Earth’s Cry Meets Heaven’s Smile, part 3

Question: I would like to know how you felt the call of God in your life?²⁵⁷

An ordinary person grows slowly and when the years advance on him, he sees around him others who are thinking of God, praising God and people who feel that without God there can be no joy. These ideas enter into him and then, of course, he may also develop a little aspiration for God. Gradually, with the help of others and with his own sincere cry for God, he feels that he has also got the call of God. In my case, though, I came with a very high mission.

Then I had the opportunity to come into a very spiritual family. My parents were spiritual, my sisters and brothers are all living in a spiritual community; they have been there for the last thirty years or so.

When I was a child of a year and two months, my parents took me to a spiritual Centre which in India we call an ashram. From that time on, even my physical being was inspired with the message of my soul’s inner call. Then when I was twelve and a half years old, I came to that place to stay permanently and I remained there for twenty years. At the age of thirteen, or when I had completed thirteen years, I became fully aware of what I was in my past incarnations. That is to say, my past spiritual achievements and so forth became revealed to me. Gradually, in the course of a year or two, I became fully aware of my self-realisation in my past incarnation and also my role as a spiritual teacher in my past incarnation.

So if I have to tell you, if you want me to tell you when actually I became fully aware of my spiritual realisation, then I must say that it was when I was between thirteen and fourteen years of age. But the call, if you ask when I got the call, I must say that the call I got or I had when my soul entered into this physical body, this physical frame. And that call I got hundreds of years ago to realise God and to fulfil God here on earth. But in this incarnation, I must say that I became totally and fully conscious of my inner call at the age of twelve and a half.

1966

Note

Question: How long have you been here in Puerto Rico?

What do you think is the soul development, the vibration here in Puerto Rico?

Sri Chinmoy: Oh, it is wonderful. The spiritual soil is very fertile. People are aspiring, dedicated and they have genuine aspiration. What they lack is confidence in themselves.

Do you think that our commodities here in Puerto Rico are a hindrance to the development of the soul?

Sri Chinmoy: Not at all. Commodities are not a hindrance to the soul’s development. We have to have a different attitude towards them, towards material prosperity. All hindrance, even if you consider them as hindrances, can be taken as opportunities in your life. If you take them as hurdles, these hurdles will give you an opportunity to surmount them and reach your Goal. What we think of as a hindrance is not a hindrance in God’s view.

I was thinking for instance, that we have very good TV programmes here and we also have a spiritual meeting. But we feel more inclined to stay at home watching the TV programme than going to the meeting. So I consider that a hindrance.

Sri Chinmoy: That is not at all a hindrance; it is a lack of wisdom. If I have money, that does not mean that I am doomed to squander it all the time. I should know when to use it for a right purpose, for a divine purpose. Similarly, there are many things that might distract me or prevent me from following the spiritual path or the inner life. It is I who am the master of my possession. I shall have to deal with them according to the dictates of my soul. If I have a TV in my room, it is I who use the TV. It is not the TV that uses me. I am the Master of my possession. So long as I am the master, it is I who have to control my mind and say, “No, I have to go and listen to a spiritual talk which is more important than the TV show.

But don’t you think that if you did not have the TV set, you would be more inclined to go to the meeting?

Sri Chinmoy: Unfortunately, no. That is not the case. At that time, laziness may enter into me and I might say, “Who cares? The spiritual life is not meant for me; it is something unreal. I want to talk to my neighbour.” In that case, what you are saying is that the poorest people who cannot afford to buy television sets would all be more inclined to follow the spiritual life than the others. But it is not like that. There are beggars in India who do not care for the spiritual life. Here also. Poverty does not mean that we are one inch nearer to God. It is our mistaken idea to feel this.

The possession is not responsible for what we do; it is the possessor who is responsible. The TV is not responsible; it is the owner. I am sure you have heard the name of King Janaka. He had a vast kingdom and in spite of having this vast kingdom, his whole mind was always devoted to God and God-realisation. Similarly the material prosperity of the West is in no way an obstacle to God-realisation. If you can feel that you are the possessor and that you must not be possessed by what you have, then you will be the master of the situation. Those who don’t have money will always harbour the feeling that they are poor and unfortunate. But for them, the same difficulty will arise and it will not be due to their poverty, but to their inner weakness.

Question: Do you believe there is a great strength in stillness?

Even if one moves he may be still. I think stillness is like the eye of a storm, which is still, but around it, everything moves. I think also that artistic stillness, even if it has a lot of movement in it, has to be quiet at the centre.

Sri Chinmoy: Actually in Sanskrit, they say, “That moves and That moves not.” Actually stillness is moving all the time, yet it is not moving. “That moves and That moves not.”

Let us say that I am at the piano and I am moving my fingers, playing, but if I am a witness of what I am doing, the fingers are moving, but I am not.

Editor's note

In compiling this book, we found that in several cases, we were left with the original question itself, plus a few disconnected, disjointed and unmarked paragraphs of unused material. As we have been unsuccessful in tracing the published material, i.e. the specific answers which originally belonged to these questions, we have had to use whatever material we have, as it is. The asterisks indicate large portions of the answers cut out.

On a higher level, though, everything that is said by the Master has a universal Truth and Beauty, quite apart from the context in which it is placed. So in whatever publication his teachings appear, and whether his answers appear as originally spoken, or not, his Light and Power as such, fulfil an eternal need in the searching life of the eternally aspiring seeker.]

Question: Had you heard something about Puerto Rico in India?

Question: How long will you be staying here: a week?

I am not flattering you. All of you are sincere and at the same time, dedicated. My humble request is to please have confidence in yourselves. If you have got a Guru, well and good. If you don’t have one, or you don’t need one, do not be at all disturbed. The first thing is to have confidence in yourselves, that you are God’s child. Say, “I am God’s child. I have to realise God. There is no alternative.” If you have a Guru, well and good. If you don’t, what can you do? If you don’t need one, that is also alright. But confidence you must have, saying, “How can I stay, how can I live without God-realisation, without seeing Him?

[...]

God is our Eternal Father and we are His eternal children. It is only a child that can make progress, not the one who is learned. He will be in his own mental world. But the child knows and feels that he has much to learn and he wants to live in God’s consciousness, which is limitless. There is no limit to our knowing and learning. We are all a drop, a tiny drop in the vast ocean of God’s infinite consciousness.

If it touches our mind that we should live a spiritual life, then only will we, one day, begin to do it. Otherwise, if we don’t think of the very idea that we should try to live a better life, a spiritual life, then we will never start the spiritual life. If we want to bathe in the sea, we may not jump into the sea right now, but we have to go, at least, to the seashore and stand there and observe the waves. If we don’t leave our room and stand before the sea, then we shall never enter into the sea. So at least let us start our journey and then one day we shall reach our Goal.

[...]

Question: How can imperfection be removed quickly?

For some time, you have to think, “No, I am not this imperfection. I can never be. I am God’s child. How can I ever be imperfect? It is something quite wrong.” Go on thinking in this vein for a few days. Then your thinking will be transmuted into feeling. First you will be thinking with the mind, “No, I cannot be that.” Then you will feel, “No, I cannot be imperfect. I cannot bind God’s child.” Then you create, within yourself, a kind of oneness with perfection: “I am all perfect.” First you are thinking, then you are feeling that oneness. You will become one with perfection. When you have become one with perfection, will you dare to say that you are imperfect?

Those of you who ask me questions, if my answers are not satisfactory or do not serve you satisfactorily, do tell me. I can try to throw more light on it if you feel that it is not convincing you. I will try my best to convince you, but I may not be able to succeed.

What about sickness?

Sri Chinmoy: There are various reasons for sickness. The main reason is a very material one. A certain internal imperfection or dislocation develops in our organs or our cells. It is natural and it occurs with all living things. Very often, due to that, we fall sick.

The second reason is that certain chronic diseases or fatal diseases may come to us owing to our previous wrong actions.

Question: I would like to know the name of Swamiji.

Today we are discussing religion. Until we know what religion is, we will not understand spirituality. And until we understand spirituality, we cannot understand yoga. Until we have understood yoga, we cannot think of God. Tomorrow I shall be speaking on spirituality and then I shall give a few more talks on “The aim of life” and “What is God’s Plan? ” and the principal Yogas: Karma Yoga, the path of Action, Bhakti Yoga, the path of Love and Devotion, and Jnana Yoga, the path of Knowledge and Wisdom. These are the things I would like to deal with during my stay in Puerto Rico.

Question: With what movement is Swamiji connected in New York?

You came by yourself?

Sri Chinmoy: No, I was brought up in a spiritual Centre. I stayed for twenty years in a spiritual Centre in India, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. For twenty years I stayed there. I went there at the age of one but they were not accepting children. But I stayed there from the age of twelve until I was thirty-two. Twenty years I stayed doing intense meditation and all that. My brothers and sisters were all there. I am the youngest of the lot and my sisters and brothers are still all there. Some of them have been there for thirty years, forty years, in that Centre.

I got the Command from within. The Supreme within me demanded it. In the beginning I was afraid, but I was compelled. My American sponsors also insisted. I said, “Well, if it is the Supreme’s Will, I have to accept.” And I came here. We do not decide anything. We wait for the Command. Where is India? Where is New York? I had to come.

Did you go to Europe first?

Sri Chinmoy: No, I did not go to Europe. Only on the way we stopped there for two and a half hours. Otherwise I did not go to Europe. I have been here in the U.S., in New York. I have gone to quite a few states to give talks. I went to Canada. Most probably at the end of my visit here, I will go to California. Again, these are all speculations. We do not know actually what will happen. Here I have come. Who knows if I may come here again. I may not come here at all.

You have to come back again.

Sri Chinmoy: We don’t decree such things.

But you must try to arrange it.

Sri Chinmoy: We say that the Guru is always at the command of his disciples. If the disciples want him, the Guru is bound to come. There is no alternative.

If a child cries, the father will not feed himself, but he will remain unfed and he will come to the child, to try and feed the child. It is like that.

We need to be fed.

_On that table is a display of the magazine that Sri Chinmoy is publishing. It is his way of spreading the Truth. When we finish here, you have the opportunity of looking at it and deciding if you are interested._

Note

Questions by Kalipada

Sri Chinmoy: Yes.

The union of the individual soul with the God-Soul.

Sri Chinmoy: Yes.

But in ordinary experience, all of us know what this is. I can stretch out my hand to Mr. Friedman. I can talk to him; I can communicate with him. Now when we want the Goal, the abode of spiritual union, what is this? What is the experience? What is it like?

Sri Chinmoy: The thing is this: you can touch Mr Friedman and communicate with him. You may even feel that you have become one with him. You get a kind of vibration or feeling that you have united with him in the spiritual sense. But actually, you have not really become one with him in the inner planes; you have not achieved a union with his inner being or with his soul. You have the feeling that Mr Friedman’s thoughts and ideas have entered into you. This comes from your intellectual closeness to him and your heart’s ties. You do have a deep affinity with Mr Friedman and a fine understanding of him. But the feeling that you have fully entered into him or that he has entered into you is partly your imagination and partly your mental projection. It is also due to your sense of affinity and the closeness that you feel towards him. But it is neither your inner being nor his inner being that has united you two. Needless to say, your souls do not enter into the picture here at all.

Kalipada, it is very difficult to achieve a union with another person’s soul without first having achieved union with the Supreme Soul, God. You have correctly stated that Yoga is union with God. When you have achieved union with God, you get the Consciousness of God. When you achieve union with someone’s soul, however, you get a glimpse of God’s Consciousness. You see an aspect or a facet of the Divine Consciousness. The more developed the soul is, of course, the more powerfully and beautifully will God’s Consciousness be manifested in that person. But in union with God Himself, you feel that you have become inseparably one with Him. Not only do you feel it and see it, but actually you have become one with what He eternally is. In Yoga, through your aspiration and meditation, you consciously enter into the Ocean, which is God, the Supreme. Like a drop, you enter into the Ocean and you lose your individual, separate existence.

Now if you touch Mr Friedman, you will get a partial glimpse of his existence, his feelings, thoughts and vibrations. But you will not really become one with him. It is only a momentary oneness. But in Yoga, when we identify ourselves with God, we become like a drop in the Ocean and we lose our very existence. At the same time, we become the Infinite Ocean itself. The union with God is different from the union that we try to achieve by identifying ourselves with someone, especially when it is a limited identification such as we get by touching or talking to someone.

In the true spiritual union, what actually happens is this: the union with the Highest may last for a few days or a few months and then you lose it until you have created a free access to the Highest, until you can go there at your command or bring it down at your command. When you can do that, it becomes something permanent. Otherwise it may last for a few hours, a few days or a few months. Then it vanishes. But in our inner consciousness, it is all being recorded -- how many times you have gone up to your highest consciousness and how many times you have come down. You have the experience a number of times and then you make it a living reality. Eventually it becomes a permanent realisation.

One further question on this. If anyone here in this room or anywhere else, for that matter, attained union with God in some previous life, but in this present life they have not yet attained it, how does that previous attainment affect him?

Sri Chinmoy: If he had already attained realisation and in this present life is not conscious of it, how can he become aware of it and how can that previous realisation affect his everyday life?

Yes.

Sri Chinmoy: It is through the same process. It is through Yoga, by practising Yoga. All the great spiritual figures, you know Krishna, Buddha, Christ, Sri Ramakrishna... they all attained to the greater part of their spiritual perfection in their previous lives. But even then, they had to practise Yoga for quite a number of years to get back to their original Home. Then, of course, once they get back to their original Home, they bring down all of their spiritual wealth.

Here also, I must say, most of you... no, all of you, all ten of you here in this room today accepted Yoga in your previous lives. Some of you are conscious of this and some of you are not. Those of you who are conscious of it, how have you become conscious? You did not become conscious overnight. Only by practising Yoga for a number of months, and in most cases, a number of years, did you become aware that you did something previously in your spiritual life. Something reveals itself inside you.

Revelation comes in the course of time. Then you go spontaneously, openly, freely back to your original Home, the Home of your true existence. Then you bring it down to affect your present incarnation.

Question: Gurudev, when I come into contact with Mr. Friedman or anyone else in this everyday experience, I get a certain joy and sometimes a certain pain in that association. Now what do you experience when you are in union with God?

You have perhaps noticed that many times in a spiritual seeker’s life, when he has a terrible headache or a stomach-ache, in the beginning he has unbearable suffering. Then what happens? He brings down Peace from above and that Peace touches the suffering itself. And when it touches the suffering, the suffering transforms itself into joy. The seeker gets enormous joy.

I remember once in India I was undergoing a small operation; I was having a boil opened. The doctor was an intimate friend of mine. He said, “Please be calm and quiet for a few minutes.” And I did what he asked. While the doctor was performing the operation, I was actually smiling at him. It was not that I wanted to show that I was confident. No, I was actually deriving joy. The pain was unbearable, but while he was operating, I was getting joy and I was smiling. The doctor said, “What is the matter with you? Are you cutting jokes with me? ” I said, “No, I am getting joy from the suffering.”

Question: Now once I have entered into this ocean of Bliss and I come back down to my normal self, would I be normal in the sense that I was the same as before I went into this ocean, or would I be radically different?

A special blessing and power

And now I wish all of you to place your hand on your heart individually when I look at you. That is to say, I wish to concentrate on that particular person most intensely, spiritually and divinely. And that concentration and meditation will be meant only for him or for her. After that we will have a general meditation. In that meditation, all of us will aspire and invoke the Supreme and all of us will be benefited.

Question: Suppose one achieves Realisation, say, at the age of twenty. Does this realisation wipe out all karmic debts for that individual?

1967

Question: Is it correct to think of love, forgiveness and wisdom while one pronounces the name of the Supreme?

Question: Is it possible to realise the Supreme in one life?

Finally if he becomes fully consecrated and devoted, if he has the deepest aspiration for God-realisation in one particular incarnation, and if he gets the help of a spiritual teacher in that particular incarnation, then it is possible for that person to realise God in that life-time. If, however, he has to do it by his own personal efforts, it will take him another several incarnations; perhaps eight or ten or twelve more in spite of having the deepest aspiration. This is because the process is very arduous, very difficult.

Question: Is there a difference or distinction between surrender, devotion and selfless love?

Devotion is wonderful in the inner life or in the outer life. Devotion: what does it mean? It means to devote oneself to and to serve with total absorption something usually apart from oneself. If you devote yourself to something or someone, then sooner or later, you will achieve success in whatever you aspire for. Then also, devotion is something very intense, especially if it is used in a spiritual way. Devotion need not, or at times it may not be pure, because of thousands of desires which the individual has or by the impure motives of his devotion. Somebody is devoted to me, but at the same time, he may be assailed by thousands of desires and then each desire is like a drop of poison in his system. But he is coming to me with devotion. It is wonderful. But he is unaware that he is bringing this poison also. But if his devotion is freed from desire, at that stage, we have come to selfless love.

Here we go one step ahead. We love but we don’t care for any return. In devotion, there may be a kind of give and take. “I devote my entire life to you. You have to give me inner Realisation or Illumination or something else.” In selfless love, when you come to this stage, there you are loving selflessly and you are becoming one with the object of your adoration. Then, in that love, there is a subtle understanding that He will give you the best reward because you do not bother Him with your silly emotional problems or desires. You no longer say, “Give me this or give me that.” That stage I have gone through. In selfless love, you know that He will give you something worth possessing.

Question: Does resurrection come when perfection in body and mind is attained?

There are two processes. What you call resurrection, I wish to call transformation. Resurrection would mean (as it does in the Christian tradition) that we would leave the physical body, ascend to a higher world, then come down again and animate the inert body with a higher consciousness than it had before. This process would not be necessary. For millions and millions of years, the body has been in darkness, this physical body, but not the heart, not the soul, not the mind. So this physical body, in the march of evolution may take a few hundred or even a thousand years to be perfected. When perfection has dawned in the mind, in the heart, and in the soul and when the soul within the body is fully realised by the outer being, at that time there would be two ways of living on earth. One way is this transformation which is the complete perfection of the body. The other way will be what you can call the divinisation of the body. Right now, if you want to speak in the strict sense of the term, the body is undivine; it is not divinised. However, with aspiration and inner realisation, everything will be divinised. So one process is the transformation and physical perfection of the human body here on earth, which is similar to what you call resurrection; the other is divinisation in which all the functions of the physical body lose their mechanical, automatic nature and are controlled directly by the inner will. Everything in the body will be luminous, malleable and totally at the direct, supple service of the inner divinity, the soul.

An ordinary seeker in the future will have the capacity to transform his physical body by using his spiritual Light and his inner spiritual powers. His bodily perfection will be divinely “normal” at that time. In the case of a realised person, however, his physical body will be not only transformed and made perfect, but it will also be divinised. He will not have to go back and take another incarnation in order to have a divine or perfect body.

Then there is a third method. That method is that the beginning of human existence would not take place here on earth. The soul will take its physical form, its human shape in the psychic world. In the psychic world, the soul will be able to unite with a physical sheath or form, a divine body already created. Then at that time there will be no necessity for the spiritually realised soul to enter into a human mother, the human body. At that time, procreation will be stopped for those spiritually realised persons. They will no longer enter the earth through human birth. But in ordinary human beings, procreation will go on.

Question: Is all that happens to a human being caused by karma or by trials or by a third force? Can we call that third force "will"?

The third thing that causes things to happen in the human being is will-power. In its purest term, in its highest term, will-power is inner determination. But in ordinary terms it is desire. At its highest, it is the inner urge; at its superficial level, it is an outer, shallow tinkering or wanting. So you can call the third force, will-power or desire.

Question: How can we succeed in breaking loose from the bonds of karma?

The easiest and most effective way of freeing yourself from the bonds of karma is to feel that you are not the doer. You are just an instrument. An instrument is not responsible, but the Doer, who is God, is responsible. If one can feel all the time that there is Somebody else who is the Doer and he is merely the instrument, then who will be responsible? The doer. If He does something wrong, He is responsible; if He does something good, He will be appreciated. Unfortunately in ordinary life, it is impossible for the average human being to think or feel that he is not the doer. If he does something wrong, immediately he curses himself and says, “I made a mistake.” If, on the other hand, he does something right, he is bloated with pride and feels that he alone did it. Our human action compels us to feel that we deserve the fruit. But if we feel that we are not the Doer, that the Doer is God, immediately the fruit, the result, goes to the One who has actually acted. And who is that person? It is God, the Supreme.

So any human being, any man on earth, can free himself from the bonds of karma just by changing his attitude towards karma. “He is the Doer, I am the instrument.” This may be very difficult, but at the same time, it is the only way for an aspirant to free himself from the bonds of karma. And if the aspirant is sincere and aspiring, sooner or later, he will be granted liberation, self-realisation and all that. When one has realised God, one has liberated himself from the fetters of ignorance. Then one is not bound by the law of karma. He does another kind of karma which in Sanskrit is called Agami karma. Agami karma is done by the liberated soul, the realised person. When he works, he is not bound by the results of his work, either good or bad, because he knows perfectly well that he is the instrument and he is not the doer. Another kind of karma is Sanchita karma, accumulated karma which brings together the results and the consequences of a great deal of past karma all, more or less, at the same time. There is also Prarabdha karma, the actions that you have done in the distant past and for which you are now reaping the results.

Question: Please explain the relationship between karma and fate.

Karma can be done physically, vitally, mentally, psychically. We can work with the heart, we can work with the soul. And again, in silence we can work. Silence is a kind of karma, if there is the power of conscious determination behind it. And that karma is most difficult: to remain silent, not inert, but dynamically silent.

Now to come back to your question. You are asking if whatever is happening is destined. Today’s suffering or tomorrow’s joys, is it all destined? Today I run into an accident. Is this destined? Or could I have avoided this accident to some extent, or could I have totally freed myself from that accident? Here we have to know whether there is something called Divine Grace. That Divine Grace can protect us totally or partially or it may not interfere at all in our day-to-day activities. It enters, it permeates our being only when we are in the field of aspiration.

