Sri Chinmoy answers, part 17

Part I

Don Antonio Tarzia: We are religious people. It is important for us to be religious and to work for God. On the other hand, I also have to manage a publishing company. I have to be a manager in everyday life and produce very actively.

The creation is the manifestation of the Creator. Your publishing company is part of the creation. In this case, God is manifesting His Light through publishing.

Don Antonio Tarzia: How do you feel that we can reach out to God?

Don Antonio Tarzia: The heart-road.

Sri Chinmoy: I also like the heart-road. The heart-road is the safest road. We call it the sunlit road. When we are in the heart, we cry. We cry to God to give us love, to give us peace, to give us joy. If our cry is sincere, immediately He gives us what we want. Here the heart is playing the role of a child. When a child cries for milk or a toy, even if his mother is in the other room, immediately she comes running to him. Similarly, if from the bottom of our hearts we soulfully cry to God for His Compassion and Love, immediately He will give them to us. But our cry has to be sincere, the way a child’s cry is sincere.

Virgilio Ciampa: Don Antonio said that some of the terms you use in your philosophy about life and God are very similar to those of St. Paul, but you are not Christian. How is that possible?

Virgilio Ciampa: I totally agree with you. At the end of those two different roads is the same God, the God of everyone, and everyone just speaks different dialects.

Venanzio Ciampa: St. Paul talked about becoming Jesus, and you, coming from a completely different background and culture, are also talking about the same thing — only using different words. You both were able to reach the same goal — the bottle of water, or God. Please tell us more about the spiritual message that you are spreading.

Venanzio Ciampa: Thinking of the problems in the world, one has to wonder if we are really making progress.

Venanzio Ciampa: Nietzsche said that sometimes the more you dig in profundities, the more bad things you find.

If you want to take a rose from the garden, you cannot just take the flower. You also have to take the stem so that the rose will look beautiful. When you pick the stem, you find thorns. But you can remove the thorns and still keep the stem and the beautiful rose.

Venanzio Ciampa: But how does one have the knowledge to remove those thorns?

Sri Chinmoy: There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. If you have wisdom, you can do anything. Wisdom does not come from the mind; it comes from the heart and the soul. From the mind comes intellectual reasoning. The mind’s greatest achievement is the intellect. But much deeper than the intellect is wisdom. Real wisdom comes from the soul’s light. Similarly, there is something called will, adamantine will. That will does not come from the mind; it comes from the heart, from the soul.

Part II

Question: What is the connection between compassion and forgiveness?

Question: If one person in our spiritual family is more aspiring, does this affect the other members?

Then again, in the same family, if you have a brother who is every day stealing, doing wrong things, then people will speak ill of your whole family. So he is also affecting you. One brother is very spiritual. He is a very, very soulful inspiration to you. When you are with the other brother, immediately your consciousness descends. His very presence is disturbing you because he is not leading a moral life, a spiritual life. He is doing everything undivine.

In the same way, two disciples are like brothers. One good disciple is praying and meditating, manifesting the Supreme’s Love. The other one does not find time to meditate in three months. He does not come to the Centre regularly. Do you want to be like him? As soon as you see him, your inspiration goes away. It is very difficult to maintain your inspiration when you see somebody unaspiring. But when you see somebody is aspiring and manifesting and living a real spiritual life, his very presence will inspire you. While you are on the street, three persons may be walking towards you. You may not know anything about their nature, but you may immediately feel an affinity with one of them because that person has touched your heart. Inwardly your heart knows that he is doing something good to inspire the whole of mankind.

Question: I feel I used to meditate better before joining the path.

Question: My son died a few years ago and I am still missing him.

So now, instead of India, think of another place, Heaven. Your son has gone there to be with his Heavenly Father, who is everybody’s Father. So if he is with my Father, your Father, everybody’s Father, how will you become angry with the Father? Because of His Affection, because of His Compassion, because of His Love, because of His Concern for your son, He has taken him to be with Him. So if somebody has more affection, more compassion, more love for your son, then will you be jealous of that person? No, you can be very happy that the one who is dearest to you is also dearest to Somebody else.

