Is the spiritual life an act of giving? Yes, it is. What precisely do we give? We give our bondage-night and ignorance-day. To whom do we give them? We give them to God. What else do we give to God? We give God, or rather, we reconfirm to God our soul’s promise that we made millions of years ago. What was that promise? Him we shall realise unreservedly and Him we shall fulfil unconditionally.
Is the spiritual life an act of receiving? Yes, it is. What precisely do we receive? We receive God’s Grace and we receive God the Grace. What is the difference between God’s Grace and God the Grace? The difference is this: God’s Grace shows us God’s Face with form and without form; and God the Grace tells us that we are not only eternal, infinite and immortal like Him, but also equal and perfect. We have made friends with ignorance; therefore, we are not conscious of what we truly are. But God and we are inseparably one: this is what we learn from God the boundless Grace.
We should know something about God with form and God without form. God with form is often questioned by the dark human mind. God without form remains always a far cry for the proud and unaspiring human mind. The dark, unaspiring human mind does not want to see God in God’s own Way, whereas the loving and aspiring heart tries to see God in God’s own Way. God with form is accessible to those who love God with their heart’s inmost feelings. God without form is also accessible to those who love God in the inmost recesses of their hearts.
Is the spiritual life an act of becoming? Yes, it is. What precisely do we become? In the process of evolution each individual becomes another God. When? At God’s blessingful, choice Hour.
How do we know that a certain individual is spiritual? If we say that he is spiritual because he often talks about God, we may be making a deplorable mistake. People can talk about God day in and day out but never follow the true spiritual life. If someone feels that there is a world of Peace and Bliss unlike this world of ours, and that he belongs to that world, does it mean that he is spiritual? No. He may be building castles in the air, or he may be enjoying some mental hallucinations. If we say that someone is spiritual because he gives up his friends, his relatives and the members of his family and enters into a Himalayan cave to become a recluse, then we will be mistaken again. Spirituality does not demand that we live the life of an ascetic; it does not ask us to give up our near and dear ones. Far from it.
So how do we know whether or not an individual is spiritual? We know that an individual is spiritual only when we notice a certain amount of purity in his body and surety in his soul. What do we mean by the body’s purity? The body’s purity is the divine capacity for endless God-receptivity. And what do we mean by the soul’s surety? The soul’s surety is the soul’s conscious and constant oneness-perfection with the Absolute Supreme. The soul’s surety is the soul’s conscious and constant oneness-satisfaction in the Absolute Supreme.
Some people are of the opinion that spirituality and divinity are very close to each other, that they are adjacent to one another — two loving, faithful, soulful and fruitful neighbours. They are absolutely correct. But I wish to add one thing. The nature of spirituality and the nature of divinity are similar. What both of them embody is God’s boundless creation and what both of them reveal is God’s infinite Compassion. But if we observe spirituality and divinity very minutely, then we do observe a subtle difference. Spirituality is God’s Self-expansion and divinity is God’s Self-perfection. While expanding Himself, God perfects Himself; and while perfecting Himself, God transcends Himself. Therefore we can safely say that spirituality and divinity are complementary.
The question is often asked whether each and every person on earth can be spiritual and divine, or whether spirituality and divinity are the monopoly of only a few selected individuals. Spirituality and divinity can be claimed by each and every individual, providing each and every individual has a sincere need for spirituality and divinity. Spirituality is not the sole monopoly of any individual. Each and every individual can practise spirituality, provided he wants to cry — cry for the ultimate Truth, the transcendental Height, the immortal Delight.
How does one become spiritual and divine? One becomes spiritual and divine by studying the inner life. One has to spend time on inner studies. When we study other subjects, we go to school and learn from our teacher. To learn spirituality and divinity, we go to the inner school. In the inner school, God is the only Teacher.
