My heart shall give a oneness-feast

Part I

Question: What would be the best way to calm the restless and unruly vital?¹

You have many good qualities, but your best quality is your heart's golden luminosity. When you see something luminous, you get tremendous joy. The heart's luminosity can also calm the restless vital. As soon as luminosity enters into the vital, the restless vital becomes the dynamic vital. Each and every seeker needs a dynamic vital; it is of supreme importance. If you can enter into the heart and bring forward your golden luminosity, then your restless vital will become dynamic. Or if you can bring to the fore the soul's poise, the soul's poise will act immediately — like magic.

The most important thing in our spiritual life is the soul. It is the only thing that keeps us connected to our Lord Supreme. You may not be able to see it or feel it, but it exists. The soul knows no barriers. It is beyond time and space; it is eternally free. It carries our Immortality. To grow into the light of the soul and fulfil the soul is to please the Supreme in His own Way.

Unfortunately, there are many seekers for whom the soul has no reality. It has no reality for them because they do not value it. If you value the existence of the soul, then you are bound to feel it and one day see it. If we give utmost importance to the soul, then all our problems will be solved. The more we can give conscious importance to the soul, the faster will the burdens of our body, the restlessness of our vital, the impurity of our mind and the insecurity of our heart be eliminated. This is true for each and every God-seeker.

Have faith in your soul. If you repeat "I am the soul," all the negative, unaspiring qualities of your body, vital, mind and heart — everything that is standing in your way — will have to surrender. All the imperfections of your inner and outer existence will drop away, for there cannot be any negative forces or imperfections in the soul.

Part II

Question: I once saw a picture in my mind of a sword and a snake. The image keeps coming back to my mind as if it wants to make sure that I don't forget it. Can you tell me the spiritual significance?

Answer: I felt inner peace and a kind of joy, but afterwards confusion entered.

Sri Chinmoy: Was the snake black or grey, or was it red or another colour?

Answer: It was coloured.

Sri Chinmoy: In your case, the snake represents dynamic life-energy. In India we have a cosmic god whose function on earth is to transform human beings. There are quite a few snakes around his neck. If the snakes are coloured, they represent dynamic energy. This dynamic energy constantly gives us new hope and new promise and also protects us from doing wrong things.

The body, by nature, is lethargic, idle; it does not want to move. But if there is dynamic energy inside the body, then immediately the body starts functioning. We get up, we walk, we run, we do many things for our lives.

The vital can be restless. This restlessness is not good, we all know. At every moment we are only shaking our life-tree. But if dynamic energy is flowing up to the top and then coming back down, if energy is percolating throughout the entire life-tree, then each and every branch of the life-tree will be full of strength and vigour, and the life-tree will produce most beautiful flowers and fruits.

If dynamic energy is flowing in the heart, then loneliness, depression and frustration will disappear, because the life-river is flowing and flowing, murmuring, running towards the vast ocean which is all dynamism on the surface and peace at the bottom. On the surface, the ocean is all waves and surges, but underneath it is all peace. Similarly on the outside, the life-energy is very dynamic, but the source of this energy is poise, inner silence.

Question: Could you say something about the role of Mother Mary?

All the divine qualities of the Divine Mother, Mother Mary has, but Her Compassion aspect always comes to the fore. Inside Her Compassion is Her Forgiveness, and inside Her Forgiveness is Wisdom. When She forgives, it is not like ordinary forgiveness. With ordinary forgiveness, even after we are forgiven, again we start doing the same thing wrong. But when Mother Mary forgives us, She also gives us the message of wisdom, so that we do not repeat our mistake. She is always ready to help the individual who is not doing the right thing with Her Wisdom-Light.