Now another method you can adopt to obliterate the law of karma is the exercise of will, adamantine will. That will is not desire proper. It is adamantine will-power which we get through aspiration, through meditation.

You speak of karma, but there are many people who call it fate and do not differentiate between the two. A spiritual person says, “Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.” Right now, most of us do not have that unchanging will. We have only a bundle of desires. Desire is not the same as will-power. We are always saying, “Give me, give me” like a beggar. We have to be conscious of what we are praying for and that is our oneness with the Will of the Supreme. When we can identify ourselves totally with the Supreme’s Will, we develop and we possess that will-power. That will-power is our soul’s power.

Let us come back to Grace, Divine Grace. In our ordinary life, we often see people attacked. Immediately the person who is wronged tries to take revenge. But there is or can be a third power. This is the intervention of Divine Grace which is infinitely mightier than my action and your reaction. If I do something wrong, immediately you will take revenge, you will punish me. But my wrong action can also be obliterated by Divine Grace and at the same time, your power, your revenge cannot take place in my life.

Question: I believe that if we live our lives according to the laws of nature, most harmoniously with the laws of nature, we won't have as much suffering as we now have, because everyday we are actually violating the laws of nature.

Question: I think that one should not try to imitate the laws of nature, inasmuch as each one has his own nature which is more important to him. We cannot imitate a tree. The tree does not have to know that it is a tree to be a tree. A man has to know that he is a man to be a man. We have to be conscious, but the tree is not required to be conscious.

Question: We try to live the spiritual life and then we feel that the forces of the world seem to act apart from us and try to drag us down. When we give in to those forces, something happens and then we lose our contact with the Divine. We get mixed up with the things of the world. We have desires, passions, and we ask God for material things. Then when we try to go back to the spiritual life, we find that we do not deserve it.

The thing is that sometimes we sleep. What you say, that you have entered into the ordinary world, you have forgotten God and that you harbour these ugly forces like passion, anger, fear and all that — let us take that as sleep or rest, conscious rest. Now sometimes, instead of sleeping for eight hours, we sleep for twelve hours. Why do we sleep? Sometimes the body needs rest but sometimes out of laziness or mere whim, we are inclined to sleep more than our due. Similarly our outer being wants to take rest, or sleep, for a few years. It has meditated for so many years and it could not keep up the continuous prayer and meditation, the mounting cry which I always speak of. The flame of aspiration, consciously or unconsciously I can extinguish. The flame is extinguished and then for some time, I sleep. Then after four or five years, ten years, again I light the flame. Then my aspiration mounts.

Now the truth is that we don’t lose anything. God is in this room. You have been trying to come here from the other room. There is a passage and you are about to knock at the door. Instead of knocking at the door, you stand in front of it for a few hours or a few days. You changed your process of entering into God’s room.

You felt either that you were frustrated in the world, frustrated with the world, that there was no God, or that in the material world God was there, but in desire, in fear, in passion. In whatever you were doing, you discovered that God was there. Here, however, you are making a mistake with your human mind. Certainly in everything there is God, but we have to find out where precisely God can really illumine us. God is in dirty water as well as in pure, distilled water. But what do we want? We want pure water which will give us new life and not dirty water which will make us sick. Similarly we should not try to find God in the most ordinary, obscure and impure activities and foolish desires.

But what is the opposite of desire? It is aspiration. It is like the obverse and reverse of a coin. When we are on one side, it is desire; when we are on the other side, it is aspiration. What do we want to do with that aspiration? We are trying to bring down Peace, Joy, Light and Bliss, all these things. So we can go on living in this world. It is like two brothers: one brother is desire, the other brother is aspiration. If we enter into aspiration’s side, we see in everything the living face of aspiration. The chair is aspiring because in that chair there is a soul. The world is aspiring because in the world there is soul. We have to see with the eye of aspiration and then everything is changed.

So to come back to your point, Agni, you have not lost anything. You have not lost anything. In the Gita, it is mentioned that, if, owing to circumstances, a man could not stay on the spiritual path and adopted a path of enjoyment, he would not necessarily come back in his next incarnation as the most ordinary man, but that he would again enter into an aspirant’s family. Suppose a man for twenty years has meditated and practised the spiritual life. Then for ten or fifteen years, he enters into the world of enjoyment. Then, what will happen? Does it mean that he will never regain the spiritual life? No, he will get it either in this life, in the evening of his life or in his next incarnation. Again he will be given the opportunity to enter into the spiritual life. God will give him another opportunity to enter into the family of a spiritual seeker. So he will lose nothing.

The only thing is that the sooner you can come back to your inner life, by emulating the aspiration of others, the better it is for you. By observing the aspiration of others, you get inspiration again to start treading the path. They will inspire your own aspiration. That is what a spiritual person does. He does not speak. When a disciple has lost aspiration for a month or two, if he is sincere enough, he will just come and look at his Master and then just by looking at his face, he will get back his long-forgotten aspiration. In your case, I am elaborating on your personal question, so that if there is any further question on this, you please tell me.

Agni: It is very clear. Thank you.

Sri Chinmoy: So nothing shall we lose, nothing shall we lose. The only thing is that if we are wise, we can get back our own wealth sooner by seeing true aspirants. And there is also another process which is the process of devotion, which is difficult in the West. In the West, devotion should grow a little more. First of all, in the West they do not know the meaning of devotion. They think that showing me devotion means that if I am the Himalayas, then you are just a hill. No, devotion actually means that you are showing loving care and service to your own Highest. When you look at me, if you show devotion, it is not to me that you are showing this loving concern, but it is to the Highest within me and that Highest abides within you as well. The moment devotion comes, you have to feel that you are showing devotion to your own Highest which you consciously want to become.

Now you know that you have a highest and a lowest consciousness. We are living, most of the time, in the lowest consciousness. The highest consciousness we don’t see, but at the same time, we want to become it. How can we become our highest? Only when we see someone who is constantly trying to bring forward that highest and that is the Guru or the Master or the illumined Teacher. And that Teacher is not, even for a second, separated from you, because his Highest and your Highest are the same. Only he is conscious of the fact that he has free access to that Highest and you are not. Otherwise his Highest and your Highest are the same. So in the West, if the westerners cultivate more the soil of devotion, they will grow faster. In the East, in the Orient, there is devotion, but at the same time, the East is lethargic. In the West, there is dynamism, but this dynamism is used as restlessness. So again, when you are acting like a restless fellow, you are misusing your dynamic faculties. When we are not aware of devotion, we cannot identify ourselves with the Highest. Devotion immediately becomes one with the object of its love. Like this it comes and it touches and it becomes what I am, what I stand for. “I” means your own Highest.

Question: How do you find a Guru? This is all new for me in this life. Idle urge is already there, but how does one know?

The thing is — whom do you actually want? Do you want a Swami or a Master or a Guru? Mahatma Gandhi, whom you were speaking about before was not a realised soul; he was a saint who expressed his love in a patriotic way. A saintly patriot need not be a great spiritual Master. Mahatma Gandhi was not an authority on the inner life or the spiritual life. He was a supreme authority on the moral and religious life; he was an authority on what was decent, proper and necessary in Indian social life and Indian politics. He was a very great man and a very great soul. His illumining vision was much higher and wider than that of his fellow men. He showed his heart’s deepest compassion and oneness for the simple Indian villagers who were downtrodden and neglected. He offered his whole life to help raise the condition of the Indian masses. But as far as self-realisation is concerned, all spiritual Masters know — I am not the only one — that Mahatma Gandhi did not have this. He was not a man who had realised God. He was not a second Sri Ramakrishna or even a Vivekananda. He was nowhere near them. He was not a spiritual figure according to our definition of the term.

It is true to say that spiritual figures are not as easily available as before, but it is simply a wrong idea to say that there are no spiritual figures any more. It is as I told you before that in order to recognise a yogi, one has to be a yogi. But there are spiritual Masters available, and if you are sincere, even though you may not be able to recognise one yourself, the Supreme will lead you to a genuine yogi.

Question: In the Bible, it says that there will always be a Joshua to follow a Moses. Joshua was Moses' disciple. I see also in Indian books that there is always a disciple who starts a line of followers. Is this spiritual chain a necessary part of the manifestation?

One disciple can play the part of a leader and he can be described as the Master’s spiritual descendant, but the Master’s spiritual powers and achievements are given to each disciple according to his capacity and receptivity. The Master may make one disciple a leader, as Sri Ramakrishna did with Vivekananda. Everybody cannot be a leader. But even the leader will receive from the Master according to his own spiritual capacity and receptivity. There are many sincere disciples who do not have the capacity of leadership, but at the same time, they most sincerely aspire. If they are sincere they, too, can get everything.

Question: This state or condition of complete surrender is not easily obtained. On the other hand, you cannot obtain liberation until first you reach the condition of complete surrender. However we find out that we cannot reach that Goal unless we bypass the limitations and self-consciousness of the limited mind, be it in the sphere of the personality or elsewhere. To by-pass that self-consciousness, we find that we cannot do so by the development of the intellect or by the development of the reasoning power because this condition transcends the sphere of both, of the intellect and the reasoning power. And there is a difficulty here because to attain this condition you cannot be consciously immersed in life's problems. I mean to say, we cannot be attached or chained by those problems. Yet life is a challenge that we must meet because life is the process by which the Atman will develop the power and the wisdom to merge with the immanent and transcending power of the Divine. Now the question is: on the one hand we cannot run away from life, but I have found now that this is true only until a certain stage. The stage comes when you have to pull out from this daily turmoil so that you can concentrate and develop or not, but at least get in contact with the inner powers of the Self. For that we need to retire in solitude and meditation so that we will not be disturbed. And my question is: is this retirement indispensable? Is it also indispensable at this ultimate stage that you have the guidance and help of the Guru to attain that condition of complete surrender? Is it indispensable? Once you have attained that condition, then can you come back into life and serve in whatever position that the Supreme wants to put you into? ²⁷¹

To start with, you are absolutely right when you say that it is extremely difficult to make a surrender. Even a partial surrender, not to speak of a total surrender, on the one hand is difficult. On the other hand, it is said that without a complete surrender, you cannot realise God. Both are equally true. Now, how can we solve the first problem or make it easier? We say that it is extremely difficult to surrender to God or to the Guru. But everyone consciously or unconsciously has to surrender; God Himself is helpless in this respect. If one does not surrender to God or to the Guru, he is bound to be unfulfilled, since the entire purpose of our existence is to fulfil the Will of God. So here I wish to tell you how one can surrender.

If one has sincerely accepted a spiritual Master — I am using the word “sincerely” because it is not a matter of just saying that one has accepted a Master in order to show off: “I have the greatest spiritual Master on earth. My Master has miraculous powers, my Master has written hundreds of books, my Master knows all the inner worlds and outer worlds,” — no; I have accepted the Master just because I felt in him my real existence, not because of what he has achieved or what promise he is going to make or what he is going to manifest. Some Masters are absolutely illiterate. They can’t read or write. Other Masters are thoroughly conversant with both Eastern and Western philosophies and scriptures. So whether your Master is a scholar or a fool does not matter. No. You have accepted the Master because in him, in the Master, you feel your highest existence, your highest reality. Only for that reason have you accepted him, not for what he has achieved or what He is going to give you.

If the disciple comes to the Master with the expectation that the Master will give him liberation, realisation, that is a wonderful idea. The Master will give them, He will bring them from God. But a real disciple is he who comes to the Master saying, “Master, take my life. Do anything. If you want me to be your eternal slave, I shall be one. If you want me to realise God, all right, take me. I am at your feet. My realisation is at your feet. My total surrender, my life is for you. Either use me as an eternal slave or use me as a king; for me it is the same.” But if you have the expectation, “Oh, the Master will make me a realised soul,” it is a wonderful expectation, but what happens? When the expectation is not fulfilled today or tomorrow, frustration comes, anxiety comes, worries come, fear comes and doubt comes. “I have been on the spiritual path for forty years; what is wrong with me? Still I am not getting the sense of realisation, not even a glimpse of it!” But where is your surrender? When you accept the Master, if you say, “Now I have totally given myself to you. Use me the way you want, not the way I want,” that is the correct way. But if you say, “I want to be a realised soul, I want to help humanity. I say ‘I’ referring to my highest Self and I do not care for myself, but only for humanity,” that, too, is wonderful. But again, how do you know what is best for you, to help humanity or to realise God first? God knows best. God knows the hour, God knows what He wants, in and through your life.

So you must feel that all your expectations must also be offered to God, to your Master — your expectation to be the highest person or the greatest person on earth or to be a great spiritual Master yourself. If all these expectations you can consciously surrender to the Master — good expectations, highest expectations — then it becomes very easy to make a surrender.

After you have got rid of desire, you have come into the field of aspiration. A time comes when you have to give up your aspiration also. To give up aspiration does not mean that you won’t pray or meditate. No, you will. Giving up aspiration means that the result of aspiration, which is expectation, that also you have to give up. Ramakrishna used to say, “When you have run a thorn into your foot, it is that desire has entered. Now, what do you do? You take another thorn and pick out the first one. Then you throw away both thorns. You do not keep them.” So first you have ignorance. Then you take knowledge to remove your ignorance. Then you throw them both away and you go beyond both ignorance and knowledge. In the Upanishads, it is said, “Through ignorance, we conquer death and then through knowledge, we get Immortality.” Yet a time comes when we have to go beyond both ignorance and knowledge. When you can transcend them both, at that time your absolute surrender comes.

So what I wish to tell you in this matter is that you must give what you have and what you are, if you want to fulfil the Divine in your life. Are you a beggar that you expect this and that? If God is your real father, if you have a spiritual Master, he has to do everything for you. Yesterday I told the disciples that whenever I accept a disciple, I consciously make a promise both to the disciple and to the Supreme that I will take responsibility for this person for Eternity or until he has realised God. Until then, I am responsible for him. So when I make that commitment to the Supreme, the Highest, I have to be sincere and honour it. Some people come and accept a spiritual Master; then after a few months or a few years, they leave him. Their own promise, however, is never ever over, because they have made the highest commitment to the Supreme. They haven’t only made a commitment to their own individual soul. But it seems that often, an ordinary person, when he makes a promise to the Master, just takes that promise as nothing, as drinking water. Tomorrow he leaves the Master and enters into the ordinary life.

The role of the Master is the role of a private tutor. The disciple has to offer his aspiration, his conscious desire, his outer existence, his inner existence to the Master, to the Supreme in the Master. He should say, “I do not expect anything from you, good or bad. From my Master I know I will get only good things, but my only prayer to you is that you utilise my life, you will mould my life, you will shape my life.”

You must go beyond expectation. When you go beyond expectation, at that time you will get everything in plenitude, in infinitude. There, at that point, you make your surrender very easily. Surrender becomes extremely easy when you have the feeling that the Master thinks of your life more than you do yourself, because the Master had made a commitment, not only to you, but to the Supreme to liberate you. If you are sincere in your belief that the Master’s commitment to the Supreme is absolutely binding, then your expectation, although you have long ago transcended it, is bound to be fulfilled in infinite measure. In this way, surrender becomes absolutely easy.

Now to come back to your question as to whether surrender is only one thing but the first thing is God Realisation. If, after accepting a spiritual Master, one wants to go this way or that, or one wants to turn back to one’s own personality and individuality, then that is no surrender at all. You have to surrender to your Master or to the Inner Pilot or to God. These are all the same. The Master is representing God. The Inner Pilot in human form is the Master and in the Divine form, is the Supreme. So one has to surrender to one of the three in order to realise God. If one has no Master and he thinks of God, all right, he has to surrender his existence to God. But if one has a Master, he has to surrender to him, or, if he cares for the Inner Pilot in the human form, who is the Master, and in the spiritual form, the Divine and the Supreme Himself, he has to surrender to them. This is the first fundamental preliminary step, without which one can never, never realise God.

Now you said something about bypassing the mind?

Anugata: By “bypassing”, I meant transcending.

Sri Chinmoy: That is very good. That is true. Otherwise “bypass” is not the right word. We cannot really bypass, but we can transcend. Now the thing is that here we have to ask how, while staying on earth, we can remain above the earth? While you are mixing with people or talking to people, while you are amidst human life, how can you think of the divine life? Here I wish to tell you that the divine life has to be manifested here on earth. How? How are you going to be unaffected when you are mixing with ordinary people who are not aspiring around you? You have to remember that a boat is inside water under water but is not affected by water. We don’t say that the boat is composed of water, but while it is carrying passengers from here to there, it is on top of the water. Similarly you are amongst unaspiring, insincere people. But on the strength of your own sincere, spiritual life, you are carrying them to their destination. That is what the boat is doing, sailing in the water, but not being affected by the water. You can be in the ordinary life, amidst your friends and neighbours, but you need not be affected. Why? Because you have your inner urge to realise the Highest, to fulfil the Highest on earth. If your aspiration is sincere, your aspiration is like an arrow which pierces into the heart of others to stab their own ignorance. But if your own aspiration is very meagre, not sincere, rather hesitant, then where do you go? You cannot inspire anybody, you cannot kindle the flame of aspiration in anyone. There you are lost. First of all, you cannot enter into them, then you can do nothing for them. So you have to know what wealth you already have. If you have the purest, which you have, the purest aspiration, then you can rest assured that you can mix with anybody because aspiration itself is the strength, the purest strength of God in human beings, in the aspirant. So if you have true aspiration, you can mix with anybody. Anybody, men, women, anybody, they will not be able to take away your aspiration. But if there is no aspiration, you are lost to the world, you are lost to yourself. Aspiration has a burning quality, but this fire does not burn people; it illumines people. Ordinary fire will simply turn everything to ashes. But the fire of aspiration, only illumines, illumines our lives. So when you are taking that kind of fire to the darkness, it is only illumining the darkness. The darkness is being illumined by our aspiration which is the constant inner fire. Easily you can stay amidst the world. What am I doing? It is my aspiration that gave me realisation. Now I am doubly secure, with my aspiration and realisation. Now you have the aspiration; what you need is realisation. Right now your own realisation is that you have to surrender your own existence to a spiritual Master who is totally one with the Supreme. So if your surrender to me is complete, then immediately we are one. When you are one with me, you are one with God. Then you need not be afraid of anybody. We are not afraid of ignorance.

Question: I cannot see anything created by God as imperfect. How can He create a soul that is not perfect and then say, "Alright, you go ahead in your own free way; develop the best you can?"

Arati: Good! G-o-o-d!

Sri Chinmoy: God is...

Arati: Perfect.

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, God is perfect — the Absolute God who is above all. The Highest is perfect, who is the Supreme, the Self. The God who is One Soul without a second, He is really perfect. But the God who has entered into the multiplicity, the One who has donned these clothes, Chinmoy, He is imperfect because He is now taking this human consciousness which is full of limitations and full of imperfections.

God Himself is in the process of making. I should say that He is going from imperfection to perfection. God wants to make me perfect. The potter, when he makes a pot, changes it constantly, moulding and changing the shape until it comes to perfection. So God is also perfecting Himself through humanity because He is the Spirit. He has descended into matter. This is His game. You can say it is a cruel game, but it is His game.

I say, we say, that we are all God, we have come from God. But where is our realisation? Where is our perfection? We are in the process of realisation: we are in the process of perfection.

When each individual represents God, what is actually happening? Even though that individual has not fully realised God, still we can’t separate God from that person’s existence. So much imperfection we are seeing in this world. Do you think that God is not there in that imperfection? God is everywhere. God is in a thief just as He is in the honest man. He is there; He is getting experience. God can be everything: He can be the Highest and He can be the Lowest. Of course I don’t want to be the God who is in the lowest. I want to be the God who is in the Highest. God is in dirty, filthy water as well as in pure, distilled water. If I want to survive, I shall drink the pure water and not the filthy water; otherwise I would die. Similarly, if I want to be good, perfect and serve the Divine, I have to become Divine.

In our ordinary existence, during one day, how many times does each human being become the victim of ugly thoughts, undivine thoughts and all that? At the same time, you will see that he gets divine, fulfilling and sublime thoughts, too. So when God is in the uncomely thoughts as well as in the divine thoughts, how can He separate His existence from ours from one hour to another? No, He is in our imperfection and in our aspiration.

So God, the Spirit, has entered into matter, yet matter is ignorant, sleeping. There He is, awakening and pushing matter forward. Open your eyes, open your eyes; you have to grow into the Infinite. God is everywhere. God is in darkness and in Light. But with our knowledge, with our wisdom, with our aspiration, we have to grow towards the Best, towards the Highest, towards the most fulfilling.

Question: I would like to know why I have many times seen that when a person comes into profound practice of the spiritual or inner life, so many difficulties arise, many times discouraging the aspirant to go on in his practice?

Question: In relation to Sudha's question, are not other personalities sometimes involved in keeping the soul in its present condition? For example if you are attached to someone?

Question: I would like to know if there is a point after pain? We live in pain, but then do you believe that there is a point beyond pain?

Once I had three big boils here and the pain was unbearable when I went to the doctor. I raised my hand; the nurse was holding my wrist and I was looking at the doctor, smiling. Before the actual operation took place, for ten minutes I was concentrating. When the doctor was operating, I was looking at him, smiling.

There is another way to overcome pain. If you can consciously enter into the pain itself and stay in the pain for a few minutes, then the pain does not torture you as pain. For when we become the possessors of the pain, we can transform this very pain into joy. When you enter into the pain, you become the possessor of the pain. Right now, the pain possesses you; you are a victim of the pain and it keeps torturing you. But if you can possess the pain, you can actually inject into that area anything that you want. With your conscious power, you can inject delight, joy, whatever you want. It is quite possible and practicable. Many people have done it and the doctors have admired it. If you want to inject joy into the pain, you can feel it in that very spot.

Question: But do you think that a person can go on like this and not have to come back and stay in the physical plane? I mean, can he stay in a state of joy?