Let me tell you a story — not a funny story, but an illumining story. I used to have a dentist. He would talk for fifteen minutes and work for five minutes. One story he told was so illumining. There were two brothers who were extremely close to each other. They loved each other so much. When one brother passed away, the dentist asked the other brother, “Do you not miss your brother, who was so close to you? How do you feel?” This brother replied, “Why should I miss him?” The dentist got the shock of his life. He said, “You do not miss your dearest brother? I thought you were so fond of each other. You were all the time together. It seemed you had such love for each other.”

The brother said, “You do not understand. My brother had so many friends, but he loved me most intensely. His love for me far surpassed his love for others. He would not have left me had he not found Someone who loves him much more than I do. I know that my brother has gone to Someone who loves him infinitely more than I do. So if I have real love, genuine love for my brother, then I should be very happy that my brother has found Someone who loves him much more than I do.”

Question: How can we strengthen our subtle nerves?

Question: I like my professor very much, but sometimes I feel that he is caught in the mind.

As soon as we see something that has spiritual beauty, we want to claim it for ourselves. When we see a beautiful flower, do we not want to have the fragrance and beauty of a flower in our own heart? When we pray and meditate, do we not want to have the vastness of the sky inside us? When the birds are flying, do we not feel that our inner being should enjoy freedom, so that ordinary thoughts cannot bind us? So anything that is good we appreciate and try to bring into our own lives. It is not that we are trying to grab it; we identify with it. I happen to be a spiritual person and you are in my boat. Something good you are seeing in me; that is why you are trying to identify with my consciousness. So if your professor is a really good person, he will see inside your soulful smile something most valuable and that is your simplicity.

The more we become intellectually great, the sooner we lose our simplicity, sincerity and so on. One can have an illumined mind without reading millions of books. When the mind is ready to receive light from Above or from within, when the mind is longing for something beyond its present grasp, then illumination dawns. Intellectuals always feel they know everything. They do not have the inner hunger to know something more, but their heart is always longing for something more. On the mental level, there will always be another intellectual giant who has more knowledge, though this is difficult for their minds to accept. But when the heart sees something beautiful or somebody who is spiritual, the heart will try to become that beauty or emulate that person.

Part III

Question: Tremendous events have occurred in the world this past year, especially in Eastern Europe. Will the world someday recognise that these events were due to the presence of some illumined spiritual Masters on earth? Will it recognise it in an outer way?

Question: How do you feel about all the environmental concerns that seem to be surfacing now?

Question: I feel that the various religious sects seem to be hardening in their positions _vis-a-vis_ one another. Is that only my perception, or do you also feel there is a hardening of attitudes on the religious front?

As far as the well-established religions are concerned, there are definitely a few religions that are in no way standing against others or trying to exercise their supremacy over others. Unfortunately, the followers of some well-established religions are still trying to exercise their supremacy. Instead of trying to embrace the universe, they are afraid of losing their so-called supremacy and so they try to dominate the followers of other religions.

Part IV

Question: How does it affect our palm when we wear a ring?

Question: I can't wear a watch. I feel it takes away my life-energy. I was wondering if that is just superstition.

Question: The last painting you painted the other night was very striking to me because it seemed that every time you touched the painting with your fingers, you blessed it. Is that painting any more special because there was no object, such as a paintbrush, between you and the painting?

Question: When you create a painting or write a song, at what point does the soul of the creation enter into what you have created?

Sometimes the soul enters after the first line. Sometimes the whole song is composed and I am not seeing the soul. Then when I am singing it, the soul comes. There is no fixed timing. Any time the soul comes, it is good. But when I get the most haunting notes, at that time, like a flower, the soul blossoms.

Some songs I just see with my third eye. The words and the music immediately come together. Again, sometimes I may not set the tune at the same time. One of my most favourite songs is Jiban debata. The tune came immediately while I was composing the words, but perhaps I did not sing the song immediately.

It has happened to me many, many times that the tune comes while I am writing the words. I am not humming inwardly, but while I am writing the words, I find that the music is already there. Sometimes I see the Bengali notation very clearly on the words as I write them down. But then again, while playing on the tote-a-tune to get the melody, I may change it a little bit.

