Suppose God wants something to be done on the earthly plane and ignorance-forces delay it or give a totally different result. What does God do? He laughs and laughs. This is His favourite kind of humour. He knows He has omnipotent power, so He can easily do whatever He wants to do. But He has given very limited power to ignorance and to us. Naturally, ignorance never uses its limited power in the proper way and, therefore, the power of ignorance itself only increases.
In the case of human beings, quite often we receive the limited power that God gives us and, because we are truth-seekers and God-lovers, we are able to use the little freedom that He has given in a proper way. When God sees that we are using it properly, He is very pleased with us and He gives us more trust and more power.In the case of a spiritual Master or someone who is spiritually advanced, God blesses that person with the capacity to envision. What does he envision? The past, present and future or the entire universe right in front of him. How can you see the entire universe? It is so wide, so vast.
You have to know that this earth planet is not the only world. There are many, many worlds. What God can do is bring all these worlds right in front of you and show them to you. As it is easy for Him to transform the finite into the Infinite, even so, it is very easy for Him to transform the Infinite into the finite. This moment He can show the entire ocean inside a drop. And again, if He wants to, He can transform the drop into the ocean itself. So the vastness of the universe He can easily bring before us when we develop universal vision or transcendental vision-power, or He can transform that same vastness into something which is smaller than the smallest. We call our experience a dream because we are not conscious of what is happening around us. But for God it is His Vision. I use the term ‘Vision’ because while He is having Vision He is fully awakened.
I always say today’s dream is tomorrow’s reality. If you have a good dream, pray to God to manifest it into reality. And if you have a bad dream, pray to God to nullify it as soon as possible so that it does not affect you.To each spiritual grandchild of mine I wish to offer my infinite affection, infinite love and infinite pride and pride and gratitude and gratitude.
Now I wish to tell a few stories about my physical grandparents. My father’s father was named Ramachandra Ghosh. His superior was an Englishman. It happened that this man was engaged in a lawsuit and he asked my grandfather to tell a lie in his defence. My grandfather did not agree; he did not want to tell a lie. As a result, he was demoted. Then, on another occasion, the same English boss asked him to tell another lie in his defence. Again my grandfather did not listen. This time my grandfather was fired! Then he left the village, without taking anything. He said, “I am not going to tell a lie to support this boss. The best thing is to move to another village.”
I can also say something about my paternal grandmother, my father’s mother. When I was born, our house in town caught fire. So her immediate prediction was that this fellow would be the destruction of our whole family. My mother contradicted her. She said that I would bring name and fame to the family.
My other grandmother declared that I would be a clerk. In our Indian villages, to be a clerk is a sign of knowledge. It means that you have gone to school. To be a clerk is something very special, very great. A clerk is one who deals with paper, and in that sense my grandmother was absolutely right. At the age of thirty-two I became a junior clerk here in America for three years. And now, every day, I deal with papers. So her prediction about me came true.
I never saw my mother’s father — not even his picture. But a picture was taken of my mother’s mother. My mother is also in that picture. It was taken before I was born. I have blessed the soul of this grandmother at least ten times while looking at that picture here in New York. I have such compassion for my mother’s mother. So I blessed her soul when she came back into this world. She is no longer in the soul’s world.
SCA 549. Sri Chinmoy's comments at the close of the Grandfather's Day celebration.↩
Some things die in themselves; they do not create other feelings. But shyness is not like that. Shyness does not end in shyness. From shyness comes sulkiness, and after sulkiness a kind of destructive quality comes. I strongly feel that the more we encourage children to be shy, the slower their progress becomes. Shyness is something that must be overcome if a child is to be spontaneous, free and natural and if they are to be loved by all and sundry. This opinion of mine is founded upon my personal observation while dealing with my students all over the world.
SCA 550. In 1997 Sri Chinmoy was asked to submit his views on shyness for a forthcoming book entitled Instruction Book for the Shy, to be published by Simon & Schuster.↩
The important thing is not to use the mind. You are saying that if you have more trust, then you will have more love, devotion and surrender. I am saying, go the other way. If you have more love, devotion and surrender, you will have more trust. If you are standing on the edge of a swimming pool and you see that the water is warm, then you will be inclined to jump into the water. Otherwise, you will remain standing outside. But if you love water as such, regardless of whether it is cold or hot, then you will simply jump into the water. You will say, “Who cares if it is cold or hot?”