Is it clear to you, Akuti? It is quite possible. Even in your meditation, if you go and enter into the place of Peace and Bliss, you retain a higher level of consciousness while you are doing your daily work. Even though you are involved in thousands of activities, you can consciously retain that beautiful state of Bliss. Although you are talking with your friends and are involved in physical activities, you are retaining the consciousness of Peace and Bliss.

In our Mahabharata, India’s greatest epic, the mother of the Pandavas used to pray to the Lord, Sri Krishna, to give her pain and suffering so that she would think of God all the time and pray to Him. “O Lord, give me pain, give me suffering, so that I can always think of you.” But in this evolved world and in our society, this should never be our attitude. We should pray to God to go towards the Light. “Give me Light so that I can think of You all the time in Light, in Joy, in Delight.” But she prayed for pain. “If I am in joy, I will forget You”, she said. That should not be our attitude.

Question: Will you speak about the Divine Mother?

There are four major aspects of this Mother Divine, the transcendental Mother. The first aspect is that of immensity, power, vastness and majesty. That aspect we call Maheshwari, the Great Mother. In another aspect, we call her Mahakali, the Great Mother who is all the time fighting against the undivine forces, yet who is full of compassion. Of course, all the Mother-aspects of the Divine are full of compassion, but this Mother, it seems, has more compassion than the others. Now this Mother, Mahakali, does everything very, very quickly towards the final achievement. She cares only for those who sincerely aspire. She does not care so much for perfecting the seeker, but she cares for the highest height. If she is satisfied with the aspiration and sincerity of her disciples, of her devotees, then what she does is to give them, in a day, the progress which otherwise would have taken those particular aspirants fifty or sixty years. She works so fast; this is the Mother Mahakali, Great Kali. She is my favourite, my most favourite of all the goddesses; but we cannot separate one goddess from another, since these are only aspects of the one Divine Mother. I cannot separate my right arm from my left arm. In the same way, all the different aspects of the Divine Mother function in their own unique way, but they work together.

And I must say that the Maheshwari aspect of infinite wideness has another emanation, another personality, whom we call Durga. Durga is one of Maheshwari’s aspects. Durga and Vijaya are the same goddess. Vijaya is also an emanation of the Goddess Maheshwari. She fights for the Divine. She fights for the victory of Truth and Light. One of our great Avatars -- an Avatar is a direct descendant of God -- whose name was Ramachandra, the first Avatar, while he was fighting against the demons, prayed to this particular Goddess, Durga. Durga was pleased with his prayer and Ramachandra was able to conquer the hostile forces and win the victory. He brought back his wife, Sita, who had been captured by the demon chief.

The third goddess is Lakshmi, Mahalakshmi. She is the Mother of beauty, charm, sweetness and fragrance. She is the Mother who creates in every aspect of life, a divine harmony. Most Indian women are inwardly connected and influenced by Mahalakshmi. She has infinite patience, whereas Mother Kali does not want to wait; she does not have patience. In our human sense, we can say that Kali won’t wait. Immediately she will know whether I am sincere or not. If I am insincere, she will simply throw me away. But Mahalakshmi will wait and wait, no matter how insincere I am, no matter what my imperfections are. She is for each and every soul on earth. She wants a peaceful harmony in this earthly life; beauty, softness, sweetness, splendour, all of these heart qualities. So those who pray to her will naturally get all these divine qualities, but they do not go as fast as the devotees of Kali do. These want only liberation, the disciples of Kali; they go right to the Goal. Then after reaching the Highest, if the Supreme wants perfection in their nature, then they have to perfect themselves; and become perfect perfection. I want to say one more thing about Kali: she is the Mother of aspiration also. She kindles the flame of aspiration in the sincere seekers. She does this immediately on seeing real sincerity.

Now there is a fourth goddess. Her name is Saraswati, Mahasaraswati. She is the Mother of Divine Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom. In India, when a child begins to learn to read, he is taught to invoke the Goddess Saraswati and at the same time, to learn a particular mantra [an incantation] and shloka [a verse] which he will repeat so that the Goddess Saraswati will be pleased with him and bless his endeavour. Even when an adult person sits down to read in India, he will often invoke the name of Mahasaraswati to bless him with divine understanding and ultimate knowledge. I still remember the shloka which I had to learn at the age of four and a half or five. We had to say it repeatedly, so we learned it. It was in Sanskrit. “I bow to Thee, O Saraswati, who gives knowledge and wisdom, and whose eyes are very wide and who plays the vina.” This goddess plays the vina, the Indian stringed instrument. She wants perfect perfection in her disciples. As I said, she is the Goddess of Learning and Wisdom, Knowledge and divine Understanding. She wants perfection in every minute detail. She is the Mother of Perfection. In everything, she wants divine perfection. Mahasaraswati is most gracious, most beautiful in this unillumined, ignorant world. She is the youngest and most recent of the four aspects of the Divine Mother.

Question: Do you have pictures of the different aspects of the Mother?

Question: In that picture, Mother Kali is represented doing different things with her four arms. What is she actually doing?

And now, why is she seen to be standing on her husband? When she was fighting, it was all water and flowing blood. She needed space. When the divine starts fighting, both the dynamic and the static states are brought into play. Dynamism can take place only where there is a static base. Somebody must remain solidly anchored and still; Kali’s own husband offered. She was moving while fighting, so she needed some place where she could get a footing. Lord Shiva played the part of her static base by lying down and allowing her to stand upon his chest.

Each goddess has a secret and special name. While this Goddess is normally known as Kali or Mahakali [Great Kali], her secret name is Kring. Many years ago, when I started worshipping her, I had to say her name most powerfully: AUM, Krinng, Krinnng, Krinnng... All fear, all the world’s fear has to leave when you repeat her name, her secret name. I used to repeat her secret name thousands and millions of times when I was thirteen or fourteen years old.

Question: What is true humility and how does true love for mankind manifest in us?

We cannot be abused. We do not allow anybody to stand on our head. We do not allow anybody to treat us mercilessly. God... let us look at God. He lives in the grass. Early in the morning we walk on the grass and how it is crushed and spoiled, but there He is. Without humility we do not, cannot, possess the divine dignity. And what is this divine dignity? Divine dignity is the knowledge that we exist in everything. I am God, so I exist everywhere, in everything. So now, if one wants to realise God, the first and foremost thing that will be necessary is humility.

Now to go deeper; when one is humble it does not mean that he is weak, he is a beggar. No. Humility and humiliation are two totally different things. Very often here in the West we take humility as humiliation. Why should we allow anybody to trample us, to degrade us? No, that is called humiliation. But humility is something that spontaneously grows in our day-to-day life because it is the sweetest, softest, mildest and at the same time most fertile ground in us. Look at this Mother Earth. Can there be anybody or anything as humble as Mother Earth? Mother Earth is holding us, receiving all impacts from us, guiding us. She is all love, all compassion and at the same time, all powerful. But when we look at Mother Earth, the first thing that comes to our mind is humility. How humble! We see this when we appreciate nature and natural beauty all around us. How humble they are! The more humble one is, the greater is his strength. God is omnipresent. That means He is everywhere. Just because He is everywhere, He is also omnipotent; He is all powerful. So when we are humble, when we know the true meaning of humility, we immediately become one with the Person who is around us, in front of us, and one with the Object that is around us. The moment we become totally one with God or Light or Duty or Power or with Consciousness, we become the All-powerful, the Almighty in our inner life, as well as outer life.

So humility is the secret to show us the oneness with the outer world and also with the inner world. When we have true humility, we unite both worlds, the inner and the outer. When we unite the worlds, then we see what else is required: possessing the world. When we possess the world, what else is required? We become the real rulers of the world. This ruler does not dominate. No, he will be the conscious guiding light of the world.

Question: Does the spiritual life preclude other kinds of normal activities in life? I mean ... does the spiritual life mean that you have to give up what you happen to be doing at the time, say, being an interior decorator?

You asked about work. Now there are two kinds of work: in the ordinary kind of work, you do something and then immediately you ask for the result. Then when you get the result, you say, “No, perhaps I could have got a better result.” There is no end to it. If you want real joy, you will not get it by fulfilling a desire for a particular result. You won’t get real joy. But in the second kind of work, in true spiritual work, you do the work but you do not care for the fruit or the result. Only by having the right attitude, will you become a happy person. If you do the work with a divine attitude, then it will not be the result which gives you joy, but the very act.

So within the spiritual life, we can easily house the outer life. But the true spiritual life will never ask the outer life to remain separate. No. What it does is that it enters into the physical life or the outer life and it tries to expedite the movement and progress of the outer life in a divine way.

What do we mean by the spiritual life? We mean that it is a life of inspiration, aspiration and inner communion. When you are able to meditate for a few minutes, the mind does not become a victim to doubts, impure thoughts, and unhealthy ideas. When there is no doubt, you can do some work in a very few minutes. If there is a little shadow of doubt, though, it may take an hour or even a day. So even in your day-to-day activities, the spiritual life is a great help in achieving success. And if you really and truly accept the spiritual life, you will see that in the twinkling of an eye, most of your difficulties not only decrease but disappear. This happens because in your spiritual life there is abundant strength which you don’t have in your outer life. This abundant strength, when it comes to the fore, makes the outer life surrender automatically to the inner life. And when it surrenders, it is not from compulsion, but from a spontaneous, inner feeling. It surrenders with joy because it feels that in surrender itself, it gets the full power and total bliss of the inner life.

Question: If there is no perfection in the body and no perfection in the mind, then my question is: would the soul's light lead the body and the mind toward perfection?

Question: Do the body, mind and heart function differently when they function with the light of the soul?

Question: Can we draw upon the cosmic energy by going deep within ourselves?

Question: What did you mean when you said that now we have a choice with regard to the discovery of the inner life, but that some day we wouldn't have that choice?

Those who have an inner Guide, a spiritual Guide or a Guru are extremely blessed. This is what I mean by “God’s Hour”. But out of their obscure folly, very often, disciples try to judge their teacher according to their own light. And they leave the Path. According to the Divine Law, you may leave the person, but you may not leave the Path. But very often, when people go to their spiritual teacher and are not satisfied, they become dissatisfied with the Path as well; that is to say, with spirituality itself. Here they make a great mistake. If they leave the spiritual Path, once having seriously entered upon it, they forfeit the Grace of God’s Hour. And it does not return for thousands of years.

Now the Hour has come. Evolution, both the inner and the outer, has come to the stage where people have developed the conscious mind. Formerly the conscious and developed mind was lacking. In our human evolution, it was the animal mind that was working. Now the animal mind has been transformed into the conscious, developed, human mind. Consciously man knows what is right and what is wrong in his own life. In spite of that, man often does the wrong thing. But now man’s conscious, developed and searching mind has become illumined to some extent by an inner light and by his heart’s constant cry.

Evolution, not only of the mind, but of the whole being in general, is a spiral. It is not a straight or a direct movement, like climbing up a ladder. It is rhythmic, like this... like the waves of a spiral movement. It goes round and round in a circular motion, going higher and higher at each round. It comes back to where it had started in the spiral, but on a higher level. As the line of development comes full circle, there is almost a meeting of the new level with the old level. In the process of evolution, man’s mind has become illumined and although he still appears to act in his old unlit way, he is actually higher than he was when there was no light at all in his mind.

Now here, in the world, the Divine, the Supreme, is trying consciously to awaken each individual soul because He feels that the time has come for the human to be transformed into the divine. Formerly, even in the spiritual life, there was only a one-sided aspiration, that is to say, aspiration from the soul or from the heart or from the mind — but only from one part. Now people have discovered the truth that the body and the vital also have to aspire. Formerly in the East, and in the West, too, they neglected the body. They thought that if the heart aspired or the soul aspired, then that was enough. But now it is not like that. Now at each moment we can serve the Divine with the physical consciousness — in the workshop or in the office or in the street. Our physical consciousness has been developed to such an extent that it can consciously aspire to enter into the Beyond. This is the time called “The Hour of God”. It is a very special period. If we deliberately pay no attention to it, then what will happen is that we will lose the Grace, the Infinite Grace. Then we shall have to work with our own strength which is very, very limited. It will take us lives to accomplish what we can do in a matter of months with the Divine Grace.

After this special period of Grace has ended, after forty or fifty years or even a century, or at most two centuries, there will be a compulsion from above, a force that will propel people forward. This will not be an opportunity but a coercion. Right now, there are some souls who have consciously accepted the inner life, the spiritual life. They are marching forward and accelerating their progress. They are moving consciously towards God. They have to be followed by those who are still sleeping. At that time, the push will come from God. Those who are now awakened are marching forward towards the Goal, but those who are not awakened will be forcefully compelled to arise and follow the awakened ones.

Question: Why would God take the trouble to compel slackers like myself to accept the inner life?

People are coming here to this Centre. People are going to churches, temples and synagogues. They are praying or meditating at home. They are doing all this consciously. Inside they are feeling an inner urge to move forward, to grow. They feel that they have some inner awareness, some inner capacity. God sees and observes and God is pleased with them. But when God sees that this same potentiality which He has implanted in all is not being utilised by some, He says to them, “No, I won’t allow you to lag behind. You must follow those who are consciously awakened.” And for that, He compels them.

The inner, divine qualities or the spiritual quintessence that you have and that somebody else has do not lead to the same results. In your case, you are awakened and you are happy and God is happy. You are marching. The other fellow who has the capacity and potentiality is sleeping. He is not aware; he does not care. He is engrossed in the material world. God says, “Now is the time. I have given him what he needs. If he doesn’t grow, I have to compel him.”

Question: There is still something I don't understand. You said that there is the opportunity at the Hour of God and yet you said that He could take away the Grace. Then if so, how is He divine?

But if His Grace is infinite, how can He take it away for a while?

Question: I ask this question mainly because I wonder why the greater part of the holy men or yogis that I know are unmarried or do not have a family life. I just wondered if marriage would be a deterrent.

Then in India, there is something called a spiritual partner, a collaborator. The Sanskrit term is shakti. They are not legally, or in the human sense, married, but on the highest spiritual level, they are divinely one. For God’s Creation, man and woman must go together in some cases, and some spiritual Masters have a feminine counterpart.

But there are some spiritual figures who agree with our silly scriptures that woman is the door to hell. Our scriptures say, Nari narakesya dwara, “Woman is the door to hell.” Women, on their part, can say and feel the same thing: “Man is the door to hell.” But that is not the thing. The reason that men say this, is that they feel that women, in general, being bound to Mother-earth, have tempted them, pulled them down and bound them. But who is at fault here? Men. Why? By nature, women think of earth more than they think of Heaven. That is, they are always thinking of their children and family and they do not get the time to enter in the deeper world. But men have never given women the opportunity to cultivate their inner life, their spiritual life. And, of course, when the question of temptation arises, who tempts whom?

Apart from all this, many Indian seers and yogins think that it is an extra burden to get married and have children. They say, “We are going to our Father. Why should we have a heavy burden on our shoulders? ” If one is married, he may say, “Let me save myself first and let her come in her own time. When she is ready, she too can see God.” This is how they reject women. The ones who said, “Woman is the door to hell,” when they finally achieve their own realisation, understand that it was not their women or wives who were the problem; the defect was in their own consciousness. With the others, it is a question of how much they can carry, how much responsibility they can bear.

Question: Referring to your talk on Illumination, I want to ask: In our daily life, when frustration and adversity attack us, how can we orient ourselves so that we know what to do about it?

It reminds me of an incident many, many years ago. In India at the time of the British occupation, an English soldier with a bayonet was about to kill an ordinary innocent man. That man immediately cried aloud without fear but with a soulful emotion, “You, too, are divine.” When he said, “You, too, are divine,” he actually saw in the bayonet the existence of God. The soldier did not kill him because at that moment he did not see in the innocent man anything aggressive or destructive, anything to feed his own aggression. Through the intercession of the Divine Grace, the soldier also saw something luminous in the man and was struck by it. Here also when suffering comes, if you say to the suffering, “You, too, are divine; in you, I am seeing the existence of God,” then immediately the wrong forces of suffering which are disturbing you will also leave you.

Question: When you tell us to learn by heart twenty meditations, are you not establishing a kind of competition among the disciples?

T.V. Programme — WKAQ, Channel 2

San Juan, Puerto Rico¹

Panel: Vijaya (Mrs. Sarah Casanova), Agni (Mr. Jose Luis Casanova), Prajna (Mrs. Haydee Casellas), Mr. Pedro Dacosta

Introduction by Sudha:

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks to the courtesy of “Foro de la Comunidad” (Community Forum), I have the privilege and the pleasure to introduce to you the figure of Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghose. To many here in Puerto Rico he is well known. Many know, “Una Pausa en el Dia” (“A Pause in the Day”), the column in “El Mundo”, the daily newspaper where Sri Chinmoy expresses his teachings.

Sri Chinmoy is a spiritual figure, a great Master, philosopher and Hindu yogi. He is the spiritual director of the Aum Centre in San Juan and the Aum Centre in New York. Sri Chinmoy is with you.

Sri Chinmoy: Thank you. I am extremely happy to be here at this T.V. station and at the same time I am most grateful to the authorities of this T.V. station WKAQ for granting us the opportunity to be here. We do hope that we will be able to serve, to some extent, those who will be seeing us and listening to us. Again I wish to offer my deepest sense of gratitude to this T.V. station, WKAQ.

Question: Master Chinmoy, I believe that there are two wars, the inner and the outer. When and how will these two wars stop?

Question: Master Chinmoy, I have read in some Eastern books that man is greater than the gods. I wish to hear from you if this statement is correct?

Question: Can you explain further what liberation is?

Question: Is there a special means that would accelerate this process of liberation?

Question: Master Chinmoy, from the spiritual point of view does the New Year have any special significance?

Question: When God thinks of me what does He really do?

Question: Master Chinmoy, will you explain briefly to us what is Yoga?

1968

Question: I believe that Adam and Eve were Vitudha and Atman and then they underwent that transformation. Is this true?

Question: When we reach the Pralaya, how can the souls who have not attained the highest and are not pure blend into the Divine Purity if they themselves are not pure?

When a country is destroyed, you think that all human beings are likewise destroyed. No. Only the earth, the external manifestation is annihilated. But the beings go back to their Eternal Abode. That Eternal Abode is the Supreme’s Consciousness. There they have their own shelter. Then they can, at God’s own hour, be given the chance to come back to earth to fulfil God’s mission or their own self-realisation.

Gauri: When they come back, do they come all pure?

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?

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.

Talk at the retailers' centre

Let us not feel disappointed and let us carry on with today’s significant talk, on the topic “I know what to do”. When I say that I know what to do, most of you will misunderstand me and this misunderstanding of yours will be quite natural. But at the very outset, I wish to defend myself. I wish to state my faith most humbly. I have just said that I know what to do. Now I wish to tell you the inmost secret of my statement. I know what to do precisely because God does it for me. You may, in no time, ask me why God works for me and not for you. No, God is not at all partial. I know that I do nothing, I know that I can do nothing. God is the Doer, God is the Action, God is the Fruit thereof. Unfortunately, there is a slight difference between you and me, between your approach to God and my approach to God. I am sure that all of you are well aware of the statement made by the Son of God. He said, “I and my Father are one.” I try to live this paramount truth. In the same vein, our Vedic seers of the hoary past said, “I am the Brahman. The Brahman is me. I am the One without a second.” I have also learned from Sri Krishna, one of the greatest spiritual Masters of India, nay of the entire world, in the Bhagavad-Gita, the Song Transcendental, that a man is made by his faith. Whatever his faith is, so is he.

Now you are apt to cherish a surprising ideal. With your kind permission, I wish to cite your part-time ideals. You get pleasure, joy, in telling the world there is no God. You try to parade your views. You say, “Had there been a God, how could this world of ours be so full of suffering, pain and untold misery? ” Even now if you feel that there is someone called God, that there is a God, you say that this God is for others and not for you. God is for others. Now your sincere belief makes bold to say that God does not care for you. God thinks of the rest of the world, but He has no time to think of you or care for you. To be sure, this is the acme of stupidity. Something more. You feel that God is terribly angry with you because twenty years ago, you told a lie or you deceived someone in your business or in your profession. And that is why God is terribly angry with you. Now He wants to punish you ruthlessly all the time. Poor God, as if He had nothing else to do! Believe it or not, God the Almighty, God the All-Compassionate, God the Transcendental Reality has many things to do with you, your life. Not one thing, but countless things He wants to do with your life and for your life.

God sings the song of Immortality within you, He sees in you the embodiment of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. You are God’s unparalleled pride, you are God’s only dream, you are God’s only Reality. For you, God exists throughout Eternity. He shapes you, He moulds you, He guides you, He transforms you into His very image, into the everlasting Life of the Beyond.

Friends, sisters, brothers, you are now in the same Boat as I am. Together, united, let us sing, “I know what to do because God does it for me. In addition to that, I know what to say, what to pray for, what to aspire for.” With the blessing and benedictions of the Upanishadic seers, I wish to chant and sing the soul’s message, a message of the Indian seers that has been ringing in the firmament of India for many centuries.

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Lead me from darkness unto Light.

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Questions and answers following Sri Chinmoy’s talk at the Retailers’ Centre

Question: Is there a coordinated effort in all countries to study Yoga, philosophy and transcendental truth, searching for a spiritual approach to God?

Question: Is Yoga philosophy something similar to Unity, where one mission or one congregation or a series of ministers or self-abnegated servants of Christ are spreading the seed to teach people how to come nearer to, and enter into, pure Christianity?

However, according to my own understanding, Unity is something quite different. I have been to a few Unity groups. Last year I went to Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. There are large gatherings of at least five hundred people at the Unity of Jamaica. I spoke there. Unfortunately, the minister had not actually achieved the consciousness of a spiritual teacher, not to speak of a realised person. He teaches, he give sermons and the members of Unity try to utilise the truth of the sermon according to their capacity and receptivity. Farther than that, that particular minister could not go. He did not have the capacity to enter into the individual aspirant or seeker in order to help him in his self-discovery. Whereas when one practises Yoga, in India or somewhere else, one is supposed to have a teacher who knows the spiritual life thoroughly. We need a teacher in every walk of life. In order to learn singing, we need a teacher. In order to play the piano, we need a teacher. Similarly, in order to learn the inner discipline and make progress in our inner life, we likewise require a qualified teacher. And Yoga means “union with God”. This union can be effected through the constant guidance and help of a spiritual teacher.

