisfaction from within and from without.

We are all sailing in the same boat to the Golden Shore, where there is no bondage, no darkness, no disease, no imperfection, finally, no death. You want to conquer death so that the life eternal can manifest in and through each individual human being. We too want to conquer death, by praying and meditating, so that we can be perfect instruments of God and serve Him in each other in His own way.

The limited life in a human body cannot carry the ultimate message of the Absolute Supreme. This is the discovery made by some of the Indian seekers or Masters. But I do not see eye to eye with them. I see and clearly feel that the eternal Life can and does abide in the physical. This eternal Life passes beyond the so-called death and comes back again through the process of reincarnation.

Each day is a golden opportunity for us to receive and offer light. This light is nothing short of life. Light is the flower of life and life is the fruit of light. Each moment is a golden opportunity for us to bring to the fore our eternal life or to expand our earth-bound life for countless years. But we have to know why we want to stay on earth for a long time, indefinitely. There are villagers in India who are enjoying human life, wallowing in the pleasures of the finite, and they are two hundred, three hundred years old. If we want to remain on earth just for the sake of enjoyment, that is of no avail. We, the seekers of the infinite Truth, want to stay on earth in order to become perfect instruments of God. Each moment of our human life is a golden opportunity for us to pray and meditate soulfully. When we arrive at a certain stage of our inner aspiration we come in contact with our inner boundless light.

You are trying in your own way to lengthen human life. From the outside discoveries you enable us to enter into the inner world by curing the body first. And we do it the other way. We feel that if we can cure the inner life in us, then it becomes infinitely easier for us to cure the outer life. You feel that the building must be kept in perfect condition or why should the occupant stay there? According to our philosophy, the body is the temple. But the temple needs a shrine. We say, what shall we do with the outer structure if there is no soul inside it?

You are perfectly right in your own way, my esteemed brothers, and we are also right in our own illumination. Now let us try to be one, unified, united in our own discoveries. We need the soul, the divine spark within us, in order to illumine the world within and around us. We need the soul in order to realise the Highest. We need the body in order to manifest those divine qualities that we received during our meditation. We need an instrument in order for those divine qualities to flow through us. The body is the perfect channel, the perfect instrument for the soul’s light. We need the body for manifestation. We need the soul for realisation. Both are of paramount importance. Without the body, the soul cannot manifest the highest Reality. Without the soul, the body cannot realise the inner divinity. So both are of equal, paramount importance.

A spiritual Master feels that we must remain eternal students. Like Socrates, he says, “It is only a student who learns; therefore, I want to be an eternal student.” From my own learning I wish to share a few thoughts with my most esteemed doctor friends and promising medical students.

Some doctors are of the opinion that when a patient is about to die, it is advisable to inform the near and dear ones about the imminent death. They feel that it is better to give them time to prepare themselves. They feel that if someone knows beforehand what is going to happen, he will not go into immediate shock. At times they even go to the length of telling the patient himself. Other doctors feel that this is not advisable. They feel that the near and dear ones will suffer unnecessarily in advance if they are informed of the imminent death of their loved ones. They also feel that if the patient comes to know, this will expedite the death of the patient because fear and worry will increase the ailments in the patient. They feel that the patient will come one step nearer to death through fear and worry, and the near and dear ones will suffer unnecessarily through expectation.

A seeker like me has something to offer at this point. He feels that these things should be decided according to God’s Will. A seeker dives deep within. If he is an advanced seeker, he will have a free access to his soul, and he will offer the message of his soul to the doctors or to the patients. A seeker of the highest Truth will always try to know what God’s Will is first. If it is God’s Will that the patient should know, only then will he inform the patient. Why? He will feel that this is the most soulful opportunity for the patient to cry to God either to cure him or to take him to a higher plane of consciousness. A seeker knows that this is not the only world or the only life, and that the last prayer of the patient counts most if it comes from the inmost recesses of his heart. This is a legitimate reason for the seeker to inform the patient.

