Who can grant me peace?⁹⁴

I am soulfully offering my performance today to Dag Hammarskjöld. This most brilliant mind and most illumined soul is the pride not only of Uppsala but of the entire world. His heart’s magnanimity and his life’s luminosity remain forever synonymous with the loftiest heights and the deepest depths of the United Nations. To Dag Hammarskjöld the immortal soul and to Dag Hammarskjöld the dedicated life, my life of aspiration and dedication bows in soulful humility.

I want peace and need peace desperately. But how can I get peace? Where can I get peace? Who can grant me peace?

My Lord Beloved Supreme alone can grant me peace. But before He grants me peace, He wants something from me. What is that thing? My oneness-love. If I can offer Him my soulful and sleepless oneness-love, then He will, without fail, grant me peace in infinite measure in my inner life.

I know that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. But these attributes quite often frighten the human in me. So I will not think of Him in these terms at the present stage of my spiritual development. I will only think of Him as the Supreme Dreamer, from whose Dream this reality came into being. If I can think of Him in this way during my prayer and meditation, then I will always feel His Sweetness, Beauty and Divinity. When I think of God as the Supreme Dreamer, and meditate on God as the Supreme Dreamer, He will grant me peace in boundless measure.

My outer life also needs peace. This peace I will get only when I can offer freedom to mankind. When I do not try to bind any human being, I get peace in the outer world. Also, I must try to think of myself in exactly the same way that God thinks of me. He thinks of me as a choice instrument of His who has come into the world to love Him, to serve Him and to manifest Him in His own Way. So in order to get peace from Him in the inmost recesses of my heart, I must gradually become an exact prototype of Him.

In my outer life, if I want to have peace, then I must think of myself the way other human beings think of me. Others think of me as someone striving for perfection but still far, very far from my goal. If I think of myself as an imperfect human being longing for perfection, then I perfectly fit in with all human beings. At that time there is no feeling of supremacy, no feeling of superiority or inferiority, no feeling of separation. I am one with them and I am one of them. Together we are going along Eternity’s Road with our teeming imperfections, but always aiming at perfect Perfection. If I can think of myself in this way in my outer life, then I can have peace of mind.

Again, I have to think of others the way they think of themselves. Each human being sees himself as a satisfaction-seeker. Either consciously or unconsciously, he is longing for satisfaction. If I can think of each individual on earth as a satisfaction-seeker, I will see that we are all sailing in the same boat, longing to reach the Golden Shore that promises complete, ultimate satisfaction. This also will bring me peace of mind in my outer life.

There is one more thing I can do to get peace in my day-to-day life. Early in the morning, before I pray and meditate, every day I must enter into my mind-jungle and discard one desire-thorn. My mind is filled with desire-thorns, but every day I shall try to diminish their number. Then I shall enter into my heart-garden and plant there another aspiration-plant. By decreasing my desire-thorns and increasing my aspiration-plants, I am bound to receive peace from within. And if I pray soulfully and meditate devotedly and unconditionally, I am bound to receive peace from Above.

From:Sri Chinmoy,The oneness of the Eastern heart and the Western mind, part 1, Agni Press, 2003
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