I like both slow songs and fast songs, but if I have to make a choice, I like slow songs more than I like fast songs. Fast songs only shake the life-tree. Sometimes if you see a tree shaking, you get joy. It is not malicious joy because you know that the tree is not going to be uprooted, but it is shaking and you are enjoying it. Sometimes in nature we like to watch a storm blowing and shaking a tree. The trees are not going to be uprooted, but just because they are shaking, we get a kind of joy.

Part V

On the Peace Run

Question: We want to make the Peace Run very large. How can we do this and still keep the spirit that you want?

You are carrying your vital, mind, heart and soul inside you. Now try to feel that somebody else you are also carrying. If you can feel that you are carrying me inside you, this will give you tremendous joy. If you can feel that you are carrying me on top of your head or on your shoulder, or right beside you, or inside the very depths of your heart, you are bound to get tremendous joy. And if you are swimming in the sea of joy, then the question of distance, the question of fatigue, the question of unwillingness — in the form of unpleasantness — can never knock at your heart’s door.

Another thing you can do is to sing any song of mine that gives you joy. But it should be a song that has been composed by me, not composed by somebody else — not even your noble self. Your song may be in the world of superstars, and I do not want you to be a superstar right now. The theme song that Narada wrote, you can sing to energise you. Narada’s song is very inspiring, and if he composes another one, then you can sing it also. But, unfortunately, there are so many stupid songs that you have learnt over the years. Very often in the inner world I get messages that you are singing songs that lower your consciousness. So be careful! If you do not want to sing, you can chant the Supreme’s Name or your own spiritual name.

Keep yourself spiritually happy. How can you do this? If you look at something inspiring, you get spontaneous happiness, and spontaneous happiness is spiritual happiness. You can look at a flower, at the sun, at the moon or at a tree. Anything inspiring you can look at in order to get spontaneous happiness. Otherwise, we try to create happiness with our mind, which is all the time doubting our own capacities. This is such a painful, painful experience!

Anything that you can offer to our Lord Supreme happily and cheerfully is treasured by Him. You may be doing something unwillingly and, at the same time, in the back of your mind you may be thinking that people are appreciating you for doing it. People may be appreciating you because you can fool human beings, but you cannot fool God, our Inner Pilot. If you do something unwillingly, He will give you zero. Again, even if there is not a single soul to appreciate your soulful self-giving in this Peace Run, no harm! The One who has inspired us, who is inspiring us and who will always inspire us to manifest Him in His own Way will be proud of you and pleased with you.

Question: A lot of disciples prefer to run in the beautiful areas in the countryside, but the organisers like to do things in big cities where there is more media and more publicity. How does the Supreme view the value of having a peaceful Peace Run in the open country versus manifestation in the cities?

You have to act like a farmer. You sow seeds here and there, but you have to pay more attention to the places where you can expect to get a bumper crop. If you go to the cities, you may draw the interest of some important people. If the President or the head of a country says something nice about our Peace Run, then immediately the rest of the country will accept it. But if the message comes only from a tiny place, then nobody values it.

Always we have to use our inner wisdom. If a little child is crying, we have to give it milk. But if we stay all the time with the little child, then we will not be able to do anything for the entire family. So we also have to pay attention to the grownup members of the family.

When you pray and meditate, you create your own type of beauty. Similarly, while running you can create a beautiful garden inside your own heart and inside the hearts of those who see you run. But if you spend most of the time going to small villages, then you will not achieve anything; you will not create the kind of beauty that the whole world can appreciate.

You have to make yourself happy, and happiness comes from giving. At every moment feel that you are giving something in order to make yourself happy. Then, you have to feel that the very thing that you are giving has already been given to you. God the Creator gave it to you, and you are grateful to Him because you are able to give it to God the creation. When you get something from God the Creator and give it to God the creation, what happens? With your aspiration and your realisation you are connecting God the Creator and God the creation.

To help with the Peace Run means to love your Guru, and to love your Guru means to serve our only Guru, our Beloved Supreme. This is not an individual’s project. This is not my project. Far from it! This is the project of our Lord Beloved Supreme. I am His instrument. Each individual is His instrument. Now it is up to us how sincerely, devotedly and self-givingly we can please our Inner Pilot.