Similarly, in the spiritual life, if one wants to make progress, if one wants to have more faith, then it is not by watching or judging the Master — if he does this, if he says that, then I will have faith in him. No. Only because of the swimmer’s love for water he jumped into the pool. In exactly the same way, if you love the Master, you will not worry about what he says or what he does. You will only establish your oneness with him. When we enter into the water with oneness, we immediately start swimming there. If you love the Master, his path and his spirituality, you will not say, “If he does this, I will have more trust. If he does that, I will have less trust. I will increase and decrease according to what he says and what he does.” Faith is not a matter of increasing or decreasing. That is only the judgement of our stupid mind. You must use the heart.
When we enter into a garden, we do not look to see whether or not each petal is equally formed or if one petal is crooked. We enter into the garden and immediately we embrace the beauty and fragrance of the garden. Then our mind, vital and body become pure, cheerful and joyful. But if we enter into the garden and start looking to see which flower is most beautiful, then we do not get the same joy. If one flower is more beautiful, we will spend five minutes looking at it. Then we will go to another flower and say, “O God, I was mistaken, this flower is more beautiful. Let me stand here for ten minutes.” In the meantime, your time is up! You have to go home. You have more important things to do.
Once you enter into the garden, you have to immediately try to see the beauty and feel the fragrance of the garden. In the same way, once you choose a Master and a path, do not say, “If the path gives me this, then I shall trust it. If the Master says this, then I shall have more faith in him.” No, immediately jump into the sea of the Master’s compassion. You have to say, “If I do not feel the Master’s compassion or affection or love, I will not mind. I came to give him what I have and what I am. I know he will give me everything at his choice hour.”
Always you have to develop the attitude of unconditional oneness. As long as we place conditions on our love and on our faith, we will be disappointed. Our conditions are going to make our lives miserable. We start by saying, “If he gives me 50 per cent, I will give him 50 per cent.” Then we say, “If he gives me 90 per cent, I will do something for him.” Finally, our expectation demands, “He has to give me 99 per cent to make me happy.” First it starts with 50-50. Then greed comes and we make it 60-40, or 70-30. Finally we say, “If he fulfils my desire 99 times out of 100, then he is my Master.”
But why start with conditions? The other way is just to go to the root. We can say, “Even if he does not give me anything, I want to give 100 per cent to him. If he does not give me anything in return, God is there above him to break his head. But that is not my business. My business is to surrender to him. Then he has to account for his behaviour to Somebody else, to his superior.” You may take it in that light, that the Supreme will be displeased with the Master if he does not do the right thing. Again, if you are a real disciple, you will say, “Who cares whether the Supreme will be displeased with him or not? Since I want to follow his path, I must follow his philosophy implicitly.” In my case, my philosophy is love, devotion and surrender. If you follow the path of love, devotion and surrender, will your mind’s lack of trust be able to fight against your heart’s love for me and for my path?You have to be active and dynamic inwardly as well as outwardly. Once you have received some light from God, you can say, “Thy Will be done.” Once you have made your surrender complete, you do not have to say, “Give me this, give me that.” But to make your surrender complete, first you have to pray to God and meditate on God. It is only on the strength of your prayer and meditation that you will be able to become one with God’s Will. If you do not pray or meditate, you will simply be lethargic. You will wallow in the pleasures of idleness and say, “Oh, God will do everything for me.” Why should God do anything for lazy seekers? So, you have to make a choice whether you want light or darkness. We are already in darkness, but if we do not strive for light, then we will remain in darkness.
The Christ said, “Let Thy Will be done.” But before he made his immortal utterance, he prayed, he meditated, he did everything. Then he said, “Now it is up to You.” Otherwise, what is the difference between a God-seeker and people in the street? If surrender means doing nothing and saying, “Let Thy Will be done,” then the street vagabonds who are drinking and smoking have surrendered! Does God need that kind of surrender? No! Always we must pray for good things: “Please, God, give me peace, give me light, give me joy, give me divine love.” Then we wait for God’s Hour when He will fulfil our snow-white prayer.