God the Teacher always asks us to be simple, sincere, humble and pure. Only then will He be able to teach us. If we are wanting in simplicity, sincerity, humility and purity, then God will not be able to teach us. What does God teach us? He teaches us how to become His perfect instruments on earth. He teaches us how to take part in His cosmic lila, the Game eternal. He also teaches us how to fly and how to march, how to fly with His ever-transcending, infinite Vision and how to march with His ever-progressing, boundless manifestation. God grants us His Vision-Reality and His Reality-Vision at the end of our journey’s close. God’s Vision-Reality is God’s eternal Greatness-Height and God’s Reality-Vision is God’s eternal Goodness-Depth.
Our Teacher, God, tells us that we cannot enjoy double-dealing. In secret we make friends with desire-night and in public we make friends with aspiration-day, aspiration-light. God says He cannot accept this double-dealing precisely because He has an aversion to this double-dealing. With our desire-night we try to bind God and have God please us in our own way. With our aspiration-light we try to love God and serve God in God’s own Way.
Why do we love God? We love God because He is all Beauty. Why do we serve God? We serve God because He is the only Reality: the Reality that we long for, the Reality that we want to grow into, the Reality that is all satisfaction, Eternity’s satisfaction. What we all need here on earth and there in Heaven is satisfaction: satisfaction in God’s own Way.In the aspiration world, the heart is of paramount importance. The heart wants the Reality, not to fulfil itself, but so it can become part and parcel of the Reality. It wants the Reality so it can enjoy the Light and Delight of the Reality. It wants the Reality because it gets joy from the way Light and Delight operate in and through the Reality. The heart wants the Reality to satisfy the Reality the way the Reality wants to be satisfied. The heart wants to get satisfaction on the strength of its oneness with the Reality.
The mind wants to derive satisfaction by maintaining a sense of separativity. The mind does not want to unite. The mind says, “You stay where You are, and let me stay where I am. Only come to me whenever I want You or need You. But that doesn’t mean I have to surrender to You all the time. Stay wherever You want, but I wish You to be at my beck and call.” The heart, however, says to the Reality, “I am at Your Feet; only allow me to be where You are. I want to stay at Your Feet. If You want to kick me out, I am ready to be kicked if that gives You satisfaction. If You want to place me inside Your Heart, place me there; and if You want to keep me elsewhere, do that. Only please Yourself, please Yourself in Your own Way.” So naturally the heart, on the strength of its oneness with the Reality, is pleasing the Reality. This is what a seeker of the absolute transcendental Truth must try to see, feel and grow into.
The mind does not accept the Reality’s existence but it wants to fulfil itself by taking help from the Reality for its own purpose. But the heart wants to fulfil itself only by pleasing the Reality in its own way. Again, today’s doubting mind may tomorrow become a searching mind and the day after tomorrow it will become a self-giving mind. It is not a hopeless case for the mind. But right now, at the present stage of our evolution, the mind is doubting and suspecting the Reality, while, at the same time, it wants to derive utmost satisfaction from the Reality. The mind suspects the Reality and, at the same time, the mind is always like a beggar waiting for the Reality to satisfy it. But the heart is all oneness with the Reality.So always we have to run towards light, if light is our goal. If perfection is our goal, then we have to run towards perfection. By staying in imperfection and waiting for imperfection to release us from its prison, we will never reach our goal. For a sincere seeker, it is always advisable to accept the positive aspect of life, to feel, “I am God’s child. I shall aspire. I shall try to grow into the very image of God.” This is the positive approach.
God is in everything. God is in light; God is in darkness, too. But we are trying to transform darkness into light. God is in filthy water; God is also in pure water. So we have to use the power of discrimination. If we drink filthy water, poisonous water, we shall die. Then again, if we drink pure water, we shall quench our thirst.
In the spiritual life, always we are trying to discriminate good from bad and stay only with good. Then there comes a time when we don’t want to leave bad aside; we want to transform bad into good, darkness into light. But by staying with darkness, we won’t be able to change darkness into light. If we stay in light, we not only have the possibility, but the assurance, the guarantee, that eventually we will be able to transform darkness into light. If I stay for many years in an illumined room, then my whole being will be illumined and flooded with light. At that time, when I enter into the unlit room, that room will automatically be lit by my very presence.
