Question: Many good people, spiritual people, are depressed by the things that are going on. How do you get these people to have hope without saying "Pollyana" to them?

Sri Chinmoy: You are speaking about “spiritual people”, but I wish to tell you that a spiritual person will never be depressed, because he knows what is going to happen in the future. You say that they are depressed and you want to carry the message of hope to them. I wish to tell you that if a person really wants to be happy or wants even to be hopeful, then he must not expect anything from the world. If he expects something, even from another person, he will be miserable. He has to expect only from God. Even from Him, today you will expect something and tomorrow you will try to get it from Him; if you don’t get it, you will feel frustrated. The person may think he is extremely sincere. It may be true; he may be sincere, but the time has not come for his expectations to be fulfilled by God. It is only when one is totally in tune with God that one can legitimately harbour any expectation. You can expect everything from God only when you are totally surrendered to Him. As for expecting anything from human beings, if you do, you will be frustrated and miserable. There will be no end to your disgust and frustration.

Now again, your expectation from the Supreme also has to be surrendered to patience. We expect something from Him and then we put a limit on our expectation in that we fix a time: tomorrow or the day after, God has to fulfil my desire. Here I am making a mistake. I do have a right to expect everything from God, but as to when my expectation will be fulfilled, it is not my business. My need will definitely be met by God, but the choice hour has to be fixed by God Himself. The hour and the moment must be surrendered to Him.

Now you asked about hope. Hope is one way of getting true wisdom in our life. There is another method. That method is to enter the consciousness that constantly wants to free us or transform our day-to-day life. We have a very limited physical consciousness, that is, the consciousness that is aware of the ordinary things and events in our outer material life. The moment, however, that we come out of the physical consciousness, we see that there is another consciousness which is the universal consciousness. If we can enter into that universal consciousness, we will see the entire world, the universe and the reason for the happenings of the world. We will see the creation of the world with its meaningful purpose. And if we enter into the region of the cosmic soul, the universal soul, we shall see the clear future in today’s reality. When we see that future, we also see that everything is perfectly all right. So, what these distressed people need is the Light of Patience, because ultimately, everything will be all right.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Earth’s Cry Meets Heaven’s Smile, part 3, Aum Press, Puerto Rico, 1978
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/ech_3