There can also be another reason for a seeker to inform a patient of his imminent death if so is the Will of God. If the patient knows that there is someone who can come to his rescue when his earth-bound time has elapsed, then that person should be invoked. All others have tried in their own way, but there is somebody else who can come to his rescue, and that is God. If the seeker can induce faith in the patient that there is someone who can save him and that is his Inner Pilot, then the patient gets one last chance to remain on earth a little longer. The seeker here comes as a private tutor, not as a teacher. A teacher tests us and examines us, but a private tutor instructs us and teaches us how to pass the examination. The seeker teaches the patient how to invoke the Supreme Beloved.

I am extremely grateful to each of you for your gracious presence at the Jharna-Kala Gallery. Here we have all become one, doctors and seekers. You as individuals are doctors and I as an individual am a seeker. We are two individuals. Human life is a tug-of-war. On one side is life and on the other side is death. You and I are pulling for life, we represent life. Against us, our enemy is ignorance, which is pulling for death. If you or I alone fight against ignorance, just because there is only one individual on each side, we may not win. But if you and I are together on one side and against us is only one opponent, ignorance, naturally we will win.

Whatever medical science has discovered is of supreme importance to me, and my discoveries are also of supreme necessity to you. Medical science has made tremendous progress. Medical discoveries are now playing a most significant role in the quest for eternal Life on earth.

I am a fellow-traveller along the road of eternal life. I have also discovered something: soulful prayer and meditation. What I stand for is the message of self-giving in the heart of all-growing and becoming. What you stand for is your capacity to prolong life with your new discoveries. Your outer discoveries are your realisation and revelation. My inner discoveries are my realisation and revelation. When your discoveries and my discoveries are put together, we can, without fail, conquer death. Before you offer medicine I say, “Let us meditate for a few minutes, for inside the patient is the Supreme, who can cure all things if so is His Will.” Then your outer capacities are added to my inner capacities. When the outer and the inner, the inner cry and the outer smile, work together and pull against ignorance, immediately they win.

Let us unite our respective discoveries. Let us give due value to each other’s discoveries. Let us place our discoveries at the Feet of the Absolute Supreme. This is the only way we can reach our destined Goal. United we shall reach our destined Goal. Divided, the Goal will remain indefinitely a far cry. Since you are all true lovers of life, and I and my students are also true lovers of life, let us become one, inseparably one. Let us walk along the road of Eternity together and let us become perfect instruments of God for world-transformation and world-perfection, for transformation of the body-consciousness of the world and perfection of the soul-reality in manifested form on earth.

To each of you I offer my soulful joy, love, concern and gratitude.

3.

82-68 164th STREET

(212) 990-2629

J V. KLAVINS, M.D.. Ph D.

Professor of Pathology

Health Sciences Center

August 14, 1975

Master Sri Chinmoy

Jamaica, New York 11431

Some paintings can be translated in a language albeit inadequately. Therefore a reviewer has difficulty in expressing the perception of the art. Abstract paintings cannot be translated in a language.

Any description of such art will be just distantly related to it.

I believe that abstract painting communicates indefinable subjects to the viewer. Consequently, the viewer should experience the artist's undefinable intentions. However, the first impression of abstract art suggest to the viewer something of the viewer's previous experience. In this context I found your art remarkable in its diversity. This diversity reflects culmination of evolutionary diversity of mankind (homo sapiens species) where each individual, even identical twins, are different. This principle of diversity for me as a biologist is highly significant although I do not fully understand its consequences. Your paintings communicate an organisational unity, aesthetic integrity and clarity. I believe that they reflect those noble aspirations that the Master is approaching and teaching his students.

I was deeply impressed by your speech on coexistence of science and religion. I believe that religion is a specific human quality in biological evolution - otherwise our presence and our future may be or become very unhuman.

Although a few among my friends are students of Indian mysticism, I have not experienced such "a sincerity and integrity in a group of people as your students last night. They seemed to me representing a bright light in our present time of search for a better future for mankind. Your presence among us and your teaching will contribute considerably to this goal.

With kindest regards and best wishes,

SAMUEL W. MILLS. Jr., M. D.