When we think of God, especially in the Christian world, we feel that He is taller than the tallest — infinitely taller than the Himalayas — or far above us somewhere in Heaven. When we pray to God our Father who is in Heaven, we feel that if we pray and pray, someday we may be able to touch the Feet of God. It is difficult for us to immediately feel His Heart. We feel His Protection aspect or His Power aspect. But when we pray to Mother Mary, we immediately feel Her Heart. When we pray to God, we think of God the Omnipotent. With His Power He can destroy this old creation and build a new creation. With His Power He can also protect us. But when we pray to Mother Mary, immediately we feel the presence of God the Compassion. Her Compassion is inside Her Heart and nowhere else.

Question: I have gone through so many hardships in trying to build up my business here. I almost went bankrupt; somebody stole so much from us and the place was destroyed by a typhoon. Do we have to go through those experiences so that we will become stronger or did we do something wrong on the way?

The question we have to ask ourselves is: are we trying to be really happy? Are we longing for the happiness that will last forever and at the same time transcend and transcend, that will increase in infinite measure? Many, many times in the ordinary life, when parents are extremely rich and children do not have to do anything, the children misuse their parents wealth. Because they have got everything at their disposal, they do not value anything. [^4,2]

Similarly, God can give us everything, but we will not value it. Let us say you bring the most beautiful flower from the Philippines and give it to your daughter. First she will observe it, and then perhaps she will wonder how this flower has come into existence, how its petals were born. Some restless forces in her will compel her to examine it like a doctor or a scientist. She will start pressing and pulling the petals, and soon the whole flower will be ruined. Some forces inside her will not allow her to only appreciate, admire and grow into the beauty and fragrance of the flower.

If she had created the flower, if she had been responsible for sowing the seed and had waited for months to see the product of her seed, then she would never think of destroying the flower. She would try to become one with the beauty and fragrance of the flower. She would say, "Oh, how I wish I could become as pure, as beautiful, as lovely, as divine as the flower."

In our lives, many, many times we encounter hardships. Why? So that we will value the divinity within us that is compelling us, urging us to move forward, to fly upward, to dive deep within every day, consciously, soulfully and self-givingly to increase our divine qualities. God is always helping us. If we play our own role in this divinely ordained task, then we feel that we are worthy to be the choicest children of our Absolute Lord Supreme. That is why we go through these so-called hardships.

When we go deep within, we feel that it was not actually we who suffered while going through these hardships. Somebody else acted and suffered in and through us. We just became the witness. When we feel that we are the doer, we suffer so much. But when our consciousness goes higher, it becomes clear to us that God is the only Doer who performs every action in order to become the divinely supreme Enjoyer of His creation.

Question: Is it possible for spirits speaking through mediums to falsely claim that they are this or that spiritual figure? Are spirits speaking through mediums genuine, false or mixed?

There are good spirits and evil spirits. Sometimes good spirits may not be as strong as the bad spirits. So we have to be careful. Suppose there are two sisters. One is very pure, always tells the truth and does the right thing. The other one is very naughty and destructive. The parents have given the same freedom to both daughters, but they exercise their freedom in different ways. One is ready to go to church, to pray and to do the right thing to please the parents. The other one consciously does everything wrong. The ignorant one tries to punish or destroy the good one. So what will the parents do? They will consciously try to help the good sister. As soon as the good sister does something, they will give her a powerful smile which will strengthen her good qualities. The bad one will say, "Am I not also your daughter? Am I not her sister?" The parents will say, "No, what you are doing is wrong." Then the bad one will feel helpless. She will say, "If I don't act the way my sister is acting, I will be nowhere." The negative forces have to be taught by making the good forces stronger. You have to always consciously take the side of the good forces.

But sometimes our very human nature enjoys destruction. It takes two or three years or even more to build a house. Then we get joy in destroying that house or in seeing that house be destroyed. We have a special festival in Chittagong, in India. The villagers gather together and spend the whole day building a house. Then, in the evening, they set fire to the house and enjoy its destruction. They give the spiritual reason that creation and destruction must go together. That is the village way of thinking.