So we try to go to light first and then from light we come into darkness. Otherwise, no matter how many years we stay in darkness, we will not be able to see the face of light. True, God is in everything; in darkness also there is a little light. But God’s living Presence is more vivid, more encouraging, more inspiring, more illumining in certain things. God is in animals. And once upon a time, if we believe in reincarnation, we must say that we were all animals. But right now consciously we are aspiring. In the animal life we were not aspiring consciously, so we will not go back into the animal kingdom, even though God is also there. No. We are now in the human world. Here we are trying to go one step ahead; that is to say, we would like to establish the divine world, the Kingdom of Heaven. If we can bring down light from above, then only is there every possibility and assurance that, in the long run, we will be able to transform our human life, which is half animal, into the divine life, and the negative aspects of life into higher and more fulfilling realities.God-realisation is my birthright. It is my birthright because God needs me to manifest Himself in and through me. Our work is shared. I need God to realise the Highest and God needs me to manifest His Reality. In divine confidence, we share our capacity, we share our necessity. I am doing my respective job, whatever is asked of me, and God is doing His job, whatever is asked of Him. So I have confidence because I know I am of Him and for Him, and He is of me and for me. And God has confidence in me because He knows that from His Silence He has created me. I am His creation. If the Creator and the creation do not become the obverse and reverse of the same reality, then the Creator will not feel satisfaction. For the creation is like God’s mirror. He looks into the mirror, His own reality, and if He does not see Himself in what He creates, then He can never be satisfied. I as an individual have to become an exact prototype of His Reality. That is what God wants.
So divine confidence is our acceptance of the divine reality which is within us, as our very own. I am of God and I am for God; I am of Light and I am for Truth. This realisation is founded upon my feeling of universal oneness. I am not one inch higher or lower. In human confidence there is always a competitive spirit. I compete with someone and if I win, then I dominate. With divine confidence I do not compete, I do not challenge. I have become one with the reality that he has or is or he represents, for I am also the same reality. Inside us there is only one Reality and that is God Himself singing the song of universal oneness and the song of constant self-transcendence.
A sincere seeker always has confidence. He has confidence that in and through him God is going to manifest Himself. This is not his pride that is speaking. It is the necessity, the God-Necessity that he embodies. God has made him the fulfilment of God’s own Necessity.If we are not spiritual in the purest sense of the term, whatever we know from the mental point of view, we do. We live up to morality. But far above morality is real spirituality, which means listening to the dictates of the Supreme twenty-four hours a day, all the time. We have to play the role that we are intended to play. Suppose the Supreme wants us to play the role of a slave and we want to play the role of a king. If we take the part of the king because we feel that this part is most meaningful, most fruitful, then the Game will not be successful; it will be wrong, a fiasco.
It is the same thing in the Centre. The Master knows who deserves each post, so the Master gives out each post according to his inner knowledge. Some who do not hold the highest posts are, unfortunately, very sad. If an aspirant feels, that by holding a particular post, he will become very close to the Master or he will realise God sooner than the rest, then he is mistaken. In order to realise the Highest, one does not need posts; it is the aspiration of the seeker that counts most. When the Master gives the best or highest post to someone, it is because the Master has been commissioned by the Inner Pilot, the Supreme, to give it to that person. At that time, the Master knows that he is giving the post to this individual with God’s sanction, so that both God and the Master can work in and through the seeker. If everybody wants to hold the highest post, if everybody wants to become the king, it is impossible. In the cosmic Game, one has to become the king and others have to become the ministers and subjects. Otherwise, we cannot have a cosmic Drama; there is no play. Only if the roles of the play are divided well is the drama perfect.