MIDDLETOWN, NEW YORK 10940

August 15, 1975

The evening spent with Sri Chinmoy on August 13th at the Art Show on Mercer Street was most interesting.

I listened carefully to the Guru's remarks and agree with him when he says that therapy to the soul goes hand in hand with that of the body. Particularly in those cases where death is imminent, I believe there is a need for the services of a "teacher and seeker".

Altogether it was a most enjoyable evening.

Samuel W. Mills, Jr. M.D., F.A.C.S.

E.A. Horton Memorial Hospital

Poetry-Reading at the Jharna-Kala Gallery⁷

A poet is he who envisions the ultimate absolute Truth. On the physical plane, vital plane, mental plane, even at times on the psychic plane, when we notice a particular poet offering to the world at large his contribution, we appreciate him, we admire him. But if we can see the seeker in the poet, the truth-lover in the poet, the real reality in that poet’s vision, then we shall go one step farther. We shall discover our inseparable oneness with the poet.

It is said that a poet has no character of his own. Now I wish to say, why should a poet have a character of his own? A poet identifies with truth. If he has to express anger through his poem, then naturally he will identify himself with the anger-consciousness. If he has to express love, then he will have to identify himself with love-consciousness. On the strength of his identification with the reality that he has envisioned, he reveals to the world his inspiration and aspiration.

A poet sees the truth from various angles. He is not obligated to see the truth always from one angle. A poet can speak of one particular subject in various ways. This moment he may praise and invoke death and the next moment he may criticise death. That does not mean that the poet is a man of no principles. Far from it! When he stays in a particular plane of consciousness, according to the capacity and receptivity that he has at that time, he sees death in one form. When he stays in another plane of consciousness, he may see death in a different way, with a different aspect. At one time he will see death as something very nice, very kind. When the world is torturing him, when the world is not giving him due attention, he prays to death to come and embrace him. But the same poet is a human being. When name and fame are being showered on him and all worldly achievements are at his feet, when the whole world listens to him and he sees beauty within and without, at that time if death knocks at his door, naturally he sees death as an enemy and begs death not to capture him. He does not need or want death.

There have been some poets who have offered to the world at large some soulful and prophetic utterances. Their poems have attained planes of consciousness that are high, very high, but their outer lives were not in keeping with their prophetic utterances. They lived undivine lives, unaspiring lives; therefore, many, many people do not pay attention to their soulful utterances. They say, “He wrote this, but who cares for him? He lived a worse than ordinary life, an undivine, animal life.” But I wish to defend the cause of the misunderstood poets. Here we are all seekers. We know that we are supposed to realise God as soon as possible, but during the twenty-four hours of each day, how many minutes do we remain in a divine consciousness and how many hours do we remain in an undivine or an ordinary consciousness? We remain for a few fleeting minutes in a divine consciousness, and the rest of the day we are in an absolutely ordinary or even an undivine consciousness. But in those few divine minutes what do we actually do? We establish a free access to some higher planes of consciousness. Similarly, when a particular poet enters into high, higher, highest planes of consciousness, he sees and becomes for a while the reality, the truth-essence of those planes of consciousness. And like the climber, he climbs down the reality-tree and offers the fruits to the world. Then he again enters into the world of pleasure, vital life and so forth, if he wants to. But his achievement on the highest plane was absolutely true. Just because he is now wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance, we cannot discard his achievements on the higher planes of consciousness. When we pray and meditate, we grow into divinity. When we don’t pray and meditate, we remain undivine. But just because we don’t pray and meditate all the time, we cannot say that we are unspiritual. We are spiritual, but we do not or cannot, at the present stage of our development, practice spirituality all the time.