In Unity, however, whether they care for union with God or not, they lack that kind of spiritual Master who has a small (or large) group of his own, where he can pay attention to each individual and see where each one actually stands in his progress towards God-realisation.

So here is the vital difference between Unity and Yoga. If you take Unity as a spiritual discipline, inner discipline, I must say that you are right, it is true, for we are all moving towards the same goal; but Yoga is something absolutely deeper. It deals with all kinds of spiritual problems, inner and outer, and Yoga tells us that man is nothing short of the veiled God.

Programme "Temas del momento"

Introduction by Sri Chinmoy

Interviewer: Sri Ghose, what is the advantage to the human body in being influenced by learning Yoga philosophy?

Interviewer: Is it necessary for a person to abandon his religion, let us say Catholicism, in order to adopt the Yoga teachings?

Question: What made you come to Puerto Rico?

Question: And this is your seventh visit to Puerto Rico?

Question: What other Centres do you have?

Question: Does that have a meaning?

Question: Is the membership of the Centre here almost one hundred percent Puerto Rican?

Question: Do they follow your teachings with enthusiasm?

Question: How many days do you spend in Puerto Rico when you come and engage in these teachings?

Question: Then from here, where will you go?

Question: You don't have established headquarters in New York or in Puerto Rico aside from all these centres?

Question: I want to inform the television audience of the location and telephone number of your Centre.

Question: Is the earth planet like a final stage for perfection? Do we have to go through the other planets first and then come here?

This is the world where you have aspiration and where you practise meditation. No soul, no human being is able to realise God on other planes; only here on earth. That is why an Indian poet said, “Man above all.” No one is superior to man because man is tomorrow’s God and God is today’s man, concealed but not revealed. Man is tomorrow’s God revealed, whereas God is today’s man concealed.

"La Voz Del Figaro" Colegio De Arberos Villa Palmeras

Introduction

Question: What do you mean by scepticism? Do you mean by the term the same thing that religions mean when they say that somebody is a sceptic?

Question: Can a man be something else than what he thinks himself to be?

Now to come back again to the question. Can a man be something else than what he thinks himself to be? A man may think anything he likes, but in the field of expression he may not be embodying what he thinks himself to be. A man may think wonderful thoughts, have wonderful ideas, but in his outer life, he may be extremely cruel and act like a beast. So he thinks that he is a wonderful person, but in his action he is worse than any ordinary human being. His thinking and action are totally different.

Let us go a bit deeper. There are people, renowned people on earth who thought that they were useless, nothing. But friends inspired them, teachers or great personages told them that they had tremendous possibilities or inner capacity to do something great, unique. Then they followed some technique or teaching or they entered enthusiastically into their respective creative fields and they became well known all over the world.

Now, let us go a bit deeper. There are people who feel, who think, that they can never realise God. In their thinking, they feel that God is somewhere else, in Heaven, that they are not God’s children, they are useless and will never realise God; they are weak, they are ignorant, etc. But this kind of thinking is again absolutely wrong, for God is seated inside each human heart. Every one, sooner or later will realise God, no matter how many times one thinks that God-realisation can never take place in his life. So in his thinking, he may be afraid of God-realisation, the Infinite Truth, Eternal Life, but a day will dawn when to his widest surprise, he will not only see the Ultimate Truth, but he will become the Ultimate Truth. So I wish to say that if one negates the Truth in his thinking, then he is mistaken. One will ultimately have to recognise the Truth. This is the only way of entering into the Truth. That is to say, think of Truth and Truth alone. The more we think of Truth in its purest term, the sooner we grow into the Truth. At that time we can say, “As we think so we are.”

Question: What attitude should we take toward religions other than our own?

Just as God has given us a free choice to follow any path, so we must give freedom to others to follow their own way. There are dozens of roads that lead to God. Each one has a right to choose the road that suits his temperament, his degree of evolution and his present needs. Tolerance and acceptance are fine, but we must go even further and feel that others’ religions are as important and necessary as our own.

When you are in a family, true, it is very difficult to manage when everyone is going along a different path. And there is a great temptation to say, “You are a fool. You are wasting your time going along that particular path.” But you must allow the other person the same freedom of choice that you yourself want. At the same time, you have the right to inspire others with your enthusiasm and your devotion. However, if they argue with you and constantly criticise you, it is better to act on them silently. At night, when everyone is sleeping and you are in your most peaceful consciousness, put all your sweetest and purest aspiration into the sleeping consciousness of the one whom you want to influence. Feel that your path will help him and that you are inwardly meditating on him. By acting silently, you help him most.

Question: How should a disciple of yours meditate?

There are two ways for Guru’s disciples to meditate. They can either try to open themselves to Guru and allow him to enter into them, or they can try to enter into Guru. Both are effective, but Guru feels that the latter method is somewhat better. When the disciple tries to allow Guru to enter into him, fear may develop and prevent the disciple from receiving Guru. He may think that, “I told a lie this morning or did some undivine thing”, and so he may feel that Guru will be like an inspector coming into a dirty or impure room. But when the disciple enters into Guru, He is all compassion. Guru keeps his room clean and pure, so the disciple can always enter and be cleansed, purified and elevated.

Interview with "Bohemia" Spanish magazine

Note

Question: What was the main purpose of your visit to Puerto Rico?

Question: Do your teachings constitute a religion?

Question: Why do you say that?

Question: These, concentration, meditation and contemplation, are they a means towards obtaining something?

Question: Can a human being know the Infinite?

Question: But you are not Infinite.

Question: Do concentration and meditation have something to do with the power of the mind?

Question: By means of this meditation you try to obtain Peace, only Peace?

Question: One can obtain peace for a moment but then when he goes out from here, he will go back to the same hustle of human life.

Question: What is the meaning of the word AUM?

Question: If you are preaching something about God, that is religion, not philosophy. Philosophy knows no God.

Question: Do you think that Westerners can understand Eastern philosophy?

Question: What is the rational and logic base for your philosophy?

Question: How many times have you come to Puerto Rico?

Did you come to preach your philosophy?

Question: About the truth, is there more than one Truth?

Question: Does any religion possess the Truth in itself?

Question: How many disciples do you have in Puerto Rico?

Question: During how many years have you obtained these disciples?

Question: What do you feel about hippies?

Question: Maybe they are seeking for peace?

Question: Maybe you could help them?

Question: And what do you think is the reason that so many hippies and so many people are opposing society?

Question: Do you think it is society's fault?

Question: Are you trying to give some message to society?

Question: Did you found this philosophy? Did you discover it?

Question: When did you come to the United States?

Question: Are you the only priest preaching these teachings in the U.S.?

Question: How did you come to Puerto Rico the first time?

Question: What is the meaning of that painting?

Question: Do you have Christians among your followers?

Question: Do you charge a fee to sustain your Centres?

Question: How many followers do you have in the United States?

Question: I think this is enough for today.

Talk to members of the finance department of the Government of Puerto Rico: August 1, 1968

Talk to members of the finance department of the Government of Puerto Rico

Each human being has three teachers: the mind, the heart and the soul. The mind tells us that God is a sempiternal mystery; the mind cannot fathom God’s mystery. The mind tells us that God is an eternal mystery. The heart tells us that God is an eternal experience. Now the soul. The soul which is a portion of God tells us that God is an eternal achievement. At each moment we are achieving something from God, either consciously or unconsciously.

What does the mind need? The mind needs clarity. The heart needs sincerity. The soul needs spontaneity. Clarity is the mind’s joy. God walks inside the head of our clarity. God sees through the eye of our heart’s sincerity. God fulfils Himself in the nectar flow of our souls, His Divinity in us. When we think of God, we see Him standing behind us. When we pray to God, we see Him standing right in front of us. When we meditate on God, we see God deeply seated within us. When we devote ourselves to God, to God alone, we see God within, God without and God in His manifestation all around. Finally, when we surrender ourselves to God, to God alone, we become God’s veritable child.

Man dies. When he dies for God, he lives eternally in the heart of God. And when man lives for God, in order to dedicate himself entirely to serve humanity, to help humanity, to illumine humanity, then he becomes the very breath of God.

Question: Is Yoga a religion, an art or a science?

Question: Please tell me about the basic principle which I understand you yogis follow very consistently about the respect for life. You see life in insects and in every animal and you respect such life. Is that a principle in yoga?

T.V. Programme On Channel 2, Telemundo "Foro De La Comunidad" (Community Forum): August 3, 1968

Moderator: Agni (Mr. Jose Luis Casanova)

Poet, philosopher, thinker and spiritual guide, Sri Chinmoy Kumar Chose is now here with us. He was born in Bengal, India. This is his seventh visit to Puerto Rico. He is the spiritual director of the Aum Centre in Puerto Rico and the Aum Centres in New York City, Miami, Florida, and Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies.

According to the philosophy of Sri Chinmoy, life must be accepted fully, life must be transformed devotedly and unreservedly, life must be lived in an integral and divine way. The Master teaches his followers, students and disciples that spirituality can never be an escape from the world of reality; on the contrary he says that spirituality is the only assurance we have in life, of solving the world’s problems. It is spirituality that can and will change the face of the earth. It is spirituality that brings forth the inner life and manifests the Infinite here on earth.

Question: What is detachment and what do we actually derive from detachment?

Question: Could you tell me what is freedom, where is it and how can earthbound man have it?

Now earthbound men can easily have this freedom. A day will dawn when each man on earth will be blessed with this freedom. Now each human being, most of the time, lives in the body, that is to say in the physical being. The body is limited, the physical is limited. It is like a prison cell; but inside the body there is something called the soul; this soul is a portion of the infinite. If a person lives in the soul then he becomes aware of the Infinite within him.

Question: Most of the ordinary human beings take life seriously; should spiritual persons take life seriously?

Question: Please tell me what is wrong with the world: It seems to act like a madman and it seems to be running towards its own destruction; what is wrong with the world?

Note

T.V. Channel 6, WIPR Interview

Note

Question: You have been here several times. Is there any particular reason, special reason that you come or do you come to visit Puerto Rico and be with your followers? Is there any special reason?

This is one reason; then there is also another important, most important reason. I have here a well established Centre called the Aum Centre. Here I have quite a few sincere, dedicated and devoted disciples who are absolutely dedicated to their inner call and God-realisation. I come here to inspire them and help them in their inner life and their discovery.

Interview at Radio Station WKYN, San Juan — 13 August 1968

Question: Your name is Sri Chinmoy Ghose?

“Sri” means Mister? In what language?

Question: Would you be classified as a Swami?

I thought that was primarily what Swami meant?

Sri Chinmoy: A spiritual Teacher can be of various types and of different calibres. He can be called a Swami or Guru or can be addressed by a number of other titles like Acharya, Sant, Yogiraj, Nath, Rishi, etc. But I prefer to be called a Spiritual Teacher.

So there is not really any difference between a Guru and a Swami or other titles?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, there is a difference in grade. A Guru is supposed to be one who has inner identification or conscious oneness with God, whereas the Swami need not be spiritually fully awakened or spiritually realised.

This is, of course, in Yoga?

Question: And is there a particular branch of Yoga in your philosophy?

Question: You have a centre in San Juan. What is its name?

Does this name have a particular meaning?

Question: I read that people who embark on one of the varied spiritual programmes are usually given a particular sound for them. Is this based on a particular thing, or just a feeling at the time, or is there a way of determining what this sound is for the individual?

Question: But you have to know the individual fairly well?

Question: At your Aum Centre, you are preaching life? Is this the idea that I get from you?

Question: Where is the AUM Centre located?

Sri Chinmoy: I am the spiritual Director of the Centre but I live in New York. I have four Centres: one here in Puerto Rico, one in Miami, Florida, one in Jamaica, West Indies and the main one in New York City.

Interviewer: So you travel between the four of them? How long have you had your Centre in San Juan?

Question: Do you find that the Western mind has difficulties in grasping the implications of the Eastern philosophers?

Question: If you had to wrap up your philosophy in one sentence, could you do it?

Would you?

Question: If people want more information about this, can they come down to your Centre?

Questions and answers on 17 August 1968

Question: I realise many times that people want to be involved and do things for the betterment of humanity, but for some reason, their inadequacy or their inefficiency does not allow them to do this. Or they cannot come forward and do what they would like to do. They think often about it but they cannot come forward and do it. What can they do?

But there is another process. When a spiritual Master takes full responsibility of a particular disciple, he may say, “Now, you help people, serve humanity. I am within you, with you. I am taking full responsibility. The more you help humanity in my name (that is, in the name of the spiritual Master) the swifter will you make your own inner progress and fly to your own self-realisation.” Like a flower, you yourself will unfold by the Grace of the Supreme and the Master. At the same time your very unfoldment will inspire people in their self-search, in their spiritual life, their inner discipline.

So either one has to be fully awakened and realised, or one has to be commissioned and authorised by a realised spiritual Master. When the spiritual Master says that he takes full responsibility, at that time you are not making any mistake in the beginning, because he is taking the entire responsibility. He is the Doer. He is in you, with you, through you and for you.

But if, out of self-imposed sympathy, kindness and concern for humanity, one tries to serve humanity, then actually instead of serving, one will be only feeding one’s ego consciously. So I wish to tell you that the involvement that you are speaking about should be with the Guru, the Master, for the Supreme. To be totally one with the spiritual Master physically, vitally, mentally, psychically, with His infinite consciousness which represents the Supreme, is one alternative. Or, as I explained first, one must wait until one has totally realised God. This is the traditional, time-honoured and time-proven Indian spiritual method. Either of these two can be followed.

Question: I have always wondered if the AMEN of our Christian religion was originally meant to have the same significance as the AUM of the Hindu religion.

When we say AMEN or TATHASTU we are praying to have something we want fulfilled. The AMEN is always preceded by something else, whereas AUM is not like that. AUM always precedes everything. When we begin any religious or spiritual activity, when we start any mantra, we start it with AUM. We can also end any mantra with AUM if we want to, but we have to start it with AUM. In the Western religions of course, we do not start anything with AMEN. It always comes at the end, after a prayer. Moreover, the significance of AUM is infinitely more soulful and more intimate in the realm of reality and God’s vision than is AMEN. When we say AMEN, immediately our physical consciousness enters into the fulfilment of some desire or prayer. But in the case of AUM, this does not happen. AUM will inspire the very existence of the seeker and then, after the inspiration is over, it will energise the seeker to enter into aspiration. When aspiration starts functioning, then AUM takes the aspiration of the seeker into the highest and the deepest in that individual’s soul.

Question: In the Gita, it says that we must have discrimination. What is meant by this discrimination and how can we obtain it?

You were reading the Gita. Yes, from the second chapter onwards, discrimination is enjoined upon Arjuna by Krishna. Let us start with duty. Each human being on earth knows what duty means. But the real duty, very few of us know. What is the real duty of our inner being? In the process of discrimination, we come to understand that our real duty, our entire duty, is our self-discovery or God-realisation. Neti, Neti, “Not this, not this.” Then what do we want? I don’t want this. I don’t want that. What do I want? I want only the Real, only the True, only the Ultimate which is God Himself.

By discriminating, by separating the true and eternal from the false and transient, I come to a point where I can see my Goal. Then I step upon the path leading to my Goal. In our day-to-day life, if we want to emphasise our duty, then there is no end to our ordinary duties. I have to eat, I have to meet my friends, I have to see my family, I have to go to college. All kinds of duties I have. But we have to know that beyond these duties there is a real duty. These mundane duties we are fulfilling daily, but they do not bring us in any way nearer our Goal. Are we fulfilling any ideal in life? No, to fulfil an ideal, we have to select or adopt a Goal. There is only one Goal for each human being and that Goal is God-realisation. This does not mean that in order to realise God, we have to discard humanity. Far from it. We do not have to throw away members of the family: wife, sisters, brothers, parents, children. No. We have to see in them the existence of God. This is one of the major duties of each human being, to see the existence of God in children, in friends, in everybody on earth.

Then one also has to know that his true duty lies not in what he does, but in how he does it. If an ordinary human being knows what he has to do and why he is doing it and also how he is doing it, then in his very action, he is approaching God. You are a student, Chaitanya. You want to study in order to have more knowledge and wisdom in the field of psychology. The reason you are studying is that you want to widen your knowledge and by this means, you want to help humanity. Now, how are you doing it? Are you studying devotedly, soulfully, or we may ask, are you studying for the Grace of God? That is to say, does God want you to take up this particular subject? Why are you studying psychology? If you know that God wants you to do it, then here you get your real duty. How are you doing it? You are doing it with the conscious approval of God. Is your soul making you feel that it is the subject that you want to study in order to manifest your soul here on earth?

So I want to tell all of you here, when you do something, when you perform any action, first you have to know whether that action is really important in your life and will take you nearer to your Goal. Then if you feel, “Yes, it is required,” do the action, but after the action, you may look for a result, either success or failure. Now here is the most difficult situation. If you have failed, you will feel that you are totally lost, frustrated, that you can never get the satisfaction that success would have given you. But after separating success from failure, if you can throw both success and failure into the hands of God, then you will see immediately that you are going beyond both, beyond the capacities of both success and failure. Here you are going beyond even discrimination.

Question: When Arjuna refused to kill, was he discriminating?

Question: Does not this battle of Kurukshetra mean that one is fighting against his own wrong ideas and ignorance, fighting an inner battle and not actually fighting to kill somebody?

Question: When one reaches the highest levels, does he have to come back to the world:

Question: Once I met a person who said that he did not believe in God because he could not see Him or hear Him. He said he believed in his wife because he could see her and hear her, and his child. What can we do and what can we say to persons who think that way, because we try a lot of arguments but to no avail.

But we know that the Infinite Truth lies inside us and that Infinite Truth or Reality can only come to the fore when we consciously try to bring it to the fore. Now, in your friend’s case, he does not want to know the Truth or see the Truth, feel the Truth or become the Truth. No harm, as long as he has faith in his wife, but his wife need not be a spiritual person. She may be a spiritual person. Let him give all credit to his wife because for him his wife knows everything and his wife satisfies him. We suppose all this because he does not want to progress beyond the achievements or capacity of his wife. But his wife, I do hope, will feel that the satisfaction that she is giving to her husband is actually coming from some higher or deeper source. And that deeper source is God or God’s Light.

Now if that person deliberately wants to negate the existence of God, it is not advisable on our part to insist to him, or compel him to have faith in God. It is a waste of time. So long as he has faith in something, that is enough. In India, there are people who have great spirituality but who do not actually believe in God. They do believe in something. He says that he does not believe in God, but he does have faith. There is not anybody on earth who does not have a belief in something, even in negation. This man is negating, negating, negating the Truth. That very negation is an affirmation of Truth expressed in a negative way. So let us allow him to continue to negate the Truth, but at the end of the journey he will see that the negation itself is being transformed into something positive.

Question: I am deeply disturbed. I want to have peace. My greatest ambition is to study languages, but I cannot concentrate on the simplest things of life. This makes me feel sad, deeply sad and I cry a lot. I feel dispersed, I am so deeply disturbed. I want to regain my happiness, my tranquillity of spirit and mind. I would like you to help me, to lead me. I will follow you.

Each person present here knows what the Truth is. But just by knowing the Truth, one cannot be satisfied. One has to try to live the Truth. When one wants to live the Truth, the real problem arises. We know the Truth, all of us, but in our day-to-day life, when we want to follow or live this Truth, even an inch of the Truth, an iota of Truth, problems arise. If we could practise the Truth, most of the problems would be solved. Now, how to know what Truth is and what falsehood is. It is very difficult. In this world, very often Truth and falsehood are intermingled. We have to separate them, For that, we need God’s Grace and our utmost sincere effort. When God’s Grace and our own sincere effort go together, we shall not only see the Truth and feel the Truth, but we shall become the Truth. When we become the Truth, infinite Peace will be at our disposal.

Questions by Sivashankara

Question: Is there any way to overcome karma in one’s lifetime?

We have to know what kind of karma we are creating. Real karma is that which is being done by the inner being within you. Otherwise there is no end of karma and responsibility, obligation and counter-obligation. I will say, “This is your responsibility.” You will answer, “No, it is your responsibility.” There is no end to human duty and obligation. But the real end we shall get only when we listen to our duty from deep within ourselves or from someone who can study our mind, who can study our heart, who can study our soul. Only he can advise us soulfully of our duty.

So to come back to your question, Sivashankara, it is possible to overcome karma when one has conquered desire and when the Divine Grace descends. Along with these are also required prayer and aspiration, but by themselves, they are not sufficient. When the infinite shower of Divine Grace descends upon us, when God’s Compassion flows into us, then in one lifetime-it is not even a matter of one life — in a few days or in a few hours, it can be accomplished.

Question: Is getting married asking for more karma?

“Marriage” is a very sweet word but most of the time it is made of very bitter experiences. Without being married, one has thousands of problems. Now when you get married, you add to your life another problem. You may say, “I am a hero; I shall conquer her problems.” She, on her part, also thinks, “I am a heroine; I shall conquer his problems.” So both of you enter marriage determined to solve the problems of the other. This I am saying from the viewpoint of difficulties, since you have asked about the karma entailed in marriage. But of course, there is another side, the side of joy. I mean human joy or human love. You will say, “I have so much love for her.” She will say, “I have so much love for him, so let us be joined.” Now if this human love is rightly guided by the inner reality or inner being of the couple, then they blend together; otherwise the union breaks into pieces. Immediately the two sides start fighting, this side and that. You start your journey with your possession: sweet love, human love. She also started this way. Then afterwards, everything goes wrong. This is the kind of karma that two people bring on themselves. But if you do not enter into marriage, then you may try to solve your problems alone. There is nothing on your shoulders. Now sometimes in this world, we feel, “If I can take somebody’s burden from him, then I will be appreciated and I will feel a sense of pride,” but again I tell you that this is all coming from a sense of ego. It is not only ego or marriage which adds to your karma, but anything you do, unless it is done by God’s Grace. Then there is no bondage at all.