If the Supreme wants you to meditate at a particular time and at that moment your wife is doing selfless service, you can’t say your meditation or her selfless service is by far the best. She is playing her part and you are playing your part. If you do her job, selfless service, when God wants you to do meditation, who is getting a good result? We shall help mankind because this is what God wants us to do. But our selfless service has to entirely depend on God’s Will. If God at this moment wants us to meditate, we shall meditate. But if God wants us to do something else, we shall do that. This should be our attitude. But if we feel that we can just look at the world according to our capacity, see what is needed and then do the needful, we have to know that this will be just a self-imposed responsibility. Only one thing is needed: aspiration. If we aspire and do only what God wants us to do, we shall be serving mankind in God’s own Way. Otherwise, if we do it in our own way, we only create problems.But if the parents are totally against your spiritual path, no matter which one you follow, then you have to be brave. At that time you have to feel the necessity of your own spiritual life; that is to say, your spiritual life must come first and foremost in your life. But I am using the word “totally”. If your parents want to make a compromise — that you follow the spiritual path and also keep a connection with them — then you should agree. You will say, “All right, you follow your own ideas, although I can’t wholeheartedly appreciate your ideas. Now you also have to give me some freedom to follow my ideas.” If you have some function at home or if somebody in the family is getting married or is sick, then naturally it is your bounden duty at that time to go and help. You should feel that there was a special reason why God brought you into that family. But if your parents are all the time against your spiritual life, if they do not understand anything or they do not want to understand, if they feel that you are wasting your time and that one day you will come to realise that you are making a Himalayan blunder, if they are preventing you in every possible way from pursuing this path, then you do not have to keep any connection with them. If they do not understand you and if they stand against you, they are in no way better than an enemy. But you should still offer your inner gratitude to them. For twenty-three or twenty-four years they have fed you, they have nourished you, they have brought you up. So you have to offer your gratitude to your parents, although they have not been totally divine. They have made mistakes and now they are making more mistakes in not allowing you to follow your own path, but still you have to show your inner gratitude. But to offer your inner gratitude is one thing and to mix with them, in spite of knowing that they are standing in your way, is something else.
So each one has to know how much opposition he is getting from his parents. There was a time, four or five years ago, when a few parents were dead against us. They felt that I had taken their children away from them. But the parents do not realise that I have not gone to anybody’s house and pleaded with them to give me their children. The children came to me on their own. And then I tried my best to give them good ideas. I have not told any son or daughter, “Leave your parents.” Oh, no, no! On the contrary, I always say, “Try to compromise.” But if the parents are totally against us, then I feel miserable. I have come here to take the side of God and not the side of ignorance. If I see that somebody is getting tremendous opposition from his parents, and if he is very sincere, very dedicated, very devoted, how can I tell him to swim in the sea of ignorance along with the parents? That I cannot do. But my request to all of you is to try to keep as much as possible a good connection with your parents, a normal connection. But if you feel that it is your duty to mix with your parents, although they are very unspiritual and undivine, then I wish to say that you can do it, but your progress will be very, very limited. You have to make the proper balance.Early in the morning, if you get up and pray with folded hands, for a few days your child will remain fast asleep while you are meditating. But on the third day, a sweet sense of competition will come into him. If his father can meditate, what is wrong with his doing it? And then the child will sit beside you and meditate. The best example is the parents’ own life. The parents’ life is the child’s ideal. When the child grows up, then he may have different goals. But in the beginning, the parents should always encourage their children to pray and meditate if they have accepted a spiritual path. They should always encourage their children to be like them.
Anything you feel is nourishing, you give to the child. If the child does not want milk, you will say, “You must drink.” But when it is a matter of spirituality, many parents think, “Who knows, one day the children may not like our path, so it is best not to make them pray and meditate. When they are fifteen, let them make their own choice and become Guru’s disciple or someone else’s disciple.” This is no good. When the children are growing up, if you don’t give them milk, they will die before they become old enough to make the selection themselves. In the spiritual life also, children will die spiritually if you don’t give them inner nourishment. You are not injecting anything into them, only you are giving them food. They may not like that particular food, but they have to eat or they will die. In spirituality also, what you feel best for your child you should give him in the beginning. Then, when he grows up, that very thing he can continue if he likes. Otherwise, he may give it up and follow some other path or he may not follow spirituality at all.When imagination has played its role consciously or unconsciously, inspiration comes forward. Then, when imagination becomes completely and unreservedly one with inspiration, we see that inspiration has something to offer and that something is creativity. So imagination brings into existence inspiration and inspiration offers us its own wealth, which is creativity.