But we believe in the positive approach. From beauty we will try to get more beauty. From purity we will try to get more purity. From divinity we will try to get more divinity. If we take this approach, our bad qualities will eventually come to feel that they are not being appreciated and will go away. In the beginning it may be painful for us to separate our good qualities from our bad qualities. But if we walk only towards our goal, gradually all the wrong qualities or the burdens that we have been carrying will drop off because those heavy loads do not care for the destination that we have in mind.

Part III

Question: When I make a resolution, how can I have the determination to follow through with it?

You can keep your resolutions only by not seeing the past. Let us say you have failed to keep a particular resolution many, many times. Do not think of how many times you have failed; that has no value. Do not feel that you have been studying and failing this particular subject for many years and that the teacher is giving you chance after chance to study it again. No, you have to feel that you are learning a completely new subject. The subject you are studying, which is self-discipline, you are starting right now for the first time. If you can feel this, then the number of times that you have failed will go away from your mind. Otherwise, each time you fail, the depression, frustration or sadness that you feel becomes a heavy load, an elephant that you have to carry on your shoulders. Look at how many heavy loads you have been carrying around in your mind all these years! That is one of the reasons you are finding it difficult to keep your resolutions.

Another thing you have to know is that our determination to keep a resolution never depends on personal effort. We can say we will do it by hook or by crook. But even that hook and crook will only accomplish one per cent; for the rest we have to depend on God's Grace. And if we are sincere, even that one per cent that represents our personal effort we will say is all due to God's Grace. If we set the alarm clock in order to get up early in the morning to pray and meditate, then we have to feel that God's Grace is operating in and through the alarm. It is also due to God's Grace that we were inspired to set the alarm the previous night. Here God's Grace is coming in the form of inspiration and wisdom. Everything positive that we do comes from a higher Source, which is God's Grace and God's Compassion. An athlete may feel that if he practises very hard, then he will become the world's fastest runner or strongest boxer. But it is not like that. There are many athletes who perhaps practise more than Carl Lewis. So how is it that he is becoming number one? It is because God's Grace is operating in and through him, and he is more receptive than others. No amount of practice is enough without God's Grace.

God is all the time exercising or expressing His own Capacity, Compassion and Grace through human beings. But most of the time we human beings are not grateful to God. We should be grateful to God that He has kept us on the path, that He keeps us from time to time thinking of Him, praying to Him and meditating on Him, that He inspires us to offer our goodwill to mankind. Because human beings are not grateful enough to God, He is unable to make progress in and through us. Every human being has a vessel into which God wants to pour His Nectar-Delight, His Compassion, His Blessings and His Divinity. But, unfortunately, because of our life of ingratitude, instead of enlarging the vessel every day, we are making it smaller.

Each day we should express our gratitude to God for what we are. No matter how bad we are, we could have been infinitely worse. People think, "How can I become worse? Have I not touched the rock bottom?" No, I tell you, if God wants to, He can make you infinitely worse. When we suffer physically, vitally or mentally, we feel that it is the height of suffering. But if God wants to experience infinitely more suffering in and through us, He can. When we are not one with God's Will, we feel that we are suffering and that God is indifferent. But when we become one with God's Will, we see that it is God who is suffering in and through us.

Question: You say that when we are suffering we should try to feel the presence of the Supreme. But one of the reasons human beings suffer is that we feel separated from the Supreme. So where does one begin that effort?

I always say that imagination is a reality. The person you are imagining may not even be alive. When I suffer physically, mentally or in any way, immediately I see my physical mother right in front of me, although she is in the other world. You can say that in my case it is different because I have free access to my mother, but you definitely know someone who was most compassionate or most affectionate to you. The Supreme you may not know; you have not seen Him. But some other person you have seen many, many times in your life. If that particular person who has been so compassionate and affectionate stands in front of you, then I tell you, that person will in no way suffer less than you are suffering.

