Question: There is one line in the New Year's Message that is not clear to me. It says, "Either we bind and blind the old world and retire, or we embrace the new world of the forward march." What do you mean by "bind and blind the old world"?

Sri Chinmoy: The old world blinded us and bound us. The old world tortured us, kept us in a lower than the lowest consciousness and punished us. The old world means anything unspiritual. So now if we want to have a tit-for-tat attitude, we can say, “You tortured me for so many years. Now that I am seeing the light, shall I bind you, shall I blind you, which you have been doing to me for years?”

The new world has come. The dawn of the new light has entered. Shall we go towards the light or towards the darkness that has punished us for millennia? Now the golden light has appeared right ahead of us. Shall we waste our time?

If we are wise, we will say to ignorance-night, “Forget about what you have done, whatever has happened between you and me.” Ignorance-night has tortured us for centuries. Now we can bind it, we can blind it because the beckoning hand has come. Now we have so much power. Shall we waste our time destroying the one who wanted to destroy us, or shall we go and become the ocean of light, the ocean of peace, the ocean of bliss? We have to make the choice. Let us run towards Infinity’s Peace, Light and Bliss.

In that line also I use the word ‘retire’. It is like two boxers who strike each other mercilessly. Then they retire. It is all over. They do not want to play any more. If I have the capacity now to come out of darkness, shall I go and attack darkness? In that case, both players will have played, and they will have become exhausted. You defeated me; I defeated you. Now we are exhausted. The game is over.

Instead of that, with the new power that I have received, I can embrace the new world. I always say that with a knife we can stab someone or we can cut fruits to share with others. If somebody has stabbed me, then in return I can stab that person. But no, I will not do that. Instead of stabbing that person, I will throw away the knife.

If we are wise, then we will say, “Forget about what the old world has done to me.” We are seeing that a new dawn has entered and we are not fools. We shall enter into the New Millennium — the new world of the forward march.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy answers, part 28, Agni Press, 2000
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/sca_28