Normally in marriage, the individual karma of each party become joined into a whole which they naturally share. The woman, for example, offers the man all her soul’s capacities and strengths, but she also gives him the effects of her accumulated actions and thoughts — her karma. The reverse is just as true. When they bring down a few more souls in the form of children, the children’s karma is added to their own. That is why in India they say that there are three divine moments in a person’s earthly sojourn: his birth, his marriage and his death. In India, marriage is extremely important, first because of the many, intricate ties, duties, responsibilities that the person makes, not only to his partner, but to the family of his partner; and second, because it was clearly understood that marriage set the pattern for the remainder of the person’s lifetime and, in India, deeply affected the general growth and direction of the individual soul. To a lesser extent, the same is true in the West.

Question: The people we meet today — are they persons we were related to in our past incarnation?

Question: It is said that when twins are born, it is because they were enemies in a past incarnation and they had to be joined together in that way, I mean as Siamese twins. Then neither one can kill the other since he will be killed as well.

Question: Sometimes we hate somebody without any apparent reason, just for his appearance.

Question: I was thinking of my mother-in-law. No matter what I do to please her, she hates me.

Mr Quinones Vidal's programme, radio interview on station WKAQ

Introduction³

I greet Sri Chinmoy Kumar Chose with much love in the name of the station WKAQ and in the name of this program, Quinones Vidal. It is a pleasure to have such a noble person on our programme.

Question: I heard the beautiful explanation of your philosophy about life. Really, that is what I understand by philosophy. But there is a word in Spanish, maybe it is because of the translation into Spanish, "to accept life". To accept or discover. Is there not a difference between acceptance without investigation, without doubt and merely discovering life?

Note

Questions and answers, August to October 1968

Question: Why could Vivekananda not overcome his doubts about Ramakrishna?

Now in Vivekananda’s case, there are a few reasons why he doubted Ramakrishna. In the first place, Ramakrishna used to tell Naren [Vivekananda] that he was a great spiritual person: “I see inside you all divinity; I see inside you spiritual Power and at the same time, I see you as the vibhuti of Lord Shiva.” At that time, Naren was only a college student. He did not take the spiritual life seriously. He had an exuberant and external life. He could not believe Ramakrishna. He simply couldn’t take Ramakrishna seriously. “One day you will awaken the whole world,” Ramakrishna told him, “for you have all spiritual possibilities.” Vivekananda’s father had died and the son was an ordinary boy at that time. He could not maintain his family financially. He did not have the means to buy even the simplest necessities and he often starved for days together. Then he hears Ramakrishna say that he is a great spiritual person and that one day he will liberate the entire world. He said, “I cannot feed even my own mother!” He used to come home and say, “Mother, I have eaten at my friend’s place, so you don’t have to cook for me.” It was all lies; he was starving but he wanted to save the food for his mother and for the elders of the family.

Another reason for Vivekananda’s disbelief was that Ramakrishna’s actual experience and assessment of Vivekananda were totally different from the boy’s own experience of his life. His Master naturally used to see the highest and the deepest. Vivekananda would only see his ordinary life as a student. Ramakrishna had so many disciples, but in front of them, he used to have Naren stand and he would say, “Naren, Naren, Naren.” If Naren did not come to Ramakrishna’s place, then the Master would go to his place. If other disciples did not come, Ramakrishna did not care. But if Naren didn’t come, he was unhappy. In fact, he got angry with his other disciples if they did not bring Vivekananda back to him. So this is the kind of thing that Ramakrishna did for Naren.

Now if you care for someone, there is always the tendency for that person to suspect that there is some ulterior motive in your love. What is behind it? Why are you not running after someone else? The human mind, no matter how pure the person is, tends to be suspicious. But the soul wants to love the person, not for himself and not for the soul’s own benefit, but for the divine in the person.

Once Naren told his Master, “You are, all the time, thinking of me. Don’t you know the story of King Bharata? He always thought of a deer and then he had to become a deer. Don’t you know the story?” The other disciples said, “Naren, you are insulting Ramakrishna. You always ignore Ramakrishna, calling him mad and all that.” But Ramakrishna immediately took Naren’s rebuke seriously for he was, after all, a serious student of Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy, the Indian scriptures, etc. So he went and told his Divine Mother, Kali, what Naren had said. Kali told him, “No, you are not running after Naren. You are running after the Divinity that you see in Naren. It is for that you are running. But that Divinity will express itself only in years to come.” So Ramakrishna went back to Naren and said, “It is not you that I want; it is the Divinity inside you.”

All these things had disturbed Naren’s mind. He felt that he was nothing and, at the same time, was worshipped by Ramakrishna who adored him. When he heard Ramakrishna say that he was so great spiritually, at the beginning, he had doubted him. “What is it that he sees in me?” he said. However, when the question of Ramakrishna’s realisation arose, he used to say, “Ramakrishna is the Highest, he is the Highest.” But at that time, he did not realise what he himself was. Ramakrishna used to say, “The day he realises himself fully, he will not stay on earth.” Indeed, when Vivekananda came to know what he actually was, his life was nearly over.

So in one sentence, I wish to say to you that Ramakrishna’s vision of Vivekananda’s spiritual greatness, Vivekananda could not see or understand. That was the cause of the doubt in his mind.

Question: In the spiritual life, which way will be best, to arrive at the truth in order to gain freedom, or to try to gain freedom in order to arrive at the truth?

Now we have to find out what our soul wants first and needs first, even within our daily existence. If the soul wants Truth and we are not getting the opportunity to obtain it because we are bound by the family or by circumstances, at that time, you have to think of Truth first, and even if you don’t have freedom, you have to go to Truth first. Let me make this clearer to you. In your day-to-day life, your soul may make you feel, “This is the Truth; meditation is the Truth; God is the Truth; realisation is the Truth.” Now in spite of this inner conviction, if you feel that the family is standing in your way, friends are standing in your way, society is standing in your way, then at that time, do not think of freedom. Just try to go to the Truth first, because this is what your soul wants. Freedom will automatically come.

If your soul’s spontaneous urge makes you feel that Truth is the only thing that you need, then outer freedom is bound to come, because outer freedom will automatically come and assist your soul’s aspiration. But if you wait for the outer freedom to be offered to you by humanity, then you will never get it. Truth has its own infinite power and when we approach it without caring for the outer circumstances, the Truth itself will pave the way so that we can live in the Truth, feel the Truth and become the Truth.

So freedom you do not get from other people — from society, from humanity. You should not worry, but you should try to go directly to the Truth. Then Truth will automatically bring freedom to your life. If you wait to be given freedom from friends, relatives, humanity, then you will never get it. Truth will always remain a far cry. You yourself have to approach the Truth and then the Truth is bound to come to you.

Question: You have explained how to remember. Now what is the best method of rejecting thoughts that you do not want to have?

So we have to know, first of all, if the thought that we are going to control is inside us or coming from outside. You please try, all of you, to distinguish. The one that comes from outside wants to strike us, squeeze inside us, go into our mind, into our brain. The other thought is the one that you have already inside your existence.

So when you want to reject them, you have to understand that it is these silly thoughts that are not productive, the thoughts that are damaging, the thoughts that are not fruitful, the thoughts that are negative, the thoughts that we do not want in our existence.

When you first observe that kind of damaging thought, uncomely thought, first you have to determine whether it is coming into us from outside or actually going out of our existence from inside. If it is coming from outside into our existence, it is easier, infinitely easier to control. Why?

Here right in front of your forehead, you have to feel that you have a shield, right in front of you. It is a protection. Instead of taking it as a part of your body, as a limb or an organ, you have to feel that right on your forehead is a coating, a protection. Try to feel that you are constantly on the lookout here in your mind to see if an attack is coming, if a thought is going to attack you. At the same time, try to feel that here, in the same place, is your shield and protection. If a thought comes to strike you, the shield will control the thought. But if we feel that our forehead is something soft, mellow, very delicate and exposed to anything and everything, then immediately we become victim to all these undesirable and wrong thoughts. Wrong thoughts can never come if we consciously make ourselves feel this forehead is a shield, a solid wall. They cannot come. But what usually happens is that when we think of our head or forehead, we think of them as something vulnerable and easily pierced. On the contrary, we have to consciously make ourselves feel that it is something solid, something very strong, like a solid wall or a fort where there are many soldiers deep inside, ready to fight against an attack. When an attack of wrong forces comes, the strongest soldiers inside us are purity, sincerity and aspiration. Our eagerness for God, for God-realisation — these are all divine forces too, divine soldiers: purity, sincerity, aspiration, concentration and our meditation. Even the very idea of God-realisation is a divine soldier inside us. All these soldiers will immediately be on their guard the moment a wrong thought comes. They will serve as bodyguards and if, by chance, the wrong forces attack here, they will be cast out by the divine soldiers deep within us. This is for the thoughts that are coming from the outside.

Now what about the thoughts that are already inside us, creating problems? It is very difficult, in comparison, to throw them out. But we can do it! How? Again it is through the extension of our consciousness. We have a body; inside this body are these wrong forces that have taken the form of ugly, damaging thoughts. If we can extend our physical consciousness as we extend an elastic belt, we will feel that we are extending our whole body through the mind’s conscious effort, through aspiration. We are extending, extending, extending the whole body to the infinite. We are extending a sheet of white consciousness. The moment we feel the infinite extension as a sheet of white consciousness, you will see that it is all purity. Each pure thought, each pure drop is poison to ugliness or to wrong thoughts in us. On our part, we are afraid of impure thoughts, but impure thoughts are also afraid of our purity. Why is that?

This is what actually happens. We identify ourselves with impure thoughts, let us say, and do not identify ourselves with pure thoughts. The moment the pure thoughts and our physical existence become one, when we say, “This thought represents me,” or, “I represent that pure thought,” then impurity inside us immediately dies; it loses its existence. The impurity or the wrong thought inside us exists just because we identify ourselves with it. If we subsequently identify ourselves with something else, the first one has to die. Now I tell people that jealousy, anger, etc. have to leave us the moment we have poise, peace, etc. inside us. Anger feels that it has a legitimate place within us only because we identify ourselves with it and nourish it with our concern and attention. We cherish it within us. But the moment we make friends with peace, poise and tranquillity, anger says, “Why should I stay here; they don’t want me.” Anger itself will become jealous of peace. You can try it.

Question: Are we to believe literally in the story of Adam and Eve, that we are actually suffering from the consequences of their fall? Or are we the product of evolution from animal life?

Now there are two viewpoints. One viewpoint is that of evolution which is absolutely true. We are evolving. From the plant life we have come to the animal life and from the animal life, we have come to the human life. This is the theory of evolution. Now again there is another viewpoint, which is equally real, that the Spirit entered into matter and Spirit permeated matter. When Spirit entered into matter it was not the fall of the Spirit, because inert matter had to be accepted by Spirit, a divine reality; Spirit likewise had to accept matter in order to have a divine life inside matter. So Spirit entered into matter, but people now say, “Oh, it is a fall; you were at the top of the tree and now you have descended!“ No. Spirit descended there in order to create palpable life. Where there is creation there should be life and there should be manifestation. For that, Spirit is required to permeate and animate matter.

You say that according to the Bible there was the fall. I must say that from the strict spiritual point of view there is no such thing as a fall. It was an experience; at that time, Divinity was going to express itself through humanity and it was Adam and Eve, the representatives of the Supreme here on earth, who embodied humanity. The Supreme wanted to have that experience through these two human beings, Adam and Eve.

Question: A neighbour of mine often swears very loudly to the Supreme against Him and when he does that, I always say, "Dios te bendiga." ("May God bless you.") Is this the right thing to do?

Questions from students at Yale University

Editor's note

Question: It seems that mystical experience cannot be forced in this way, in that manner. And I would think that if one thought that he could reason himself completely into religious awareness or experience, he might never really get there.

Question: Would you please explain the difference in some words you used: "Physically," "vitally," "mentally" and "psychically" ...I don't understand the difference between "vitally" and "physically."

Question: Do you mean that the vital body is a less dense form of matter than the physical body and it interpenetrates or gets within the physical body?

Question: Which of these bodies is involved in extra-sensory perception and other psychic experiences?

Question: Can you say something about past lives?

Now there are some spiritual Masters who have the capacity to tell you anything about your past incarnations. They can easily tell. But what will it accomplish for you? Suppose a Master tells you that in your past incarnation, you were a thief ... a dacoit. What will be your immediate reaction? You will say, “I was a thief. Then it is useless for me to think of God in this life. In my last life, I was so low. I was such an unspiritual soul.” So you feel that in this life also you will be doomed to disappointment. Now the Master has told you about your past life. He has played his part. But who is the sufferer? You, yourself. If, on the other hand, he tells you that you were the President of the United States, you will immediately think, “Now in this present incarnation, where am I? I am nowhere near that.” Immediately you will be disheartened. You will feel, “O God, in my last life, I was so great, but in this life I am nothing. So I see that it is useless. I will not aspire because I can never be what I was.” So knowing that you were someone very high only created disappointment in you.

Question: Will you give me an opportunity to have a private talk with you?

If you want to come the day after tomorrow, on Thursday morning at 10:00 a.m. you are most welcome, all of you. And if you want to feel the highest Peace, Light and Bliss, you are most welcome at ten o’clock. Please come a few minutes early. On New Year’s Day, we have to forget the past.

1969

Question: Upon bringing a man born blind to be cured by Jesus Christ, his apostles asked him, "Who sinned, that this man was born blind? Did he sin or did his parents sin?" Christ answered, "No, it is so the works of God may be shown through him."

Now I wish to tell you something. The law of karma is limited but the Grace of God is unlimited. Again, inside the Grace, what do we see? It is God’s experience. Within His Infinite Grace and in His cosmic law, God is having the experience. When He is in His cosmic law, He follows the principle, “As you sow, so you reap.” But when He goes beyond His cosmic law, beyond the universal phenomena, there He is boundless, He is infinite, He is limitless. There He does not follow any law or orderly principle. He is above, far above. He is owner of all His laws.

In connection with your question, I wish to say that the Christ was absolutely right. It was not the karma of that particular person; it is God who wanted to have a particular experience, a significant experience in and through that particular human being.

Question: There are persons who pray and still are suffering!

Question: Why did Sri Ramakrishna not cure himself if he had the power?

Now once it happened that Vivekananda, his dearest disciple, asked him, “Why don’t you go and tell Mother Kali to cure you? You have the power to cure yourself, but if you don’t want to, go and ask Mother to cure you.” He said, “Why?” Vivakananda said, “If you are cured, you will be able to eat. Now you cannot eat anything; you are in such pain. You cannot put anything inside you.” So Ramakrishna went to Mother Kali and said, “Mother, Naren is telling me to ask you to cure me, so that I can eat.” The Mother said, “What is wrong with you? You are eating perfectly.” Ramakrishna said, “When? I am not eating.” She replied, “You are not eating? You are eating through your hundreds of devotees and admirers and disciples. When they eat, are you not eating? Do you have to eat separately? In their eating, you are eating.” Immediately he fell silent and went back to Vivekananda and told him, “I will never listen to you again. My Mother has told me that I am eating through you and eating through all my disciples. I am one with you.”

Question: What is the difference between the soul and the Spirit?

The Spirit is something different. It is not really connected directly with the earth. The Spirit is an aspect of the Highest Transcendental Consciousness which plays upon, shines down upon each individual soul, but is itself undifferentiated. The Spirit is eternally one, undifferentiated like the White Light of the Supreme before it is broken up into different colours. The Spirit is higher than the soul. It pours down as a manifesting Divine Power and Protection for humanity directly from the Unmanifest for the manifested cosmos. It is a kind of divine radiation hovering above and influencing the earth. It is a very high and unified Force from the Supreme. The Spirit should not be confused with other divine qualities of the Supreme, such as Peace, Power, Light, etc.

As you know, the soul, although it is a portion of the Supreme, is individualised and differentiated. Each soul possesses its own colour, fragrance, divine attributes and even its own mission and destiny. But the Spirit is eternally undifferentiated. The Spirit has a direct connection with the Supreme and also an exalted connection with the creation. When the Supreme breaks Himself up into small individual entities, you have the individual souls. When His Force is sent down as a pure and unified power, in direct touch with the Supreme, but hovering over humanity, high above, that is the Spirit. Normally we do not have the same direct connection with the Spirit that we do with the Soul. The Spirit is there above us and only when we are in the highest meditation or in contemplation, can we reach it or be in touch with it. It silently advises the Soul, elevates the Soul or can illumine or console the Soul.

Question: Does evil have a real existence?

Now if you say that by losing contact with the Divine, we have allowed evil to take birth inside us or in the world atmosphere, I say it is true to some extent, but let us not use the world “evil”. We should rather use the word “ignorance” here because in this world we human beings are not in direct contact or in conscious union with God. We are one in God; that is one thing. But conscious union is altogether a different matter. So when most of us are not in conscious oneness with God, we are away from the Highest, from the deepest Truth or the Transcendental Reality. So you can call it “evil” if you like, but I would like to call it ignorance.

In India there is a philosophy called Vedanta philosophy. The followers or practitioners of that philosophy are not satisfied even with calling it ignorance; they will say that it is a mere obstacle in our path. What you call evil, what I call ignorance, they call an impediment, an obstacle in our way to absolute oneness with God.

Question: Is it acceptable to offer the joy that one derives from one's outer life to God? For instance, my music, my songs — although they are not religious songs — or is it an offense? ⁴¹⁰

Now in your eyes, you are an infinitesimal portion of God. Each human being thinks that he is only the tiniest portion of the Infinite Ocean, a bubble. But in God’s sight, it is not like that. You may think of yourself as one individual. You may think that God has on earth infinite children but that you are not really one of His children. That is your idea. But God takes you as His very image, as His chosen instrument on earth. God takes you as His representative here on earth. Each individual God takes as His own representative, conscious or unconscious. God is conscious that He has sent you into the world as His representative, but you are not conscious. In order to become conscious, you have to realise God consciously, like me.

This is the difference between a realised person and an unrealised person. But in the case of God, He is most pleased with you because you have offered to Him what you have. God has given you a most remarkable voice, a soulful voice and you are offering God what He has given to you.

We cannot give to God anything more than He has given us. If He has given me a voice to sing, I will give Him my voice. If He has given me the dancing capacity, I will dance and please Him; if He has given me the capacity to write poems, then through poems, I shall please Him. He has given me this divine gift; it is I who have to offer what I have back to Him. He gives and I have to return it to Him. Nothing do we create on our own. He gave us everything and with our deepest gratitude, we are offering Him what He first gave. So what we have and what we are, what you are and what you have, if you can consciously give to God, God will be most pleased.

So in your case, I wish to say that with each song, each line you sing, if you can feel it as a dedication to God, no matter what song you are singing (it may not be spiritual; it may be romantic or anything else) but the very act of dedication purifies your song, illumines your inner life and your outer life. Then you become one with God. While singing on the radio, feel that you are singing to please God inside your admirers, inside the audience. Those who are seeing you or listening to you... please try to feel that you are pleasing the divinity in them, but that you are pleasing God at the same time in that way, you are killing two birds with one stone. You are pleasing your admirers and the audience, but you are pleasing the One who is dearest to you, who is God.

The most important thing in your life is to please Him in humanity. Then God is most pleased and each time you sing, please try to feel that you are offering each song, each line, as a flower or a garland of flowers to God, placing it at His feet. Then God will be most pleased. Now also He is pleased because your singing is the capacity, the talent He has given you and you are offering it back to Him. You surely are doing the absolutely right thing. Please continue it. And if you follow the spiritual path, you will develop an infinitely better voice, the inner voice, and you will please God infinitely more. I wish you to concentrate here, on this Centre, the throat. This Centre is called, in Sanskrit, the Vishuddha or Kanta Chakra. The Chakra is right here in the centre of the throat. If you can concentrate daily on it for about five minutes or ten minutes, you will notice an improvement in your voice.

Question: What should be the approach of the aspirant to the concept of the Supreme?

Some spiritual Masters say that God should be realised in a human form; then the seeker will be more convinced. Experiencing Him in His infinite aspect and infinite consciousness, they say, makes it difficult for the aspirant to even believe in the personal God. But I wish to say that the personal Supreme and the impersonal Supreme, we all know, are One. So each aspirant must realise the Supreme, both in His personal aspect and in His impersonal aspect. In His personal aspect, there is a form which we can see — golden; you cannot describe it. It is beyond description, the colour of the Supreme! It is dazzling and divinely luminous. It is all golden, beyond human description. That is the personal aspect of the Supreme when you see Him in a form. And again, when He is formless, it is all Consciousness or Energy or Power.

Question: When I meditate on you, I feel that I enter into you as a personal God. Is there anything higher than that?

But again, inside me, the divine consciousness and the infinite consciousness are very vigilant. It is not that I drop from Heaven into hell. No. My highest is always accessible to me when I need it.

When you are concentrating on me, meditating on me, you are absolutely right in feeling that you enter into my Infinite Consciousness which is totally one with the Supreme. At that time, there is no difference between the Supreme and my Infinite Consciousness. At the time when I meditate right in front of you, in front of the disciples, here and in New York, I become everything that one can think of and aspire for. Even in the physical body, which you see inside the frame of the picture, the soul and the physical existence become totally one and there I see and I become the entire universe. At the same time, the entire universe is inside me.

Question: What are the ways that we can expand our receptivity to the Supreme?