When disciples who have a close connection with me suffer physically or mentally, at that time I suffer much more than they do. Outwardly I may give a smile or just say, "Everything will be fine; it will go away." But afterwards, before I even take two steps, I enter into the soul of that person and do the needful. If the person has established a close connection with me, I may not look at that person again in order to show how sincerely concerned, sincerely caring and compassionate I am. But immediately I will work inside the soul and the heart of that person. At that time how much I suffer on their behalf!

So if you can imagine the presence of the person who is closest to you in front of you, sympathising with you with utmost sincerity, then definitely you will feel less pain. It may be more than one person; there may be ten or twenty individuals standing in front of you and sympathising with your suffering.

Question: If you had known how things would turn out, would you still have accepted me as your disciple?

Question: What is the secret of perfect manifestation?

Question: Do we come back with the same body, vital and mind?

Question: How can I have sweetness in my singing?

In some cases it does not come from the throat chakra. There are some world-famous singers who will get zero in the spiritual world because their singing comes from the navel chakra. The vital also can have a very subtle, delicate feeling, but the capacity of the vital is limited. It may last for 20, 30, 40 or 50 years, but at the end of the life of that particular singer, it will end.

But if somebody can bring the very subtle, delicate, sweet, soulful quality from the throat chakra, then it lasts forever. Not only that, it helps to raise the consciousness of mankind. Many famous singers touch the vital of others, but they are never going to raise the consciousness of any human being, not to speak of their own consciousness. Millions of people may appreciate these singers, but they are appreciating their songs from the vital plane. Because the vital and the heart are very close to each other, sometimes we feel that the heart is also getting joy when the vital is excited. No, the heart is not getting anything. But if the music comes from the throat chakra, the body, vital, mind, heart and soul will all benefit.

Question: How do we know if we are pleasing God?

Question: Did God give us short memories so that we don't know why we are getting certain karma from previous incarnations?

After a thorn has been removed from your foot, even then your foot may be hurting you. But if you actually saw the thorn while it was still inside your foot, the very image of the thorn would give you more suffering. You would think, "Oh my God, such a destructive thing!" Or suppose you step on a piece of glass. If the image of that sharp piece of glass flows before your mind, then even though it has been removed, you will suffer more because you know the cause of your suffering.

Question: Will our universe become a black hole when the universe ends?

As long as God wants to keep His creation, the whole universe will not be destroyed. A portion may be destroyed, but if we see that portion with our inner eye, we will see that it is an infinitesimal portion of the entire reality, which we call the universe. A few mischievous boys may play with fireworks and destroy their own house or a few houses around them, but there are millions and billions of houses, and they cannot destroy all of them. In Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed, but Japan is not the whole world. Again, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been reborn. They have now become sacred peace shrines.

This world will never end, because inside the world is God's own Vision, God's own Hope, God's own Promise. If a potter creates a few vessels, a mad animal may for no reason come and destroy some of the vessels. But the potter can easily create more. God is the Creator. At every second he can create a new world.

Question: How can we work quickly without tension?

Question: How can I lose weight?

The person said, "Then how am I going to lose weight?"

The doctor said, "If you eat too much, then you are not going to get up. You will just lie in bed all the time. Then you won't go to work and your boss will fire you. If your boss fires you, you will have no money to buy food. Then automatically you will lose weight!"

Question: How can the vacation consciousness last all year?

Question: How can I find my spiritual role?

Question: How can I minimise my working time?

Question: Will you speak about gratitude?

The things that most deserve our gratitude we just take for granted. Without air we cannot live for more than a minute or two. Every day we are breathing in and breathing out, but do we ever feel grateful to the air? If we do not drink water, we cannot survive. Even our body is composed to a large extent of water. But do we give any value to water? Every morning when we open our eyes, we see the sun blessingfully offering us light and life-energy, which we badly need. But are we grateful to the sun? On the contrary, when the sun is too bright we get mad and complain that it is bothering us. The sun is like the mother who gives food to the child so that he can remain alive on earth. But the child quite often gets annoyed at the mother for bothering him. In India we have many gods and goddesses, and even a particular god to whom we offer gratitude. The Western world has many saints. But do we offer these gods or these saints our gratitude?