Part VI

Question: If the soul of a dog has the opportunity to advance to a human life, why would it choose to have another animal incarnation?

Believe me, right now I can give you people very high experiences — high, higher, highest. Sri Ramakrishna had the capacity to touch someone and bless him with the highest experience. Naren (Swami Vivekananda) was doubting whether Sri Ramakrishna had realised God. When Sri Ramakrishna touched his head, he started entering into trance. Then he cried, “I have a mother, I have a father! Bring me down, bring me down!”

Question: What makes an animal want to take a human incarnation? Is it a conscious decision?

Question: Can dogs feel if you were a dog in your previous incarnation?

Question: Once I saw a dog biting a young boy. Is there any particular reason for that to happen?

Question: Do you actually need a photograph to concentrate on someone's soul?

So, why do I ask for a picture of your parents or dear ones who are suffering, or who have gone from this world? It helps, but I do not actually need it. I can help the person by concentrating on the soul that I already know. If I did not know your father or mother, and if they have passed away, I will concentrate on your soul and ask your soul. Your soul knows your parents’ souls. Your soul will act like a messenger. Either your soul will come to me or I will work through your soul. Like that, thousands of times I have concentrated on individuals only with the help of the souls that I already know.

Question: How can we increase our readiness and capacity?

In our case, we create the burden for ourselves and place it on our shoulders very nicely. We say, “I am overburdened! This weight is so heavy.” Again, there is a kind of silly pleasure, an unconscious pleasure that we get by carrying the burden. But who asked us to carry this heavy failure-burden? Immediately we have to feel that it is gone, and we have to invoke only light, light, light. Each past mistake or failure we have to take as a burden, and then we have to throw it away. Then we can run the fastest.

The philosophy of the Saviour Jesus Christ is that repentance purifies the soul. Yes, it is true, but our philosophy is to repent for five minutes only. If you continue with your repentance, it will definitely, definitely weaken your subtle nerves, the nerves that help you pray, meditate and realise God. Repentance is good for five seconds or five days, but if you continue, you will be making a mistake. Let us say you have done something undivine, or you have been jealous for months and months, and then all of a sudden you repent. If you are in the jealousy-world for ten years, then will you show your repentance for another ten years? God knows how many years you will live on earth! Then the time will come for you to go to God. So, after a few days, immediately you have to give up your repentance.

We have to be so careful with repentance. To shed endless tears of repentance for our failure-life is silly. Repentance is good for a few days, or a maximum of one week. More than that if you carry your repentance-burden, then you are walking along a negative path. You will be shocked at God’s reaction. You will say, “I did something wrong, so I am repenting.” But God will say, “True, you did something wrong, but did I ask you to indulge in endless repentance? Now do something good, something positive. Go forward, go forward! Then your past misdeeds will be all washed away.”

Take failure as ink. God has given us the wisdom to use soap and water to wash away the ink from our hands. If the palm of my hand is besmeared with ink, shall I only look at the stain and suffer and suffer? No! God has supplied me with soap and water, so what is wrong with me? Why do I not wash it away? Then, let me not allow anything uninspiring to stain my hand any more.

So, the fastest way to increase readiness and capacity is to forget the deplorable past. Whether it was one year or two years or twenty years or thirty years, do not go on repenting. No! Only go forward! Again, when depression or frustration comes for some reason, counteract it with the sweetest or highest experiences of your own divinity. If the mind is enjoying self-doubt or doubting the Master, at that time bring forward the highest meditation that you had on a number of occasions. Just imagine those higher experiences. Again, all your best qualities and highest experiences you can keep in writing: when you had the highest meditation, when you had the deepest love for your Master, when you were all ready to become an unconditionally surrendered disciple. All the good qualities that you had twenty years ago or two days ago, immediately bring to the fore.

Always there is medicine for our ailments. If anything is creating suffering for us, then let us just remember that medicine is there for us. This medicine will definitely cure our sadness, frustration, depression and sense of failure. Always remind yourself of the things that you have already achieved. That is an excellent medicine. But remember that you have not yet reached your final goal. Your surrender, your love, your devotion and your gratitude: these divine qualities have not yet enabled you to reach the goal. They have to be increased in infinite measure so that one day you will arrive at the goal.