Always try to see, from now on please, that you are the chosen child of the Supreme just because He is utilising you. But if you feel that you are utilising yourself with your own ego and pride, then you are thousands of miles away. The moment you are away from Him, you have to feel that you are nothing, you are useless. The moment you are one with Him with your dedication, devotion and surrender you will feel that you are everything. When you feel that you are everything, automatically your receptivity expands.

Then there is another way to expand your receptivity. During your meditation, try consciously to have inner joy. Suppose the inner joy does not come to you all at once, then try to imagine for a few seconds or a few minutes that you have it. This will not be something false. You can take it as pure imagination but this imagination will help you to some extent in the long run, perhaps a few weeks later, to bring forth the true inner joy. Why? Because you are sincerely aspiring to get true inner joy. You are not going to stop with imagination, far from it. You have intense aspiration; however, at the same time, you don’t have inner joy right in front of you. But you are crying for inner joy and this inner joy does not come. But your aspiration is so intense that it is going to bring you true inner joy in a few minutes’ time. But before this, you can imagine. Imagination helps the aspirant to some extent and it intensifies the power of aspiration. Gradually, in the course of time you get genuine inner joy.

Question: Does the factor of having spiritual experiences make you closer to the Supreme?

Question: I want to ask about the meaning of the gods. What powers do they represent?

Ganesha is the son of Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva had two sons and Ganesha is the elder. The younger one is Kartikeya. Ganesha destroys all human darkness and he is worshipped or invoked by all Indians without exception. At the time of ceremonies, before we perform any rituals, we have to pronounce the name of Ganesha or offer obeisance to him. Ganesha is also called Siddhidada, one who gives siddhi, spiritual powers and realisation, one who fulfils our aspiration. So no matter what we aspire for, we have to please Ganesha first. When he is pleased, we can rest assured that we can have victory in our inner life as well as in our outer life.

Question: I would like to know in which way to invoke Ganesha.

Question: They are all the same, Ganesha and the other gods?

Disciple: Also Lakshmi, Kali, and Saraswati.

Question: The question of responsibility has purified me for a long time. I have heard that the law of Karma is inexorable, that each action has its reaction; that any transgression of the law brings forth the corresponding reaction in the form of punishment or whatever it may be.

Sri Chinmoy: Now who is actually responsible? This man is a tyrant. He is destroying the country and has been doing it for one year, three years, six years, and years beyond. Now let us see who is the tyrant and who is destroying the world. The tyrant is actually an instrument. Just as we are instruments of the divine force, he is an instrument of an undivine force, a dark force. Now there is a cosmic law. True. You say that nothing can be done on earth without God’s approval. If God is all kindness, all love, how is it that God is tolerating this kind of injustice on earth?

Now I wish to say that God has given us very limited freedom. He Himself has limitless freedom but when we enter into the physical world, we have very limited freedom. This limited freedom we start to misuse. When an individual starts misusing this power, that power enters into the cosmic vibrations, or let us say, the Cosmos. There it vibrates in a wrong way. Then it spreads into the atmosphere of the world.

Now who is responsible? Undoubtedly the person who is destroying and torturing the world, but behind him there is a destructive force. Where did that force come from? It came from ignorance. Where did ignorance start? It started from matter. Now why did matter allow ignorance to abide inside itself? When Spirit entered into matter, in the beginning matter did not like Spirit, and matter did not respond to Spirit’s action. Spirit is all Light, all perfection. But matter found it difficult to be totally identified with Spirit. So matter began to have its own life. Life is existence; and matter wanted its own existence which was, and is, based on pure inconscience. So you see, Spirit came and touched matter, but matter refused to respond. Inside matter dwells ignorance, and inside ignorance, can be found powerfully destructive forces. The destructive force is waiting to be channelled. How? It is waiting for a person who is ready to be an agent of its power.

Let us speak of responsibility again. Now if you see the Supreme as ultimately the Highest, then we also have to say that since He has approved our limited freedom, or since He has given us our limited freedom, He also has the capacity to withdraw this limited freedom. Now in the case of the tyrant you have spoken of, he has now been in power for ten years, twenty years, let us say. But in God’s eyes, since He deals with Infinity and Eternity, these twenty years are not even a particle of a second, not even an infinitesimal portion of a second.

Then His Heart: we see the battlefield. The heart of the Supreme on the one hand is flooded with infinite Peace, infinite Harmony, infinite Joy, infinite Delight, but again on His Heart we see nothing but a battlefield of dark forces constantly fighting with divine forces; fighting, fighting. But the ultimate Victory will be His because He wants Light to prevail on earth.

So when He wants Light to prevail on earth, it means that He has taken responsibility. Right now we do not know the outcome of the battle. He is playing with a football, kicking it to this side and that side. Here is the goal post. He is pretending to kick the ball, pass the ball through. But instead of doing this, He changes His play, and using His left foot, He kicks the ball. There He secures His goal, His object. Similarly, in the beginning we feel that the dark forces that we see will eventually touch the goal, in the sense that they will destroy the entire world. For them that is the goal. But I tell you that the dark forces cannot destroy the world because the Light is God. Atom bombs will not be able to destroy God’s creation because God’s creation is God’s body. If God wants to keep His body safe, He is fully responsible. How can he be separated from His body? Let us take God as the Soul and creation as His body. We know that without the soul, the body is useless. Again, without the body, the soul cannot manifest anything. So God’s creation is God’s body. How can they be separated? If God wants to fulfil His Vision and Reality together, if He wants His body and soul to go together, then naturally He will be responsible for both His soul and for His body.

So to come back to your question, Sanjivan. God is responsible. Ultimately He will be responsible both for His soul and His body. He is inside everything and finally responsible for everything.

But getting back to the tyrant. When we open our eyes, we see that there is a conflict right in front of us. The tyrant is misusing his limited freedom, but the responsibility goes to the Supreme. The Supreme, through His divine instruments, through His forces of Light, will eventually cause the destruction of the tyrant. Every tyrant is eventually overcome. Even if his brutal system remains, it is significantly weakened by the tyrant’s own annihilation. Tyranny lasts only as long as we are in ignorance. Ignorance is temporary; conscious knowledge and perfection are permanent. Tyranny is only a temporary manifestation of darkness, ignorance and misuse of freedom. Since this is God’s creation, eventually He is responsible for everything. He is so kind. He is infinitely Great, infinitely Compassionate. He says, “It is My fault”.

Question: The consciousness of the self is a handicap in the path towards God-realisation and complete surrender. This self-consciousness will limit you in the world of plurality, differentiation and phenomena. Now, this is what we want to transcend because we are searching for that oneness of the Absolute. If we are searching for that oneness, where all differentiation ends and where you will integrate with the universal consciousness, you must try to pull away from these forces that will limit you in the sphere of personality or the ego, that will give you a distorted view of what humanity is, of what the purpose of life is and many causes of differentiation. You are dealing with phenomena that takes place in space and time. But you are not dealing with true values, the eternal values of the real Self. What I mean to say is that when I say that you have to transcend that self-consciousness, it is that you have to destroy this consciousness of the individuality as the "I" or the personality as the "I." You will have to live in a broader consciousness, in a broader vision, otherwise you cannot attain that goal. To reach that goal, we need the Master because the Master will be like a catalytic agent who will bring up those forces that are hidden in the inner Self so that they will flow into view.

Now you were speaking about self-consciousness. A spiritual aspirant must feel that his individuality and personality must be merged in his Master’s or in God’s individuality. Individuality is not the physical height, not that you are five feet, eleven inches, standing there full of aggression and lecturing to me. It is not that you are separate from the rest of the world. No. Divine individuality is the highest individual divinity in a person, not showing off how much power a person can exercise or how much knowledge he has attained. No. Individuality means the highest divinity which you have achieved as your own. When I say, Aham Brahman, “I am the Brahman,” then your personality is full of Light. Your personality is the lantern-breadth of the universe. Your height is your divine individuality, your luminous breadth is your personality. If you can think that your breadth is your personality and height is your divine individuality, if you can concentrate on it, meditate on it, then the limited individuality and the limited personality which you see in your life is bound to go. You don’t have to be conscious at each moment what your defects are. This is a very bad way of making progress in the spiritual life. Try to think what good qualities you have, not what bad qualities. By concentrating more and more on your good qualities, that means by concentrating more on light, you expand your light. Then that expansion automatically covers, envelops the darkness, doubt, fear in front of you. So, how can you expand? You see the positive side which is aspiration, purity, divine beauty, concentration, meditation. If you try the positive side, automatically you are going to the highest and that is your individuality. And when you are looking at this side, it is all your personality-covering. So I wish to tell you that to conquer self-consciousness, feel that you want to be, and say that you are God’s child, that God-realisation is your birthright instead of saying that you are in darkness. How can I get rid of darkness? Darkness is all around me, inside me, inside the world. Let us see only the positive way. Then in that case it is not that we are ignoring the fact, the phenomenal world which is full of darkness, no. We are seeing what the reality is inside the phenomenal world and that reality is Light, that reality is Truth. When we consciously see Reality and Truth, then we expand. In the field of expansion, we expand and in the field of realisation, we go to the Highest. That is how it is done.

1970

Question: How can we teach ourselves to love people who hurt us? People who are bad?

Question: Can one develop this love?

Question: Will God help me if I ask Him for help in that way?

Question: I have read that one has to help oneself, too. If one does not help oneself, God will not help us.

Question: In each era God manifests in a different way. We are entering into the Aquarian Age. I was thinking that since energy changes her form of manifestation in each era, even psychic energy changes. There is a complete transformation of the creation in each era. I would like to know how true my argument is now.

When we think of transformation in the terms of an era, we have to be conscious of one thing and that is evolution. We are in the process of evolution. This process will find its proper satisfaction or complete satisfaction only when our human nature is completely transformed. You have heard of the eras of the past and there will be a few more eras in the future. We have to know whether the changes or the transformations that we have made up until now are really noticeable, whether these eras have brought any progress.

The transformation that we are crying for is the transformation of our human nature and human propensities. At the same time, we cannot deny that the ordinary person is making some kind of progress. He is getting a better life, a more fulfilling life. He may be transforming or changing himself but this change need not be actually for the better, even though we are all proceeding towards a higher life. But if one is not aspiring, you will see that he will be caught in his ignorance-sea even though while living there, he may start learning how to swim. In the beginning he was sinking all the time in ignorance-sea, drowning; now he knows how to swim and slowly, steadily, in God’s own infinite time — God Himself knows when — one day he will be able to swim across the sea of ignorance and enter into the sea of knowledge.

So here we see again the play of an era. Human consciousness started to run towards the Light. Each era offers that opportunity to aspiring human souls, but what happens? That ignorance does not allow human consciousness to reach the Highest. Now we are marking time: one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, but when we think of one hour, immediately we feel that in this one hour, we have to accomplish what we thought of accomplishing from the beginning. That is, we are standing still and yet we feel that in this era, we should accomplish everything that was not accomplished in all the past eras. Each era embodies a new hope, a new energy, a new will to accomplish the thing that has not yet been accomplished. But what happens? The promise is one thing, the fulfilment is another. There are various factors that do not allow the era to be fulfilled or to fulfil itself.

Now if you think of all the eras, according to our Hindu shastras, there are a great many, but right now we are in the Iron Age, they say. According to spiritual figures, this is the worst period. In this age, the world is going to be destroyed, it is said. When? Some say next month or next year. Some say tomorrow. But it is not true. What they call “destruction” will eventually be proved to be the transformation of human nature.

You were saying that each era is a promise towards a better understanding of Truth, but not even one era has fulfilled or has been able to fulfil its purpose. Here we are trying, but God knows how far we will succeed.

But what is going to happen? Ultimately, it may take a hundred years or two hundred, four hundred years or six hundred. It may take even thousands of years, but the Truth has to be fulfilled. Nobody, no hostile force, no undivine force can prevent Truth from being established. That is to say, Truth has to be established on earth and for that end, what is required from the earth’s consciousness is the total transformation of human consciousness. Unless and until our human nature is completely and totally transformed, the Truth may touch the earth-consciousness, but it will not be able to stay there permanently, because the earth-consciousness is not wide enough to hold the Truth. The vessel is not big enough.

Question: What is the quickest way to achieve self-control?

Question: What changes do we have to make, when, as seekers, we have to work and eat with other persons who don't feel what we feel? Sometimes I have harsh reactions in my relations with the ordinary world.

Now let us use an analogy. The mother is naturally superior to the child. But the mother does not consciously feel, twenty-four hours a day, that she is superior. What she feels is that she is absolutely one with the child. Hers is a feeling of oneness and not a feeling of superiority. It is we who say that the Mother has more knowledge, wisdom, more capacity, than the child. But if the mother consciously harbours the idea that she is superior to her child, then she won’t be able to show affection or concern or be able to do anything for the child.

So if you consider the world around you and feel that you are superior because they are acting in an animal way, you won’t be able to become one with them and enter into them. It is we, the witnesses, who will make the comparison, that you are superior to others who are not aspiring, who are still sleeping.

Now how can we mix with people who are not aspiring, who are destructive in their relationship with us? You lose your patience and you lose your temper, it is true.

Now every day, I am sure, you try to meditate. You not only try, you do meditate every day. Now when you go out, try to feel that your wallet is your spiritual bank. Early in the morning you meditated for five minutes and you gathered Peace, Light, Bliss and Power, etc. This is all your money, your wealth. Just like nickels, dimes and dollar bills, you are putting all this money into your wallet. This is inner wealth, however. In the morning you meditated and you collected the money, this spiritual wealth, which you are putting into your wallet.

Now in your outer life, the moment you are displeased with someone, and you are about to fly into a rage, always when you are about to burst into fury, immediately try to open your inner wallet where you have kept the inner peace. These are the pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and bills that you have saved. If you can use your inner wealth, which is inside your wallet, then you will not be attacked by the wrong forces; at the same time, the Peace and Poise that you get from your inner wealth will prevent you from attacking them with your human power. What you will do while they are attacking you is to show your money, your Light, Bliss, Peace, Joy, etc. Just open your inner wallet and show them the solid protection that you have. They will not be able to enter into your inner sanctum when you have placed right in front of you a solid wall which is composed of your inner wealth.

Question: In one of your poems you say, "Hope lost... destruction close." What can one do if that person is losing hope? What can an aspirant do?

Now what can you do to regain hope? Here we have to know that hope is not something weak. Very often our conception of hope is something very delicate; a sweet, smooth, soothing feeling which is a kind of balm to our outer minds. But this is not an adequate definition of hope. We have to know that hope is something very solid. It is something strong. It has seen the Truth, only it is unable to bring the Truth into its world. Hope is not something that is crying for the world beyond or crying for a truth which it has not seen. No. Hope has seen the Truth but it cannot and does not yet possess it.

So what can you do when you lose hope? If you know what it is, first of all, you will not lose it. If you know that hope is something that has already seen the Truth which you are ultimately going to achieve, then you will get strength from this knowledge. The time has not come; hope has not yet been able to bring the Truth in front of you. The real time which has been planned by God has not yet come.

Now again, what can you do to get back your hope? Try to cast aside all expectations from your desiring mind. It is the desiring mind that feeds our outer hope. If we can be above the desiring mind, and remain all the time in the spontaneity of our heart, we will have a constant feeling of divine possession, of possessing the Truth. We shall know then that hope is the vision that sees the reality and finally becomes the Reality itself in the Supreme’s own Hour.

Our inner heart is always full and complete, requiring nothing. It is our outer mind which feels that it needs something, wants something. Then hope comes into play. When you need something, hope begins to play its part, but when you need nothing, hope does not enter the picture, for it is not at all necessary.

Now I would like to point out that ordinary human hope can never be fulfilled because inside it there is no determination; there is no sincerity, there is no conscious willingness to accept the highest Truth. If, with our human hope, we want to achieve the Highest, the Ultimate, we will see that when the Highest is descending and descending, approaching our own human physical being, this human hope will be terrified and try to escape at the very moment that it sees the enormity of the reality that it was aspiring to possess.

Now let us look at the fulfilment, in boundless measure, of our ordinary human hope. Hope expected something, say five dollars. When fulfilment came, it came as five million dollars; immediately this human hope was overjoyed. Immediately also it loses its inner poise. When spiritual receptivity is lacking, we always lose our inner balance and poise. But if you started with Divine Hope, where Truth is already seen in its highest aspect, it needs only to be embodied. Your hope is only to bring that Truth into manifestation. There you do not lose your inner balance. Then when hope’s fulfilment comes into you, you do not become unbalanced because you knew about it. You knew what was bound to happen. You remain poised.

Now your question was, “What can you do when you lose hope?” When you lose hope, you have to feel that the reality is bound to come to you precisely because you are in the world of aspiration. You are aspiring most sincerely, most devotedly, most uniquely. You are doing the right thing. Now if the Truth or the Fulfilment that your hope has envisioned has not yet been able to manifest, do not worry. It is only when you lose your aspiration that you can feel that you are lost. When I said in my aphorism, “Hope lost, destruction close,” it is because the ordinary man will not aspire when there is no hope. It is hope that keeps him alive on earth. Hope plays a great part on earth. For example, some people say that they are doing disinterested work, and so on. Only aspirants and truly spiritual people really do this. Ninety-nine percent of human beings, in working, are only feeding their own human hopes and desires. That is why they are living, working, existing. Otherwise they would not budge an inch.

Now in a spiritual person, this aphorism “Hope lost, destruction close” does not apply. Where is destruction for a spiritual person? For him, there is no destruction. He acts only to fulfil God’s Will. We tend to judge the fulfilment of God’s Will in two ways, in the form of success or in the form of failure. But God Himself is above both success and failure. So if you want to become identified totally and inseparably with God’s Will, then think neither of success nor of failure. Think only of pleasing the Supreme. According to our human eyes, the fulfilment of hope is success. But according to our divine vision, the fulfilment of God’s Will is far above and infinitely higher than the achievement of failure or success.

So if you remain with your burning aspiration, you are constantly identified with God’s Will. And when you are one with God’s Will, this earthly hope has no value. It will be impossible for earthly hope to knock at your door of aspiration because your divine hope is already self-sufficient. It is already one with God’s Will. In God’s Will there is everything, the Vision and the Reality. If the Reality is success, well and good. It is the fulfilment of God’s Will which is of paramount importance, not success or failure. Fulfilment is always beyond results. We see the results best and we derive the utmost benefit from the results only when we are one with God’s Will unreservedly. When we are identified with His Will unreservedly, we know that we are fulfilled.

Question: I want to know the relationship between maya and creation.

Question: In the third chapter of the Gita. Arjuna asks Sri Krishna about action and inaction. I would like to know something more about it.

There are two kinds of action. One is disinterested action and the other is the action of desire. Now most of us act only when we feel that we will get a satisfying result. Before we actually act, we think of the result and if we feel that it will be satisfactory and fruitful then we enter into the field of action. If we know beforehand that the result will be unfavourable, usually we do not enter into the action at all.

Now here, the disinterested action, which is the real action, is what we have to do. We have to act for the sake of God and not for the sake of the result, which is what the Gita calls “the fruit of action”. Success is not our goal. Failure is not our goal. But the fulfilment of God’s Will is our goal.

Now let us speak about action. Normally, we feel that we have acted when we use our limbs, our hands or at least our brains. We feel we must move and be dynamic. But spiritually speaking, when we act, we must feel that it is God who is acting in us and through us. It is God Himself who is acting and we are His instruments. We can feel that it is the Divine Play: our inaction but God’s action. We are used by Him for His Purpose. We are consciously moving and working, but the inner Force and the source of the action is coming from Him. This is what “inaction” means here.

On the other hand, if we feel that it is we who are working and God the Witness, the Silent Purusha, is merely watching, then naturally, we will feel that the action is done by us. We call this silent, withdrawn aspect of the Supreme the Sakshi Purusha, the Witness Being. He is watching; we are working and earning our daily bread by the sweat of our brow. If this is our feeling and experience, we say that we are working and God is observing. I cannot say that if we have this feeling, then we are totally mistaken. It is a valid experience. It is also much better than being totally unaware of God’s existence. But there is a higher Truth about God’s relationship with us when we act. I shall speak about this another time.

I wish to tell you that whatever we do must be done only because He, the Inner Pilot within us, commands us. This is called real action. Unreal action is when we cry for the result and when we feel that we are responsible for what we say or do.

Questions and answers following the lecture "The inner freedom"

Question: Does the inner world affect the outer world?

Question: What is the purpose of life?

Question: How do we reach the inner worlds?

Question: How can one achieve this realisation of Truth?

Question: Have you attained to realisation, or are you still a seeker?

Question: What will happen to you when you die, being a realised soul? Will you be absorbed in God and not take incarnation again?

At the end of this lifetime, when I pass through the tunnel of death, I will shed the five sthulas or sheaths and pass through the physical world, the vital world, mental world, and psychic world and then to the region of the soul’s consciousness, where I will take rest in my own highest consciousness for as long as the Supreme needs. Then, when the Supreme wants, I will again enter into the manifestation to serve Him.

Question: Since you are a realised soul, will your next incarnation be different from that of an ordinary person?

Question: Why do we need a spiritual Master? Can't we find Truth by ourselves?

If the mother does not teach the child, how will he learn the alphabet? So when we launch into the spiritual life, we need the blessings and concern of a spiritual Master, and then when we have got our degree — when we are on the verge of realisation or we have achieved realisation — then we graduate and no longer need his help.

Question: You said before that each incarnation is a stepping stone towards our God realisation. Does that mean that we can't reach God in this life?

Question: How do you define God? I try to define Him as an animate Force, but this just confuses me more.

Question: You said that we are all evolving and progressing. But where did this whole process start? Was there a beginning?

But in the case of a spiritual aspirant, it is different. He tries to drop all the lower animal parts of his nature and tries to be aware of and live in his true Divine nature where it is all Peace and Joy and Love.

Question: Is the realisation you speak of achieved through a certain kind of Yoga?

There are three major kinds of Yoga: Bhakti Yoga, the path of love and devotion, Karma Yoga, the path of selfless service and Jnana Yoga, the path of wisdom and knowledge.