Every day there are so many people to whom we should offer gratitude. Someone did me this favour. Someone else did me that favour. There is no end to the number of individuals to whom we have to offer our gratitude. If we try to offer gratitude to each individual, it becomes impossible. But no individual created himself. We were all created by God, our Heavenly Father. He is our Source. So if we are not able to offer gratitude to everyone who deserves it from us, we can at least offer gratitude to the Source.

A tree has many branches and countless leaves, flowers and fruits. If we try to offer our gratitude to the millions of leaves, people will say, "You are a fool!" We will get tired just counting the branches, not to speak of the leaves, flowers and fruits. But the tree came from a tiny seed, and the Source of that seed is God. He is the Source of everything in the creation. So if we offer our gratitude to the Source, we are doing the right thing.

From our early morning prayer and meditation we receive good thoughts. Some people will have hundreds of good thoughts. For them to try to offer gratitude to each thought would be ridiculous because they have to go to work, they have to do this, they have to do that. We know that if we can offer gratitude to anything good that comes to us early in the morning, then many good things will happen in our life. We will do good things for others and they will do good things for us. So how can we offer gratitude to our good thoughts? It is by offering gratitude to their Source, our Heavenly Father, for He is the One who has come to us in the form of good thoughts. Everything that comes to us in the form of goodness comes from God.

So at every moment we have to offer our sincere gratitude to the Source, because we will not be able to offer gratitude to each individual, each thought, each action. Today I have received a fax from Tomsk, Russia, informing me that they plan to teach my philosophy at the university there. God alone knows who the President of the university is, who the faculty members are who are responsible, who the secretary is who typed the fax. If I try to imagine what each of them looks like and then offer my gratitude, it will be a joke. But He who blessingfully inspired these people — the President, the faculty members, the university and the country — is the One to whom I can easily offer my soulful gratitude. As soon as I read the fax this morning, I offered gratitude to my Inner Pilot Supreme. Then, while I was reading out the fax to all of you, again I offered my gratitude to Him.

Of course, if we do have the opportunity to offer gratitude to a particular individual, wonderful! But even then what we are really doing is offering gratitude to the Source. Let us say that you do me a favour and I offer you my gratitude. At that time I am actually offering my gratitude to the Inner Pilot, the Source, in you — to the Heavenly Father, who is in you, in me, in the entire creation. The One who deserves my gratitude is not you, but God, our Heavenly Father. He is the very Person who came to you in the form of a good action, and He is the One who is inspiring me to offer you my gratitude. In everything He is the Doer; we are only His instruments.

Question: Could you speak about growth, peace, luck and fulfilment?

But if we care only for progress, then we are not competing with anybody. Yesterday, let us say, I wrote two nice poems, and today I have written four poems. So I am very happy because I am making progress. I am not competing with you; I am not asking you how many poems you have written. But if I feel a sense of rivalry with you and ask you how many poems you have written, and if you say, "Oh, I wrote ten poems," then all my joy goes away and I feel miserable. So all that matters in our spiritual life is progress. That is absolutely necessary.

The next idea you asked about is peace. Peace we do not get by having something; peace we get only by becoming something. You have a farm and so many possessions, whereas a poor man may have nothing. So people may say that you have peace whereas the poor man has no peace, since early in the morning he has to think of where he is going to get food for the day. But you have other problems. Your problem may not be to get a little bread and butter, but you have to think of your wife, your children, your dear ones. They may get sick or something else may happen. Although you may have many possessions, at every moment they may cause you worry and anxiety. You know in your heart of hearts how much suffering you go through. So where is your peace?