Always pray and meditate. Prayer is much easier than meditation. Again, while you are praying to God to give you something good, your mind may not be there, or your heart may not be there. Like a parrot, you may be praying. But if you meditate, you have to be serious. At that time you will not allow any thought to come. Everything has to be calm and quiet. Otherwise what kind of meditation is it? Meditation is much more difficult than prayer, but prayer is needed.
The difficulty with prayer is that if you do not get the results, you may become disappointed or disgusted and start sulking. But when you meditate and make your mind calm and quiet, then you get tremendous peace. At that time you do not have to worry about what you are expecting from your meditation. When you make your mind calm and quiet, although you may not have achieved the thing that you want, the very fact that you have made your mind calm and quiet gives you tremendous joy and peace. There is an immediate inner benefit.
We may pray for two days or two months or two years for something, but then if our prayer is not fulfilled, we may become disappointed and disgusted. We may feel that God does not listen to our prayers. We have to know that sometimes God examines us when we pray for something. If we pray to God, “God, please take away my knee pain,” God examines us to see whether we really love Him or not. Then God may actually increase the pain to see the depth of our love for Him. If we really love God, we will not say, “God, how is it that You are so cruel to me?” Instead we will say, “O God, I prayed to You to decrease my pain and You have increased it. It is up to You. I prayed for the right thing, to decrease my pain, but if You want me to prove that I really love You, then increase it, increase it as much as You want to.”Prayer will be more effective if you do it on a regular basis. Punctuality is of supreme importance in the prayer-life or the meditation-life. If you pray and meditate, you are infinitely better than those who do not, but if you want to be an excellent seeker or disciple, do not neglect punctuality. One day you may meditate at six o’clock, one day at seven o’clock, one day at eight o’clock. That is not the right way. You have to be wise. You have to feel there is Somebody who is watching. Nobody is going to stay indefinitely and wait for us to do something good. If you want to do something good, then do it on time. There are many things in which you do not have to be punctual, because you cannot be punctual for everything. But you have to be punctual when it is a matter of prayer and meditation. It is God’s business whether He is watching us or not. But since God is omnipresent and omniscient, He is definitely watching.
Through prayer you can definitely realise God. But if you know how to meditate well, then you have tremendous confidence in your ultimate God-realisation — not over-confidence, but real confidence that you will be able to please God in God’s own Way. When you are only in the world of prayer, it is so risky. You are all the time begging for something to be done. Mentally you will fix a date — it can be tomorrow or ten days from now. Then when a year has passed, you feel that something is wrong with your prayer. But if you meditate well, you are always sure. If you meditate well, you feel, “God does not have to come. I have to go to Him, since I am hungry.” So the prayer aspect is to bring God to feed you and the meditation aspect is to go to God.
These inner things, especially prayer, we can do at any time. While walking, you can pray. While you are in the office, if you do not work for two or three minutes, who is going to catch you? Who is going to know what you are doing? When it is a matter of outer things — you have to write something, do something, say something — then people may say you are not doing your job. But meditation and prayer are inner activities. You can fool the whole world. They see you walking or sitting at your desk, but you are in your deep meditation. So here we have the advantage. When something is inner, nobody can see what we are doing.
To come back to your question, to get results from your prayer, you have to be very strict with yourself. Develop eagerness, eagerness, eagerness. Readiness is there, but readiness has to be transformed into eagerness and punctuality. It has to become like eating. Every day we take our outer food on a regular basis. When it comes to inner food we have to be not only regular but punctual. Most of my disciples, if not all, do not believe in punctuality. So the results remain upstairs. The most delicious mango remains up in the tree. God’s Grace, which is the wind, does not help the mango to descend.Again, it may happen that while you are praying and meditating most sincerely, most devotedly, God will fulfil your prayers. But do not think, “Just because I am praying sincerely, God has to do it.” God has to do it eventually, but God has His own time. Our time is not God’s time.