Now, all paths lead to Rome, but one may get us there a little quicker or easier. My path, which we call the Sunlit Path, is the path of Love, Devotion, and Surrender.

It is up to the individual aspirant which path he feels best suited for. One has to be careful, however, not to follow a false teacher. A false teacher can bring your life to ruin.

Question: Is there a difference between man and God?

You have a soul, I have a soul, the Christ had a soul. The soul is consciously one with God. On the strength of his highest realisation, the Christ said: “I and my Father are one.” How can anyone dare to say differently? In India we say Tat twam asi, “That thou art” and Soham Brahman, “I am the Brahman.”

Question: Is there any relationship between imagination and faith?

Again, inside imagination reality can be found. Some scientific truth or poetic truth or any other type of truth may emerge. When a poet, for example, creates something, he may see the truth through his imagination’s light. Then when he expresses it, it is all reality, all truth.

Now to come to faith: faith comes from the heart. Actually it comes from the soul. The soul does not have to imagine anything. The soul lives in reality. When one lives in reality and sees reality all around, then one need not imagine. You are sitting right in front of me; I don’t have to imagine that I am seeing you. You are the reality right in front of me. Faith, the expression of the inner reality, makes us one with the object or the subject. That is why faith does not need any kind of imagination. Faith is our inner awareness of oneness. Awareness of oneness is faith. The finite is becoming aware of the Infinite. This awareness comes first, then comes oneness. Faith has the capacity to start with awareness and end in oneness.

How can faith and imagination help each other? When faith shows the truth and wants to expand, imagination can supply the fuel. Imagination can help faith expand. Faith has seen the truth. Faith knows that this is the truth, that we have come this far. Faith feels the truth but faith does not have the inner capacity, the immediate capacity to expand it. Now if behind or inside imagination, we can seize upon the divine intention or the divine will, then faith will be expanded and our vision will certainly be no mental hallucination. Otherwise we expand the consciousness of faith through imagination; and if, inside imagination, there is no trace of God’s Will or of God’s intention, the purpose is missing and then the result will always be fiction or hallucination.

Very often, our faith is shattered into pieces because when imagination comes to feed faith, imagination does not have God’s approval or His Will-Power. It does not have His Concern or Blessing-Light. But if imagination comes with God’s Blessing-Light, Concern and Love, then faith can be expanded. In this expansion, faith makes us feel that the finite has infinite possibility to be one with the Infinite.

And then how does faith help imagination? When we imagine something, we may be wrong, we may be right. But when faith comes and enters into imagination, faith gives living breath to imagination. This moment we imagine something and next moment our imagination is frustrated because we cannot go beyond it. We imagine and then, although it is imagination, we come to a halt. If we close our eyes now, we can go to Berlin with our imagination. Then we are unable to go further and there we are caught. Or we can go to some other place and we will be caught there. We cannot go further. But if faith is inside imagination, faith will give us its living breath. A living breath means dynamic movement. Now if Berlin exists, then there should be something farther than Berlin also. Then when imagination feeds us with its living breath, our imagination gets real divine strength to go farther and deeper. Otherwise, what happens is this: imagination loses its own strength to go any further. It comes to a point and then it stops because it feels that there, either it is all achievement or else all frustration. But when faith comes to help imagination, then there is constant movement in imagination, which does not stop. It feels that there is something higher, something further, something deeper. This is how faith and imagination help each other. But it does not happen always. On rare occasions it happens.

Question: A disciple from Arecibo told me one night that he felt the necessity to meditate while he was driving his car at night and that he went out of his normal, physical mind. I told him not to do it and that I was going to ask you about that.

But if he enters into deep meditation and he does not have the capacity to keep a balance between his inner consciousness or his inner aspiration and his outer situation, then he can have a serious accident. At the beginning it is always advisable to meditate at home in one corner of a room. Here he is dealing with life. Here he is taking a tremendous risk and he is also involved with others. He is driving and if he enters into deep meditation and if he takes somebody’s life, what right has he? If he is at home at the time of meditation, if he wants to sleep, he can lie down. He can do anything he wants, anything which will suit him. But when you are in a car, when others are involved, you have to be very, very careful. When others are involved in the street, you always have to be very careful. So for the seekers, especially for the beginners, it is inadvisable to meditate in the car. You have twenty-four hours. Right now the beginner need not, cannot, cannot is the right word, cannot meditate for more than an hour. Impossible. You can meditate for fifteen minutes, four times a day. If you can meditate four times for fifteen minutes each day, sincerely, then that is one hour. More than that if he wants to do, he will only count hours, saying that he has meditated ten hours, twenty hours, etc. Out of twenty hours, perhaps ten minutes he will have really meditated and the rest of the time he will have slept or enjoyed all kinds of earthly thoughts, activities, every thing except meditation.

Question: Master, please tell me, if I have to come back here in another incarnation, who is going to take care of my soul? You? If you don't want to come to this world again, will you name someone to take care of me?

You are thinking of your next incarnation. I wish to say that in this incarnation you have to know whether or not you have achieved an inseparable oneness with my soul or not. In ordinary human life we see the bond between mother and son. You are here. Now your son may be in New York. When you are working with your other children, you may be working in the kitchen, but your heart is inside your son. And your son may be studying in New York in the University, but his heart is inside the mother. It is human love, the human bond, and even then it has crossed thousands of miles. This is the human way. Your human body will perhaps stay on earth seventy or eighty years. But in these years, you have developed something which is called a heart. How it is crossing the distance of thousands of miles! Your son is in New York and from New York message is coming to your heart of all his affection, love, concern. This is your offering and his offering. Now you must ask yourself if you have made this heart’s connection with me, with my soul, with your Master’s soul. Now on the spiritual plane, the teacher himself represents God and his soul is infinitely more illumined than the disciple’s soul. Your soul wants to be illumined as my soul and it knows that everyone has to realise God. We can deceive everyone, but not God. We can say that we won’t do something or eat something. But one thing we will have to eat is the fruit of the realisation-tree. Realisation-food we won’t be able to deny. God will say, “Alright, if you don’t want to do this, don’t do it; if you don’t want to eat, don’t eat, but this food, the realisation-food you have to eat sooner or later, in this incarnation or ten incarnations later.

Now it is I, your eternal friend and your eternal Guru, who has to give you this realisation-food. If I am unable to do it during my lifetime, I shall continue to feed your soul after I return to my heavenly Home. I do not need to name someone to take care of you, Vijaya, for it is I who promised the Supreme that I would take care of you eternally. I made this promise to Him when I first accepted you as my disciple.

Even while remaining in the physical, which is a real bondage, a spiritual Master can help his disciples in different parts of the world. But when he leaves the body, he is totally free. From the other shore, the spiritual Master works through the soul’s Light or will-power. The soul’s Light can be offered from any plane of consciousness, from the highest plane right down to the earth plane. So from the higher worlds, the Master can easily make contact with the disciple’s aspiring soul, and the disciple can respond to the Master’s Light. In this way, the Master can and does and must help the disciple.

When a Master accepts someone as a real disciple, a true disciple, he makes a promise to God, the Supreme, and to the soul of the individual seeker that he will be eternally responsible for that soul.

When great Masters come to earth, they greatly expedite the progress of their disciples. But how far can they expedite it when the disciples themselves have made so little progress? Still, the Masters try to make a very brave fight; they challenge ignorance. They say, “Let us see how far we can go.”

On the part of the disciple, there has to be a real feeling, a radiant feeling, a feeling of oneness with the Master. Then, if the person does not get realisation in this incarnation, the Master, when he has left his body, will make a definite, direct contact, an express connection with that disciple’s soul. During the disciple’s remaining earthly life and also in the soul’s world, where she will go to rest, she will feel the Master helping and guiding her so that in her next incarnation or in one or two future incarnations, she can reach the Highest, the Absolute.

So when the Master is in the physical, it is the greatest opportunity because at that time, the physical mind is bound to be convinced of the value of the spiritual help the disciple is receiving. The soul always feels this help and never needs to be convinced. You get the greatest opportunity when a spiritual Master descends on earth. Ramakrishna used to say, “The cow is standing before you. The cow has milk. Where does the milk lie? Only in the udders. So milk the cow! You should not try to get milk from the tail of a cow, for there is no milk there.” So here also, Divine Bliss is standing before you. The whole universe embodies his Bliss, but there is a place, a particular place where constantly Infinite Grace and Compassion are descending in bountiful streams. And that is where the spiritual Avatar has descended on earth.

Questions asked by Sri Chinmoy himself

What does the human in us want? What does the divine in us want?

What is the difference between the divine Lover and the Divine Beloved?

What is life and what is death?

What is ego?

What kind of loss and what kind of gain?

God means what?

Truth means what?

Man means what?

The past means what?

The present means what?

The future means what?

What is God's contribution?

What is man's contribution?

What is aspiration?

What is realisation?

What is revelation?

What is manifestation?

What does my mind say?

What does my heart say?

What does my soul say?

What does my goal say?

What is the difference between humanity and divinity?

What is the difference between inner and outer education?

Who is the fool?

Who is the wisest of all?

What does God do when I concentrate on Him?

What do I do when God concentrates on me?

What does God do when I meditate on Him?

What do I do when God meditates on me?

What do I do when I contemplate on Him?

What do I do when God contemplates on me?

I

Question: How can we tell which is our ego's will and which is the Divine Will?⁵

The ego’s will is not like that. You are not convinced, but you are convincing yourself that you are doing the right thing. You are doing the wrong thing because you are adopting foul means, acting by hook or by crook. You are not doing the right thing, but you are trying to convince yourself that you are.

When it is your soul’s will, you are automatically convinced because the ringing conviction comes from deep within. In the ego’s will, you are convincing yourself through your mind, through your vital, through your physical. But, when it is your soul’s will, you will feel a kind of inner confidence. This inner confidence is accompanied by joy, by an inner ecstasy. In the case of the ego, this does not happen. In the case of the ego, while you are exercising your ego’s will, there will be some fear in it. “Perhaps I will lose the battle. Perhaps I will be smashed. I feel that I am going to be defeated by the other party.” A constant battle is going on. “Although I feel that I am stronger, superior, more powerful, more dynamic, I have no security inside me, no confidence. I am afraid that the other party will defeat me and I will lose the battle”. But in the soul’s will, it is definite that we are going to win, not by any kind of foul means but just because God wants the soul to win, because God wants to conquer ignorance, because God wants that particular soul to gain victory over ignorance. That is why God is giving indomitable will to the soul to conquer ignorance.

Now, when the soul’s will-power is expressed, it is expressed the way we see a huge wave moving in the sea. Immediately it inundates the whole consciousness. Once the soul’s will is expressed, you are bound to feel that your inner consciousness is inundated with inner energy, inner joy, inner delight, inner power, inner confidence. Everything is inundated there. But when you use your ego’s will-power, you are thinking that you are building a palace. Again you have enormous fear inside you that while you are building, your palace is going to crack, the building is going to collapse. With that kind of fear, finally it really does collapse because where there is fear, there cannot be any Light or Strength. Light cannot exist in fear. In fear only doubt comes. Our fear and doubt go together and there we see vexation looming large. In the soul’s will, we see only confidence, inner assurance, inner oneness with the soul which is Divinity.

Question: Could a creature of the Supreme Omnipotent, Omniscient, obtain a temporary suspension of his karma so that he can obtain worthy progress? What are the requisites thereof?

So I wish to tell you that it is not actually a suspension of karma. The cosmic law is operating. If you have made a mistake you are going to reap the fruit, but at that moment Compassion comes, falls downward to your aspiring heart and fights against outer desire. Your aspiration comes and fights against your outer desire. If a spiritual Master is involved, your own inner, higher deity is involved. Then what will the Master do? If he sees that somebody is about to be punished for his wrong karma and he sees that this punishment will last for only six months, if the spiritual Master wants, if it is the Will of God, immediately he will take the pain inside himself. But he will not suffer for six months. He will suffer for ten days or fifteen days or even only three days if he wants.

Or what he can do is to take the pain and immediately throw it into the universe. That he can do. Now, here, for my dearest disciples, I can do this. About a month ago ... you know today is Monday. Today they offer meditation at the Connecticut Centre where Akuti is president. About a month ago, Alo was not coming down; she was in Vancouver in our Centre there. That Monday, one of our very close disciples was suffering from an abdominal pain for the whole day. Her husband takes me to the Connecticut Centre and she was coming from her place with her husband to take me up there. Now it is a matter of two minutes from their place to our place. She was about to vomit, her pain was so unbearable. Then what did I do? I entered into the car and I was eating something. I was eating peanuts. So I said, “I am eating now, I can’t do anything.” She was suffering like anything. Then her husband needed gas for the car so he went three or four blocks to a gas station. While the man was filling the tank, I told her husband, “I am very hungry. Bring me a sandwich.” He went to the cafeteria and brought me a sandwich. So I was sitting in the front seat and she was in the back. Unbearable, excruciating pain she was suffering. I told her, “Now look, place your hands on the affected area, wherever it is.” I looked at her and the pain was gone. She could not believe it! Her husband came back. She smiled and told her husband, “The pain is gone.” Now this pain that I took away would have lasted in her at least for four or five hours. At least four or five hours she would have suffered and when I took it, I suffered for three or four minutes. But the pain I suffered for her was a real pain and with the pain I was still eating and smiling. Inside I was suffering, outside I was eating and smiling. I knew that in four or five minutes the pain would be gone. This was done with my own conscious awareness.

Last week you saw Suparna here. She was suffering terribly from a headache, an unbearable headache. She started meditating at nine o’clock. She said to my transcendental picture, “Take it, take it, take it. I cannot bear it anymore.” Her Master took it. So here I wish to say that the actual karma was for her to suffer. If I had not taken the karma, it would have lasted for a few hours. We can take it away but we can take it only when it is God’s Will.

The other day Sevananda and others were saying that their parents are against me because I am exploiting their children. So I told them, “Please tell your parents that either this Indian fellow is very clever, more clever than you are or he has more love for us than you have. Either one of these two qualities he has. Either I am cleverer than your parents, or I have more love for you, and therefore you listen to me.”

II — Talk and questions and answers at the Sagrado Corazon College in San Juan

Discourse⁶

While he was performing this unique and extraordinary set of movements that we saw a few minutes ago, we observed, along with his superb skill, a power of concentration that ran from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Every part of his being was surcharged with a dynamic will. Now this will comes from the soul, not from the body. His physical body became the conscious instrument of his soul’s dynamic will. Now where did he, how did he, learn this so-called technique, which is actually the concentration of a spiritual Master? He learned it from his soul’s inner will.

So what you are getting here is a great opportunity; and this is not the end. You will be taught by him for a few months or a few years and that is just the beginning. The very essence of everything you do is meditation. Kimo’s performance was the result of inner concentration and meditation. So, this is my sincere request to each of you, that every day in the morning, you will please try to concentrate for a few minutes or meditate for a few minutes. Meditation is a vast subject. If I speak about it, it would take hours and hours and there would be no end. I have spoken considerably on meditation at various places: spiritual Centres, churches, synagogues, American universities, Puerto Rican universities, European universities. I just came back from a tour on the Continent. There I spoke on meditation.

What I feel would be best for you here is to ask me a few questions on meditation. Otherwise if I give a talk on meditation, it may not serve your immediate purpose, because each one here has a different problem. Your problem need not and cannot be the same as someone else’s problem. In your inner life, you have a problem of your own, or you want Light in a different way from your neighbour. You want to grow into the Light, the Light divine. For real growth, your way of approaching the Truth has to be different from the one who is sitting right beside you.

Now, in the spiritual life, we always say that we must grow and become. Now some people will say that unless you have become something yourself, you cannot give anything to others. Yes, it is true. If you don’t know something and you try to teach others, it is a matter of the blind leading the blind. But I also wish to say that if you know something better than I do, then you are perfectly entitled to teach me that particular thing. And if I know something which you do not know, you should learn it from me. Now here is the golden opportunity to co-ordinate your knowledge of the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic with the spiritual. The spiritual life teaches us the unification of all the members of the family: the physical, the vital and the mental must run abreast and inside the physical, the physic and the soul must predominate. Otherwise if you just become an expert in karate, if you learn it mechanically, you are serving no purpose. But if you exercise your inner will through karate, while you are performing, you are not only learning the technique of self-defence, but you are discovering your inner reality which is God-realisation. Everything you do when you study or when you speak to a person should have the soul’s will coming to the fore from deep within; then your life will have a purpose. Otherwise you will achieve success, the so-called success, but if the spiritual part of your life is lagging behind, if meditation is missing, your joy will be limited, fleeting, and your achievement will be very insignificant. But if you meditate, you will see an abiding Peace, abiding Light, abiding Joy deep within you.

Now I wish to invite a few questions from those who are interested in the inner life, the spiritual life.

Question: Please explain your system, so we can know how to go about meditation.

Now each individual has to learn how to meditate from a teacher, from a spiritual Master. Here you have a teacher, a karate teacher who is teaching you that art. So also in the spiritual life, you need a teacher. It is the teacher who will be able to direct you personally. Otherwise you will feel miserable that your way of understanding the truth will differ widely from the person sitting beside you. If you want to learn how to meditate, you have to follow a specific path. For that, you have to know if there is a spiritual Master like me. I am not the only Master; there are many Masters on earth. As soon as you see a spiritual Master, you have to feel the necessity of entering into him to see if his path suits you or not. If it does, then you should try to be in his boat. Then he is bound to teach you how to meditate. Why to meditate? Because you want to be divine, you want to be perfect. But how to meditate, unfortunately, a seeker does not know. He has to learn it from an adept, from a spiritual Master. So, for that, one goes to visit spiritual Masters, goes to spiritual places, and then, if one is interested, and inspired to follow the spiritual life, then one asks a Master to accept him. The Master gives a short interview and meditates with that particular disciple.

He tells the new seeker that he has to meditate regularly, daily, devotedly and faithfully. We cannot say in public that there is a certain way to meditate. Yes, there are general rules. You have to keep your mind calm and quiet. You should not allow any thought to enter into your mind because thoughts create disturbances in your mind. These are general rules. Everybody will tell you that when you want to meditate, the first thing is to make your mind calm and quiet. That we all know. But how to do it? That answer has to be given individually. Everyone has a different type of mind and each person has to be dealt with in a different way, because everyone has a different nature. The goal is the same. From here I have to go to New York. New York is my destination. But I can take a plane or I can take a boat. The destination remains the same, but the vehicles are different. Similarly in the spiritual life you have to know that God-realisation is one, but your vehicle to reach it need not be the same as someone else’s vehicle.

Question: How are our actions in life connected with the spiritual life?

When ordinary persons are constantly fighting in their minds and when jealousy, doubt, obscurity (which is darkness), impurity and imperfection loom large in their everyday life, day in and day out, then they are half-animal, from the spiritual point of view.

But again, when a spiritual person sees someone quarrelling and fighting all the time, he does not look down upon that person. An ordinary person when he sees a real animal, like an elephant or a tiger will immediately think, “Oh, here is a real animal! Thank goodness that I am a human being. You remain in your own life. I am so proud that I am not acting like you!” But a spiritual person, when he sees someone below his standard of consciousness, does not lord it over that person. On the contrary, he tries to help that person to kindle the flame of aspiration inside him.

Now in answering your question, if you are following the inner or spiritual life, then your activities can be motivated from this inner life. Each thought gives rise to action. If you are leading a spiritual life, then at every moment, God comes first in your life. To an ordinary person, God does not come first. Prosperity, power, importance, fame and other things come first. But a spiritual person immediately says, “God has to come first; the inner life has to come first.” From within we come without. An ordinary person usually feels that we should go from outside to inside. But this is impossible. “As we sow, so we reap.” We sow a seed and it germinates. Then it grows into a huge Banyan tree. So our inner life must come first because everything in our outer life, whether or not it is spiritual, is a result and an embodiment of whatever is in the inner life. A spiritual person feels that the inner life is of paramount importance and that it has to come first. An ordinary person feels, “No, the spiritual life is vague and meaningless. Let us enjoy life. Let us possess and be possessed. Let us enjoy the world and let the world enjoy us. There is no bridge between the spiritual life and the ordinary life.” But a spiritual person sincerely cries and says, “Let me realise the Truth in its own way and then bring down the Truth into my outer life.” The Truth is within, and then it has to be felt and expressed outwardly also. Truth is universal, it is true, but only if we go deep within do we first get a glimpse of it.

So in our day-to-day life, if we can meditate for ten or fifteen minutes a day, we can enter into the Source of life, Eternal life. From there, we have to enter into the fleeting life of fifty, sixty or seventy years, which is our life-span. Every day, consciously, let us offer our spiritual breath, our divine breath, to the Inner Pilot. Then let us try to grow into the perfect image of God in our inner life. Then from this inner life, we have to come forward to the outer life.

Let us not attempt to govern our inner life only with outer capacity. Outer capacity means possession. By possessing something or someone, if we feel that we will be able to govern our inner existence, it is impossible. Inner existence is always flooded with Light, Delight and inseparable Oneness with the Cosmos, with the Universe, and with the transcendental Supreme.

Question: Is meditation a way of having absolute freedom from all attachments which cause us to be separated from delight which is our inheritance on earth, spiritual delight?

But in meditation we get Joy, inner Peace, inner Light and inner Delight. And about the freedom that you are speaking of, you are absolutely right, meditation will give you eternal freedom.

Now let us speak about freedom in the outer life. We see children who leave their parents and they feel that they are free. Right; they are free from their parents because they are living elsewhere. They are not staying with their parents. But there are hundreds and thousands of problems that they still have. Only since they are not staying with their parents, this is the freedom they feel they are getting. Yet there are other obligations all around them that loom large in their day-to-day existence. So where is freedom? First their mind is a constant victim to ugly and venomous thoughts. They cannot get rid of their thoughts. Now, from the spiritual point of view, if one cannot get rid of ugly, undivine, hostile thoughts, then one is still subject to ignorance. Inner freedom comes from within. It does not come from freeing oneself from outer restrictions and obligations No. You may be free from your parents for a day or a month or a year, but this is no freedom. Real freedom is the feeling of universal oneness. This you can get from a life of meditation.