Question: Should we pray for more capacity or more willingness? When I pray, my prayers get confused and I usually end up praying for the Will of the Supreme, so I don't really pray for anything specific.

At every moment use the heart. If you use the heart, at every moment you will be able to please me. But if you use the mind, you will say, “Oh, it is late. God knows whether I will be able to get what Guru wants or not.” Once you use the mind, you have polluted your aspiration, you have destroyed your inspiration. Never use the mind! The mind is only for limited purposes. If you see right in front of you a snake, then you will not use your heart, because God inside you is telling your mind that this snake will bite you. But there will be millions of instances in your life when you will not see any snake or any other danger, and the mind will not be needed. Again, if you use the heart, you will be at that particular place where the snake is either five minutes later or five minutes earlier. You will see that there is no snake there.

Readiness, willingness and eagerness you need, but readiness, willingness and eagerness have to come from the heart, not from the mind. The mind’s readiness will take you two steps and then you will say, “I should go and get my sweater. Perhaps it is going to rain; I need an umbrella. Who knows what will happen?” That is the mind’s readiness. The mind will always try to be ready by looking to this side and that side. The mind will always try to protect itself. But the heart has no time to think of rain or sun or anything else; it only acts.

Question: Was Hanuman really a monkey, or was he a member of a tribe of people?

Hanuman was not a monkey. His was a kind of evolved tribe. It was so evolved that it was almost on the level of human beings. Hanuman had infinite inner strength from his surrender to his Lord Sri Ramachandra’s will. He knew Sri Ramachandra was the direct descendant of God Himself, an Avatar, and his bounden duty was to serve his Master sleeplessly and breathlessly. So Hanuman was not just a monkey with a huge body — far from it! Sri Ramachandra’s Hanuman had very, very high and lofty previous incarnations. His was a kind of tribe, but in terms of evolution, it was very advanced.

There are some elephants I have seen whose souls are so fully evolved that, when they take human incarnation, they will immediately far surpass many human beings. The height that they will attain in one incarnation, many human beings will take forty or fifty incarnations to reach — especially in the mind, the vital and the body. When those animals take their first human incarnation, they will far, far surpass the human beings who have already visited earth quite a few times.

Question: I like to be outdoors running and cycling, but then I think I should spend more time meditating and being with you, learning songs.

Cycling is good for you, to keep your body fit. Definitely it will help your meditation. Again, if you meditate well, the inner joy that you get from your meditation and prayer will make you feel that you are flying while you are riding. So, everything has its own time. If you do everything at its proper time, then the previous things will always give you joy while you are doing the next thing, and those things will also give you tremendous joy. There is always time to do the right thing.

Question: If a friend is suffering from a negative emotion, from hostility or anger, how can you help that person?

Question: Sometimes when we tell you that a person is doing something wrong, that person gets furious. Once someone would not speak to me for two years because I told you something that he had done wrong. What is the best way to deal with that?

I chose you to be the leader of one of our Centres. Is it not your bounden duty to inform me about what is happening in your Centre? Who gave you the authority? Sri Chinmoy. Who gave Sri Chinmoy the authority? The Supreme. Did you come to our Centre to be loyal, faithful, surrendered and devoted to me, or did you come to please someone else in his own way?

You did absolutely the right thing by telling me. Even if that person does not speak to you throughout Eternity, you are not going to lose an iota of your spirituality. But if you do not tell me what you are supposed to tell me, then you may lose all your spirituality. So ask yourself if to be loyal to the Master at every second is not of supreme importance in your life. Is there anything else as valuable? No. You have done the right thing. If that person does not speak to you for one year, he is not living in the heart, he is not living in the soul.

By telling me, you have proved that you care. In a family, if somebody has cancer, then what happens? If the sister knows that the brother has developed cancer, she will go running to the father so that the father can bring in a doctor. But what happens in the spiritual life? Fear, fear, fear comes into the picture. One person is doing something wrong, and the other one hides it. Then it becomes a hopeless case.