Many times it happens that if we do not get results from our prayers, we blame ourselves, which means indirectly we are blaming God. Either we say that God has not given us the capacity to be more sincere or more self-giving, or we say, “How sincere I was, how soulful I was! How is it that my prayer was not sanctioned?” But why should our time and God’s Hour be the same? He can have His own time. He is the Supreme Boss.
Let us say that perhaps at eight o’clock your boss has asked you to come so that he can give you some job. Then when you go there, he is reading the newspaper and not paying any attention to you. You came at the time he told you to come, but he is not ready for you. When this boss is God, He will be so pleased that you came on time, but it is His business whether to give you the job at eight o’clock or much later. He has in mind a fixed hour, which means whenever He wants to. You will be waiting at the door until He tells you to do something. That is His choice Hour.
So you continue to pray and meditate. Either your prayers will be fulfilled in the course of time or you will get an inner message. Kindly pray for yourself, your daughter, your husband and your son. They also have accepted the spiritual life, so they are reducing your burden.
Unless we become unconditionally surrendered at every moment, we cannot please God. We have to do it happily, cheerfully, soulfully and self-givingly. Otherwise, that surrender is no surrender. It is the surrender of a street beggar. If you want to become a perfect disciple at every moment, you must become unconditional. You can even do japa by repeating to yourself, “I want to become an unconditionally surrendered disciple.” Then automatically you will become a perfect disciple.My prayerful message to the heart, to the soul and to the life of Guatemala is very simple: after suffering, there is always joy and love and happiness. The suffering has ended. Now a new life, a new joy and a new bliss will enter into the heart of Guatemala.
SCA 558. Sri Chinmoy answered this question on 23 December 1997 during a television interview while he was visiting Guatemala City with a group of his students.↩
There is no such thing as insignificant disobedience. You have to write this down on the tablet of your heart. If you think, “This is insignificant or that is insignificant,” then the very thing which is most important in your life will come and appear right in front of your nose, but you will say, “Oh, this is also not important.” Then something more will come and something more after that. Gradually, gradually you will see that everything in your life you are taking lightly, while as a God-seeker and God-lover, you are becoming worse and worse.
If you count the number of times you were disobedient, even yesterday, you will be shocked to discover how many times you disobeyed not me, but the Supreme in yourself. I am his mouthpiece for this particular path, but the request or the command is not coming from me. It is coming from the Highest. Your highest and my highest are the same, only I know a little more than you do. That is why God has given me the painful or impossible task of telling you again and again and again what the Supreme expects of you.
To all of you I am saying, when it is a matter of joking between boys and girls, there is no such thing as an insignificant joke. When you tell jokes, is it not an exchange of the vital? You may say that this vital exchange is not on an emotional level, but from there it starts. All the problems in humanity’s life have started from lack of seriousness.
At what point are we going to become serious in our life of aspiration? There is a two-lane road. If we take the wrong lane, we may think that in two seconds we shall come back to the right lane, that nothing will happen to us. But, I tell you, those two seconds may never come. While you are in the wrong lane, you may fall asleep. Then finished! You will have a collision.
When I took my driving test the first time, the examiner asked me to make a left turn, and I made it very nicely from the right side. Immediately I knew I had done the wrong thing. If I had said to the examiner, “I shall not do it again,” why should he believe me? I made a wrong turn, so he failed me. I deserved it. Here also, when you take the wrong lane in your spiritual life and fall into ignorance-sleep, sometimes you say, “O my God, what have I done?” But by then it is too late. Your Examiner, who is none other than our Lord Beloved Supreme, will say, “What have you done? What have you not done?”Again, you have to know that your mother’s sweetness and affection are not enough for you now. Only when you get affection and smiles from the Supreme is it enough. Again, the little affection that you got from your physical parents — which is nothing, nothing, nothing in comparison to the affection of the Supreme — can remind you of the Supreme’s affection. So it is good to remember those sweet experiences.
But do not try to remember how many mistakes you made in the past or how many unfortunate things you have done. If you are trying desperately to forget these things and if others are reminding you of them out of so-called concern, just tell them to mind their own business. Tell them, “My life is for God. My life is for the Supreme. My life is for my Guru. My life is not for you. It is none of your concern. You take care of your own life.”