There are many, many poets who have enjoyed, according to us, emotional life, vital life, but they have offered us something striking nevertheless. They have offered spiritual truths of the highest magnitude to us. I see their achievement. I value their achievement deeply, wholeheartedly. A day will come in the course of time when they will care more for their nature’s transformation. Eventually they will enter deeper into spiritual life, conscious one-pointed spiritual life. Each individual soul that has taken human incarnation will, without fail, manifest the absolute Truth here on earth, for that is the Vision of the Supreme. For the transformation of the body-consciousness and earth-life, each soul will descend onto earth again and again until perfection has dawned in that particular soul. So we should pay utmost attention to the poets’ achievements in the world of reality and divinity which they so soulfully offered to mankind for the elevation and transformation of human life.

A poet is he who envisions the inner reality, who brings to the fore the inner wealth. A poet is the harbinger of God the supreme Musician. A poet sees the cosmic Game before the rest of the world. He watches the cosmic Game and participates in it and he invites the rest of the world to participate in this cosmic Game, as well. If we can separate the soulful utterances of the poets from their outer lives, we will be able to gain considerable inner wealth from them. Who said the words is not the important question, but what the utterance means. There are many poetic lines and stanzas which, if we soulfully repeat them, will without fail carry us into a higher plane of consciousness. Each individual seeker can identify himself or herself with the poet’s soul-stirring utterances. On the strength of that identification, the seeker can easily achieve for himself something divine, illumining, fulfilling and immortalising.

This evening, with your kind permission, I shall read out some of my favourite poems. Today I shall not pass any comments. In the very near future it is my sincere wish to offer my spiritual comments on these soulful utterances of the poets who have contributed much to the spiritual world, the world that we are trying to live in. I have been a poet all my life, and I have been a spiritual seeker as well. Inside my heart I feel two eternal players, the poet and the seeker, who can easily exchange their names. I can call the poet the seeker and the seeker the poet. I can easily change and transfer their names, and still I will see the same reality. My poetry and my spirituality are inseparable. They are like the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. They cannot be separated. Each has contributed to or fulfilled the other most soulfully and most fruitfully.

I wish to start with Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore.

> In one salutation to thee, my God, let all my senses spread out and touch this world at thy feet.

— Rabindranath Tagore

> Like a flock of homesick cranes flying night and day back to their mountain nests, let all my life take its voyage to its eternal home in one salutation to thee.

— Rabindranath Tagore

I started with Tagore and I would like to end with Sri Aurobindo. I wish to quote the last stanza from his immortal poem “Invitation”.

> I am the lord of tempest and mountain,

> Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger

— Sri Aurobindo

Sri Chinmoy's birthday offering⁸

There is a great difference between a childish attitude and a childlike attitude. A childish attitude consciously or unconsciously tends toward destruction, whereas a childlike attitude consciously or unconsciously tends toward construction, perfection and satisfaction in fulfilling the Supreme in His own way. It is my childlike heart that will play and, as you know, I shall make mistakes in all the instruments that I shall play. But your compassionate heart will forgive me and will see eye to eye with my soulful message: that I wish to be eternally a divine child in my consciousness. I am forty-four years old today, and I look like an octogenarian. But in my consciousness I always feel like a four year old child; therefore, I do make progress in my inner life, inner consciousness, every day, and that inner consciousness I wish to offer today on this most auspicious occasion, to all those on our path, who are in our boat, who have formed this small sweet family.

[After the concert]

At the beginning of my journey’s start I needed your compassion. At the end of my journey’s close I need the same thing: compassion. Forever and forever I wish to remain a divine child, an eternal child in my searching and illumining consciousness. And those who are in my boat, I do hope will do the same, for the eternal, the Supreme Pilot in me and in you all wants us to remain eternally as divine children. It is only the divine child in us that can grow, will grow into perfect Perfection. This perfect Perfection is nothing short of constant transcendence of one’s own climbing cry.

Now I wish to invite all my teachers, starting from Dulal, Arun, Nadeshwar, Vinaya. If you have helped me in any capacity, please come up. And those who have offered me instruments, please come up. I offer my soulful gratitude to all these divine instruments who have helped me considerably in today’s performance. Soulfully, most soulfully, I am offering you my gratitude from the very depth of my heart.

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When I live in the vital, it is all challenging.

When I live in the heart, it is all illumining.

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