What you have to do is consciously feel that you are not the owner of your possessions. Somebody has given them to you to take care of, and that Somebody may also take them back. Since You are not the owner but only the keeper, you will not be upset if He asks for them back. If you can feel that God has entrusted you with some prosperity and that you are keeping it for Him, if you can feel that you are not the possessor but only the keeper, then you will have peace. If you can feel that you are only consciously and soulfully executing His Will according to your capacity, then you will definitely have peace.

When we feel that we are taking care of something for someone, we feel that we are an extension of that person. Peace comes when we extend ourselves. I was born in a tiny village in India. That was my whole world. Then I went to a spiritual community and my world got bigger. Then I came to New York, the capital of the world, and my world became even larger. Now I am travelling in the Philippines, here, there, everywhere, and establishing my prayerful oneness with all of these places. So in the beginning I was only part of a tiny village, but now my soul-bird is flying the length and breadth of the world. The life-tree is one, but it has many, many branches. Each country is like a branch, an extension of the life-tree, and the bird is flying from this branch to the next. In this way I am expanding myself and becoming one with the whole world. When I am one with the whole world, who is there to take away my peace? At that time I have become peace itself.

You have asked about luck. There is no such thing as luck or fortune. Whenever there is luck, we have to know that in the inner world something has taken place. Luck comes in the form of the sea or the ocean, but a long stream or a long river has brought us to the ocean. When we reach the ocean, we feel that we are lucky, but we do not see that the life-river which carried us there is very, very long.

Everything comes from the inner world because of something we did either in this incarnation or in some previous incarnation, either twenty years ago or two hundred years ago. We believe in reincarnation. We feel that this is not our first or our last incarnation. If we want to please God and fulfil God, we need more than a single lifetime. Thousands and thousands of years are needed to do God's work properly. So what someone may call luck is actually the result of something good we have done.

Luck may also come from the good thoughts and good wishes of your friends and dear ones. You have so many friends. You cannot think of them all at the same time, but they all can easily think of you at the same time. If ten of your friends or dear ones are thinking of you with very pure, divine thoughts and offering you their love, affection and compassion, a solid inner power is being accumulated. It may seem that all of a sudden you are lucky. But you have no idea how many people have sent you goodwill at that very moment. You are getting the result, but you do not know the source. Again, the reason they are thinking of you with such goodwill is because you did them a favour either yesterday or many years ago. So luck is the result of something you have done in a previous incarnation or the accumulated result of things that you or your dear ones have done in this incarnation.

The last thing you asked about is fulfilment. We have to take fulfilment as happiness; there is no other way to think of it. Ordinary human happiness comes only when we get something that we wanted, when we are pleased in our own way. Let us say you want to be a very strong person. So you become strong and you are happy. But then you see that others are making fun of you because they are stronger. Or you see that although your body is strong today, it becomes weak tomorrow. This moment it has no ailments; the next moment it catches cold or gets a stomach upset. Then you cannot get up in the morning; you cannot talk to people. You are miserable. So for one moment this body gives you joy, and then for weeks or months it makes you miserable. This is the way everything happens in our life: we get something and then it is taken away. We get it for five seconds; then for five days or five months it is gone. When we get what we want, we are happy, and our happiness lasts for a fleeting second. When what we wanted is gone, we are miserable for a long time.

But there is another way of getting happiness — the way of surrender. The most powerful prayer in God's entire creation was uttered by the Saviour Christ: "Let Thy Will be done." There cannot be any prayer higher than this. He said, and everywhere on earth people have come to realise, that only by pleasing God in God's own Way can we be happy. Otherwise, we will keep the bird inside the cage for a few minutes, and then the bird will fly away. So if we want happiness, we have to change our attitude. We have to say, "It is God who brought the bird and gave me the inspiration and capacity to put it in the cage. And it was God who took the bird away from me." At every moment let us think of the Source — that God gave us something and that God took it away.