I am begging my disciples to deal with their own problems and not to indulge in reminding others of their problems. People who remind you of your past blunders are not your real friends. In most cases, these people have committed more blunders than you have. So let them deal with their blunders. Let them look into their own minds and hearts. They will see what their minds and even their hearts are like. So do not think of them. Only think of the Supreme.
I always say that the past is dust. When I was a lion in my animal incarnation, God knows how many of God’s innocent creatures I devoured. Shall I now think of that and say, “O God, O God, forgive me, forgive me”? God says, “I have already forgiven you. But the moment you think of your past animal incarnations, I withdraw My Forgiveness.” It is the same with the mistakes that we have made in our human incarnations. The moment we cherish and treasure our undivine life of twenty or forty or fifty years ago, our consciousness immediately falls down again to that level. God says, “Only go forward, go forward!”
If you have to think of anything from the past, then think of the times that you had your highest meditations. While you were meditating, you imagined that you were on top of the snow-capped Himalayas, where there was only white snow. Everything was purity-flooded and you were there meditating. Right in front of you was Lord Shiva, who has a close connection with you. If you imagine that kind of thing, it is not mental hallucination; you do have a connection with our Lord Shiva.
So many well-wishers you have. But if you leave the path today — which is something I do not want and you do not want — those so-called well-wishers inwardly will dance with joy. They will say, “Unlike us, she was not meant for the spiritual life.” Their human mind of division will come forward and they will feel happy that only they are meant for the spiritual life. Human friendship is like that. Human concern is all false. Most of the time, others’ concern for us and our concern for others is nothing but a joke.
Many people get malicious pleasure when their so-called dear ones jump out of the spiritual boat and enter again into the quagmire of the ignorance-world. ‘Malicious’ is the right word! Outwardly they will say, “Oh, I am miserable that he or she has left the path.” But ninety out of a hundred do not feel any real sympathy. Even if those unfortunate ones are members of their own family — a father or mother or sister or wife or husband — still they are happy when they leave the boat. Such separativity human beings enjoy! Do I not know anything about the inner world? I see what kind of roguish nature people can have. Human nature is always division, division, division: “I am better, I am better, I am better. That is why I am still on the path.”Again, it may happen that they are not fully ready for this garden. When they see the beauty, fragrance and divinity of the garden, they may say, “O my God, my vital life! What will happen? What will my boyfriend think or what will my girlfriend think? What will my parents think?” Those ideas may come.
When I look at the pictures of seekers and accept them as disciples, I feel there are many, many extremely good seekers. I see that they are definitely meant for our path, but then they leave. So for that I have to blame the disciples. When they look at the old disciples, these new ones say, “Oh, after staying for ten years, fifteen years or twenty years, if they look like this, then I do not need that kind of spiritual life!” A few really remarkable seekers we have lost like that.
Unfortunately, when most of the disciples who have been with us for many, many years meditate, there is no sincere cry. It is only routine work. Regularly you can do routine work or you can do it haphazardly, but it is almost always done unwillingly and reluctantly. If you do your prayer and meditation unwillingly, reluctantly, how will you get the same result as those who are doing it prayerfully, soulfully and self-givingly?
So there are two groups of disciples who leave. One group feels you are too good, and the other group thinks that if this is what you have received after twenty years or twenty-five years, then it is not worth striving for.Now I am 67 years old. The moment I use my heart, I feel that I am 20 years old. So I try to use my heart when I do these kinds of weightlifting feats. When I use my heart, I feel oneness with the aeroplane. Everything helps me and everybody helps me when I use my oneness. Whereas if I stayed in the mind, I would not be able to lift heavy weights at all.
The human mind is full of division at each and every level. Our mind appreciates our right hand more than our left hand, for example, even though they are both part and parcel of our body. Since the right hand is stronger than the left, our mind prefers our right hand.When I lift planes, I get a feeling of lightness from the plane itself. Plus I get a kind of inner thrill or joy because I fly in planes.
Reporter: Yes, it is hard to think of an elephant as light!
Sri Chinmoy: The mind immediately makes us feel that the elephant is such a solid object. How will it be possible to lift it? So I do not use my mind at all; I use my heart and try to establish my oneness with the elephant.From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy answers, part 14, Agni Press, 1999
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