Meditation will free you from the sea of ignorance. Meditation will give you everlasting freedom. And this freedom is the freedom of oneness. Right now you cannot unite yourself even with another person right beside you. You feel with your ego that you are yourself and she is somebody else. So where is the freedom? Your freedom is so limited that even with your very limited capacity and limited knowledge you are trying to exercise your will and utilise your human power to lord it over others. That is what you call freedom. This is not freedom. Real freedom is the inseparable oneness with the universe. There you are growing together. You are achieving something and you are seeing that the entire world is achieving it at the same time. When you are sorrowful, immediately you feel that the whole world is suffering with you, sympathising with your cause, growing with you.

God is One and He multiplies Himself into many. Now God says, “I am a tree. Since I am a tree, I want to become also the branches, the leaves, the flowers and the fruits.” Freedom lies in becoming the many while maintaining the oneness. The leaves, flowers and fruit see the same consciousness flowing through them as flows through the trunk. A spiritual person, when he stands in front of a tree and meditates on it, sees the one consciousness which is flowing through the root, the trunk, the branches, flowers and fruit. This kind of oneness is the real freedom.

Question: During meditation, can one enter into the level of unconscious thought?

Question: Is this done through a mental process?

Question: How does a person become a Guru?

When you go to school, you start your lessons from the kindergarten and then you complete your journey when you get your university degree. From kindergarten you go to elementary school, then to high school, then to college and then to university. In the spiritual life also, one has to start at the beginning. In my case, right from my childhood I took up the spiritual life. When I was two months old, my parents took me to a spiritual shrine, a very well-known spiritual place in India. Then when I was three years old, four, seven and eight years old, I was taken to another place. Unconsciously, I was going with my parents to a spiritual Master. When I was twelve years old, I became conscious of the inner life, the spiritual life. Then from twelve right up to thirty-two, I spent five hours, eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours a day in rigorous meditation. Now you know that when you study something, you spend an hour or two, or three or four hours, according to the necessity of your study. So spending all those hours in meditation is nothing unusual if one wants to achieve a high standard in the spiritual life.

When I was twelve years old, I said, “Now is my time to be conscious.” And I started meditating one hour, two hours, three hours. But not for the sake of counting the hours. If you just count the hours, you are not doing real meditation. But if you can develop the inner capacity to meditate, your capacity becomes greater. When you take exercise every day, you gradually develop muscles. Then instead of five minutes, you can exercise for an hour. Then you develop your capacity to two, three hours. In the spiritual life also, we start with five minutes, then we increase it to ten minutes, fifteen minutes; then slowly it goes up to six hours, eight hours, nine hours a day. At that time, one has become an expert. One gets inner illumination; one becomes consciously one with the universal soul, with the Highest Absolute. At this point the person becomes a spiritual Master because he has achieved and received the Inner Illumination.

The spiritual Master at this point will not grow two horns or a tail. No, he is still a man. My spirituality is inside me, inside my heart, inside my consciousness. My disciples feel it, those who are my disciples.

Then when a spiritual Master meditates on his disciples, he offers them his Light, inner Peace, inner Bliss. He meditates on each individual and he spreads the inner Light. When he gets his own illumination, then and then only, can he offer his Light to others, to the seekers of the world.

Now you are apt to say, “How does he know he is illumined?” He knows on the strength of his absolute oneness with the Transcendental Truth. Those who are following the same path as he will see, inside him, the real Light. If you are a doctor, you will have a very good idea of whether another person is a genuine doctor or not. Immediately you will ask him some questions and if he is not a doctor, he will be totally lost. In the spiritual life also, when a seeker comes to a spiritual Master, he asks a few questions, inner questions. If the Master is really spiritual, he will be able to answer them. If not, he will not be able to answer.

In the spiritual life, the Guru’s answer is an immediate psychic response; it comes directly from the soul. It does not come from the mind. Many seekers come to me. Some of them don’t ask questions, but others ask hundreds of questions during the hours they spend at the Centre. Sometimes these are questions that nobody has been able to answer for them, but when I answer their questions, they are convinced that this person has inner illumination.

1972

Question: In your article "New Creation", you say that the best way to use our life, every moment of our life, is through inspiration and aspiration. My question is how can we, in what way can we put forth our utmost effort to bring to the fore our highest inspiration and aspiration?

Now this is not the end of the answer. Once you know what you have to become you will get inspiration and aspiration. But you have to ask yourself, at each moment, when you do something or say something, whether it can be utilised for a divine purpose or can be added to your own dedication or to your surrender to the Will of the Supreme. You have said something, for example. You have spoken for a few minutes. Then you have to ask yourself, “Will this, in any way, help in realising God or in serving God?” For five minutes you have spoken to someone. Now you have to ascertain whether this talking will in any way help you or help him or help anybody else. Then if you feel, “Yes, it has helped me; it is helping my friend; it is helping others,” then I wish to say that everyday you should try to do that kind of thing. It can be used as a service to you and to the one whom you speak to and to others who are around you.

This is all done on the physical plane. It is outer action. When you do something, everybody notices you. But in the mental plane again, you will be the observer and we will be the observers. The Supreme Himself will be the Observer. In the mental plane, when you are seeing someone or saying something, talking to someone inwardly, you have to feel that the action is taking place in the mind. Is it going to be of help to you or is it going to be a hindrance to your spiritual progress? So at each moment, when thought tries to knock at your mental door, you have to be careful, very conscious and alert. Will you allow that particular thought to enter into your mental room or not? If it is a good thought, open wide the mental door. If it is a bad thought, do not allow it in. Just act like a soldier standing at the mental door.

So... action on the mental plane, action on the physical plane can make each person inspire and aspire most soulfully and most profoundly. Each action is responsible either to make you realise God or to take you away from your Goal and to delay you in realising God. Each action, whether on the physical plane or on the mental plane can do that. This is why I say that each thought, each idea is equally responsible, equally important in the spiritual life if one wants to be a man of knowledge or if one wants to do something extraordinary on earth. Each second is most important in the spiritual life.

Question: It is very easy for us to conceive of God in the Infinite and the ultimate. But how can we see God in our everyday life, in our relations with people, in our activities with people? How can we see God here, the Divine here?

You stand in front of twenty persons. When humility comes forward for a second, you may feel that you are imperfect; otherwise twenty-three or twenty-four hours a day at least, you will think that you are perfect and others are imperfect. Why? Because the mind is playing its role. But if the heart plays its role, immediately it will see only oneness. The heart does not see defects. In oneness we do not see any defects. No. No matter how ugly my nose is, because I am one with it. I will feel that it is as fine as any other part of me. My eyes, my hands, my nose have all become part and parcel of my existence. I represent my nose and my nose represents me. This way, I cannot separate myself from it. When I use the heart, I see that even my little finger is equally important in my body. Here and everywhere I feel the message of oneness.

So use your heart and you will see God in all human beings. Sevananda is your friend, but there may be some people who are your enemies. You will see even in them the living presence of God because you are using an instrument within you which is bound to act like a magnet and that is your heart. Use the heart and you will see, you will feel, that God is in everyone; in addition, you will feel something more, that you are all the time for them and of them. When you use the heart, first feel your oneness with them. Then as soon as you have established your oneness, you are bound to feel that you are no different from them. When you establish your oneness with God, you are bound to feel that you are of God. If you have not created or established your oneness with God, you can never feel that you are of God. Somebody else is of God, but you are not of God. You are of something undivine; this kind of ignorance will come to your mind. But once you have established your oneness with God, you will know that you are of God. That means that you are of Light. And once you feel that you are of Light, the next moment you have to feel that you are for Light. The reason for this is that in this world, as soon as we know the Source, we try to fulfil the Source in its own way.

Question: In one meditation you say that if anybody strikes me on the right cheek, I shall not turn my left cheek to him because I love him and I don't want him to commit the same mistake again. Do you mean that one can get mad at that person?

Suppose I see that someone has consciously done something wrong and it is damaging him. By doing this wrong thing, he is not in any way, expediting his spiritual progress or inner progress. On the contrary, I am seeing clearly that he is descending in the scale of evolution. Then what shall I do? In me also is the living God. Now my living God here is acting like a Transcendental Being who is just. It is very easy to forgive someone. But by forgiving him, we have to know whether that person is really going to change his nature. If I just go on saying, “You have done something wrong; you can do more; you are exercising my compassion,” yes, I will exercise my compassion, but in the eyes of God, I will not be allowing him to come to the right path and at the same time, I am wasting my precious life by indulging someone else’s wrong action.

So we have to be very careful when somebody does something wrong to us. It is not that we are threatening them. Far from it. Only we have to feel that by allowing him to do the same thing again, or indulge in the same wrong action, we are taking him away from his own divinity.

At each moment, just as we should always try not to do anything wrong ourselves, consciously or unconsciously, we should also not allow another person to do anything wrong. We know that our encouragement of his mistake is in no way serving as a kind of compassion. No. If we encourage him to do the wrong thing again and again, then this is not compassion. This is our self-imposed weakness in the name of compassion. We shall not attack anybody, consciously or unconsciously. If somebody attacks, then we have to defend ourselves because in this self-defence, he will realise that he is striking someone who is innocent, who is crying for Light, for Reality, for Truth. Since we are crying for Light, Truth, Reality and Divinity, we have also to make the other person feel that only in Light will he receive his satisfaction. By striking me, he will not get satisfaction. I tell you because a day will come when his soul will come forward and make him feel that he has done something extremely wrong. So if we know that he has done something wrong, then we have to make him understand this, the sooner the better. Then he can enter into the soul’s Light and be guided all the time. So this is how I explain this aphorism of mine.

During Christ’s time, the average man lived in a very undeveloped semi-animal consciousness. When Christ instructed them to turn the other cheek, it was in line with His entire teaching of brotherly love, and compassionate kindness. He was trying to teach them mildness and harmlessness which was very necessary at the time. If he had given them the same instruction that I have given you now, they would not have been able to understand it. They were not sufficiently evolved. Since the average person has evolved considerably in the last two thousand years, we have come to a point where a higher level of teaching can be applied. What Christ said was divinely and supremely necessary for the people in His day. I am not saying anything against the Christ or contrary to Him. Each spiritual Master teaches according to the level of consciousness of his devotees. Each Avatar is bringing humanity one step higher up the ladder of evolution.

Question: About two weeks ago, we were talking here about attachment and detachment. We think that we are attached only to somebody whom we like. But Sudhha told us that we can be attached to somebody we dislike. How can we detach ourselves from a person whom we dislike?

Either you are thinking of your friend or you are thinking of your enemy. When you think of your friend, at least it is in a positive way. You are trying to bind him or you are allowing him to bind you. In the negative way, you are hurting the person, but at the same time, you do not want to be hurt. In the previous way you are binding someone and you get joy that the person is also thinking of you. But here in the negative way, you only try to hurt the person whom you decry and at the same time, you want that person to remain silent. You don’t want him or her to strike you back. It is one-sided. You will strike him, for you know better, but you won’t allow him to come near you. You will put a solid block in front of you the moment that person wants to attack you back. Only you want to attack.

In every possible way, you want to stay on the top of the tree and you want your enemy to remain at the foot of the tree. But the very fact that you want to be something and you want him to be something else shows that this is a negative attitude. In the positive way, when you want to be something, you want your friend to be that also.

But again you have to know what you want and what that person wants. If you want anything from that person, on the physical plane, you are only binding him. And if that particular person wants something from you, he is binding you. On the physical plane, it is always like that. On the spiritual plane, on the other hand, it is all a devoted feeling. You may ask, “When I think of the Master, then is it not attachment?” Far from it. Why? When you deal with a spiritual person, it is not attachment but a devoted feeling of your inseparable oneness. When you deal with ordinary, unaspiring, unrealised people, it is total attachment. You are binding them with your desire and they are binding you with their hearts’ desire. It is all attachment. But in the spiritual life, you are not binding. Here you are trying to throw yourself into the vast consciousness which your soul feels. In your aspiring moments, you feel that this consciousness is boundless. So when you throw yourself into it, that means that you are going to be free. But when you are ready to throw yourself into someone who is unillumined and you want the other party to throw his or her existence into you, since both of you are unillumined, naturally there is only a sense of limitation. Where there is darkness, there is limitation. Wherever there is Light, it is limitless and infinite.

So you have to know, all of you, that when you devote yourselves to the spiritual life, to your Master, it is not attachment; it is your devoted feeling of inseparable oneness, where you can be in the Vast, with the Vast and for the Vast. That is to say, you can consciously dive into the Infinite and act with the Infinite and for the Infinite.

The positive type of attachment is binding because there you are entering into darkness consciously or unconsciously, since that person is not illumined and you yourself are not illumined as an individual. Two blind persons going together can never offer light to each other. But one who is strong, powerful and mighty stands in front of both of you and he strengthens both persons.

In the spiritual life, when it is a matter of unaspiring beings, unillumined beings, unrealised human beings, then you are bound to be fettered. This is in the positive type of attachment. And in the negative type, it is always destruction. You want to destroy and at the same time, you don’t want to be destroyed. You want to attack everybody and make them feel that they are no good; they are useless. This is when you have an enemy. Then at the same time you are well protected, shielded and guarded so that the enemy cannot come. But the mind is all the time thinking: sometimes how to attack and the next moment how to escape, because you are afraid that you yourself will be attacked. You are playing a game of tit for tat.

1973

Question: Besides meditating, if you have confusion, say someone has told you something that confuses you in your own spiritual life, how can you clear that up?

When somebody creates confusion, what does he say? He says something which is unreal, and only an unreal thing creates confusion, not a real thing. Somebody says to you, “Your name is not Mita,” now what will happen? Either you have to believe or disbelieve. You know your name is Mita. I have given you that name and whether others know it or not, you know. Even if there is no second person on earth to confirm it, you know that your name is Mita. So here in the spiritual life, you have to know that your name is also Aspiration. If somebody comes and tells you that, “no, no, no, your name is not Aspiration,” then what will you do? Will you believe that person? As your name is Mita, so in the spiritual life your name is Aspiration. Now, if somebody tells you something which creates confusion, that means you are denying your own name. It is like this: who can create confusion in you if you do not allow it? Confusion is an unreal statement, an unreal reality, it is not real. Now, if you are real, who can create confusion in you? If you have faith in yourself, if you have faith in me, if you have faith in God, who can create confusion in you?

Suppose this is your building and somebody comes and says, “No, no, this is not your building. This is my building,” what will you do? He can stay for twenty-four hours saying it is his building. It is not yours, it is his building. How will you believe him? No, you simply will say, “No, this is my building.” So if your building is aspiration, there can be no confusion. But if your building is not aspiration, if your building is doubt, or curiosity or an unsettled state of things in your spiritual life, then I tell you, confusion can get in any moment. You must be firm in your aspiration and feel that your name is Aspiration. Who can tell you otherwise, who can deny it? But if you are not sure of your own name, which is Aspiration, you see that at this moment you have many names: your names may be fear, doubt, insecurity, uncertainty. If you have four or five names, naturally you will lose the game. But if your name is only one, one name you have which is Aspiration, I tell you, nobody can confuse you, nobody. Your aspiration is infinitely stronger than others’ capacity. Their capacity is doubt, their capacity is fear, their capacity is undivine gossip, that is all. But if you think that you have only one name, Aspiration, and one capacity, divine capacity, absolute capacity, supreme capacity, nobody can destroy you. Not even an iota of your aspiration can be destroyed if you feel that your name is nothing but illumined Aspiration.

People say, “He has confused me.” How can he confuse you? That means you have opened your heart’s door. You will open your heart’s door only to God, only to Truth, only to Light, only to Purity, only to Divinity. Do you open your door to your enemy? Do you open your door to the stranger? No. Who brings confusion? He who is a stranger, he who is your enemy. No, a real friend of yours will not bring confusion into your life. A real friend will only bring messages about God, messages of aspiration, love, joy, concern, all the divine messages, divine gifts he will bring forth. But he who is not your friend will bring only undivine gifts, fear, doubt, anxiety, worry. No human being on earth who has aspiration can be confused. Where aspiration lags, confusion starts. It is like that. Otherwise there is no confusion.

Aspiration is a flame, a burning flame which is our divine property, our real divine gift. Constantly it is illumining us, illumining and fulfilling us. And how is it possible that Grace which is aspiration can be confused with something else? It is impossible. Here it is all light now. No matter what you bring in, it is all illumined. But instead of bringing obscurity into light, what we do is that we feel that in darkness there is some joy, some pleasure. That darkness here is gossip, darkness here is lack of faith.

Question: What can we do with the hostile forces when they attack us and try to separate the Centre or the members, instead of feeling as one group? What can we do?

But let us not think about this light and night. Let us think of our inner light which is spiritual. First of all we have to accept the fact that hostile forces do exist. Then our next step is to challenge them. How do we challenge them? We challenge them not by standing in front of them. No, we challenge them by going to somebody else. We go to Light. The moment we go to Light, the hostile forces will say, “What kind of audacity do you have, that you go to Light and not to me?” And the hostile forces will come and attack you while you are in the Light. Then Light will immediately say, “What right have you if she is taking shelter in my heart? I will not allow you to stab or to take my child from my heart.” Then immediately Light will fight. But if one wants to go to night and fight, thinking that if night is very bad, the hostile forces are bound to be very weak, you will find that they are very strong. They will attack you more. But the very moment one goes to Light, the hostile forces feel that it is a defeat on their part and they feel that you have the audacity to go to Light without going to them. These hostile forces are all from ignorance. For years and years we have fed ignorance and ignorance has fed us. So ignorance feels that it is its bounden duty to keep us under its jurisdiction. Light feels that once you take shelter in it, it is the duty of Light to guide you, to protect you, to help you in your full illumination, salvation and liberation.

Then every day, consciously, during meditation, first offer your gratitude to the Supreme that you are praying and meditating well, that God has given you the capacity, the opportunity to meditate whereas there are millions of people on earth who are not praying and meditating. So God has given you this opportunity and capacity. First you offer your gratitude to God, then you pray to God for protection, always for protection. Then, how will you receive God’s protection? It is through gratitude. If you have gratitude, then God offers you protection. Then if you ask for protection, immediately God feels grateful to you that you are asking Him to do something. Here, on the contrary, in this world, in the human world, when we ask someone to do us a favour, we feel that that person should offer us his gratitude. I ask somebody to do something for me; why should he be grateful to me? If you ask me to do something, you should be grateful to me; why should I be grateful to you? This is on the earth plane. You have asked me for a favour. Naturally I am the benefactor and you become an object of compassion. This is our human understanding.

In the spiritual life it is different. In the spiritual life, you ask me questions, I invite questions. Now here I am ready to offer you light. I beg you to ask me questions. Now when you are asking me questions, I feel that you have given me the opportunity to reveal the Supreme’s Light which I have. Here in the case of God, God also is like that. When you ask God, beg God, “Give me illumination, give me liberation and give me strength and give me the capacity to save the world,” immediately God becomes so happy and full of gratitude that you have asked Him, and not Satan, not the devil, not an undivine force, to be of service to you.

So God always appreciates those who ask Him for the right things. You are asking Him to give you Light, illumination and not millions of dollars and not power to destroy the world. You are asking him to give you the power to love the world, to illumine the world, to fulfil the world. So each time you pray to God to give you something, God becomes really happy, really grateful, really proud of you because you are asking Him to do something significant. And when you ask Him for His service, He becomes extremely grateful. You could have asked somebody else to do the service, somebody else who is called ignorance. There are two teachers on earth, either God or ignorance. So you take the teacher God. Naturally, if you select a teacher to teach you, that teacher will be most pleased with you. The other teacher, ignorance, whom you have not selected to teach, naturally will be displeased with you. So here, we will care only for the teacher you need and that teacher is God. So when you offer gratitude, God protects you and when you ask for protection, which is a kind of Light, God will be grateful to you.

Question: I would like to know if detachment is in humility or if humility is in detachment and which one comes first.

Question: How can we best tell the difference between true humility and when our ego thinks it is humble?

Now there are two ways. One way is touching your feet. We are not ashamed of touching our feet, no. But if we feel that the feet are something inferior to the hand, naturally we will feel that it is beneath the dignity of our hand to touch our feet. But when it is necessary, our hands do touch our feet.

Question: How can you obtain a love for humanity in a true, practical sense? That is easy to speak about but difficult to practise.

Your inner existence and God’s outer reality are one thing. So when you divinely love yourself, not emotionally or egotistically, you are loving yourself just because God is breathing inside you, a God who wants to fulfil Himself through you. If you love yourself egotistically, you are killing yourself. If you love yourself undivinely, you are binding yourself. But when you love yourself divinely, you love yourself just because inside you is God. That is why you are loving yourself. You and God are one.

If you are fully aware of this truth, you will see, inside you, all of humanity. Humanity is not around you or outside you. It is inside you. If you become one with your divine existence, then you will see that inside you is humanity. Whatever is inside you is yours. Whatever is outside you is not yours. You can help to fulfil, illumine only that which is inside you. So you have to feel that humanity is inside you. Then you will be able to help humanity truly and effectively.

But first you have to realise God. Philanthropy is a very good practice, but real philanthropy begins inside. Just as it is said, “Charity begins at home,” so also in spirituality, philanthropy and everything like it starts deep inside yourself. And what is the reality there? Only God inside you who is also the real humanity. So if you realise God, then God will show you how to love humanity. First things first. God-realisation is first for a spiritual seeker and not philanthropy; far from it. Realise God and then you will see that the world is inside you. If you don’t realise God, you will see humanity around you as a world apart from you. The moment you realise God, you will feel that humanity is yours and the rest of the world is only yourself.