When our dear ones leave us, we have to feel that He who created them and who loves them infinitely more than we do, did what is best for them. Then we are happy. God's Love for His creation is infinitely greater than our love. God's Love for our dear ones is infinitely greater than our love for them. The potter has created a vessel with inspiration, affection and love. When we see the pot, we just grab it and break it. But he who created this vessel with such concern, such affection and such self-giving will never act like this.

God gave you [referring to Elias Tan] your wife twenty-eight years ago out of His boundless Compassion. She existed before she married you, and now also she exists in the soul's world; she is in Heaven. It is as though while walking somebody comes and joins me for twenty-eight miles. After that, I become tired or the other person starts going faster. If I love that person, I will say, "You go according to your own speed. I am tired now; I have to take a little rest. Then, when my time comes, again I will run fast." So happiness comes by allowing the other person to go ahead if the person has the capacity and wants to go ahead. You have to surrender to God's Will and feel, "I will go in my own time. When my hour strikes, at that time I also will go to God."

Part IV

Professor Reynolds: I really appreciate your coming to a small city like Dumaguete.

Professor Reynolds: We appreciate you coming at this time. The whole peace process is so important.

When we live in the success-world, we are always competing with others; so we are always at the mercy of others. But when we care only for progress, we are not at anyone's mercy. We are only climbing up our own life-tree; we only want to transcend our own capacities. We have an inner urge to become a better person and a better citizen of the world, not by hook or by crook, but by sincere diligence.

Professor Reynolds: How long have you been conducting these peace programmes?

I have gone to many places and given talks on spirituality. Nineteen years ago I came to Silliman University and gave a talk at the Medical College. Doctors and nurses asked me questions, and I told them that spirituality and medical science are not enemies because their goals are the same. Both the doctor and the spiritual seeker are trying to cure human suffering. So they should stand on the same side in the tug-of-war against imperfection-disease. If doctors and spiritual people all pull together, then they are bound to win. In a family somebody may be a doctor, somebody may be a lawyer and somebody may be an engineer; but all are members of the same family, and when necessity demands, all have to stand together against ignorance.

Professor Reynolds: I have been teaching a seminar on world peace for about twelve years. I have come to realise that the United Nations is a hopeful organisation although it does need some changes. Since you have been close to the United Nations, maybe you could make some suggestions.

The mind wants only to enjoy supremacy. For the mind, peace is being one step ahead of someone else. But if I want to be one step ahead of you and you want to be one step ahead of me, how can we have peace? The heart wants only oneness. With my heart-power I will try to claim you as my own. With my heart-power I will seek not to be one step ahead of you, but to walk side by side with you. So it is only heart-power that will bring about world peace.

The heart has the message and capacity of identification; the heart is all oneness. We feel our heart is synonymous with a home; we speak of a oneness-home. We go to work in various walks of life and come back home for the evening, where we enjoy our oneness with our family, our world-family. For real peace to be achieved, we need eagerness and enthusiasm. Enthusiasm we need in our minds, eagerness we need in our hearts and soulfulness we need in our life.

Unfortunately, when nations meet together to discuss peace, they are using their mind-power. They are trying to solve their problems mentally, not psychically. That is why the problems are still there and will always be there. If we enter into a room that is unlit, then how can we get light? The mind-room is unlit, whereas the heart-room is getting light directly from the soul, which gets the light directly from God. So, from Above, the light is coming down to purify and illumine our life. The light has already entered into the heart. Next it will have to enter into the mind. From the mind it will enter into the vital and then into the body.

Again, we have to know that receptivity is of paramount importance. The morning sun is for everybody. But if I keep my doors and windows closed, then the sun will not be able to come in. Since you have kept your windows and doors open, the sunlight is coming in and illumining your room. You are getting fresh hope, new inspiration and new aspiration. But I am continuing in my darkness-life.

Professor Reynolds: I am glad that you are continuing your mission.

Professor Reynolds: That is a very good point — the old style of conquering has to be transformed.

Part V — Notes

Editor's preface to the first edition