There is divine imagination and undivine imagination. War — this is also imagination. Here human imagination is being used in a different way. One kind of human imagination is used for a divine purpose, to build the Palace of Love, Light and Truth. The other kind of imagination wants to destroy the whole world. From imagination we are inspired to do something, either divine or undivine.
How do we get divine imagination? We get divine imagination by leading a divine life, a spiritual life; we get divine imagination by purifying our breath. Every second we are breathing in and out. While we are breathing, if we consciously repeat the word “purity” or think that purity is the only thing that we need in our life, automatically our breath becomes pure. Even by imagining that we need purity more than anything else, our breath becomes pure. And when our breath is pure, we have to feel that it is nothing but divine. So if we want to become a divine artist, then we have to feed the divine imagination within us. When the divine imagination offers its reality, it becomes inspiration. And when we consciously feel the divine inspiration, then we get divine art.A seeker can easily trace a negative thought before it touches the physical. Take the mind as the third floor in your house. If there is water leaking up there, easily you can stop it before it flows down to the second and first floors. If you do the needful on the third floor, then you don’t have to suffer on the other floors. When you notice something wrong in the mind, the best thing is to immediately invoke the Light and Peace of the Supreme. If you have Light and Peace, illumination and peace of mind, then the wrong force will be illumined. Either it will be frightened to death and leave you or it will be transformed by the Light and Peace that have entered the mind.
So all the time, while you are thinking or talking to friends, you have to know whether the thoughts you are using, or allowing to stay in your mind, are progressive or not. If you see a thought moving forward, then you should keep it. But if it is moving instead just like an insect, then it has to be thrown out. We have to be very careful of our thoughts, because we live in a mental world, a thought-world. One thought can take us to Heaven or to hell. Each thought is either nectar-like or poisonous. Each thought can be our saviour or it can be our destroyer.It is like going to school. Some Masters will be able to teach only kindergarten, or only primary school, or only high school courses. Again, there are some Masters who will be able to teach you right from the beginning to the end — from the kindergarten level right up to the Ph.D. If you see a Master who can guide you right from the journey’s start to the journey’s destination, then you will go to that one. Otherwise, you will go to one who has the capacity to teach you at your level of spiritual development. Then, after a couple of years, perhaps you yourself will surpass him, and you will have to look for someone else to guide you for another couple of years. Then once again you will see that your inner progress has far surpassed your Master’s realisation. This has happened in many, many cases. So again you have to look for a new Master.
Each time you go to a new Master, you waste time. Each one has a special way of teaching and you have to adapt yourself to the new way. One has taught you a particular truth and given you a specific way to reach it. The next one is giving you a higher truth, but he may not ask you to walk along the road where you have already made some progress. He may take you along a totally different road. He may take you to a farther destination, but he may also take you along a different road. So when you start along a different road, you may be bewildered or puzzled and it may create problems for you.
So if you get someone in whom you have implicit faith and confidence, and if you feel that he will be able to guide you, not only at your present level of consciousness but until you have reached your highest destination, then you should go to that person. He will show you how to walk along Eternity’s road and also help you walk along the road. It is not his road but the road that he has discovered, that he is well acquainted with. In that case, it is advisable to walk along with that Master who, from the beginning to the end, can show you, teach you and guide you along one road to your highest Goal. Otherwise, you will just waste time going from one Master to another.But now we use it according to our own purpose. When we are in a position to use the message of the Gita in a practical way, we say, “Yes, Krishna did come.” But the message of disinterested work — that we work for the sake of work, but offer the result at the Feet of the Lord — is very difficult for human beings. So we say it is all symbolic; it is all theory. It is not reality. But for spiritual people, everything is reality. For ordinary people, unaspiring people, everything will be imaginary or theoretical or just symbolic, with no reality in it. But for spiritual people, everything that the Gita says is reality.
The battle of Kurukshetra was real, and this battle is taking place every day deep within us between the divine forces and the undivine forces in us. Since we are seekers, ultimately the divine forces within us will gain victory. Also in the case of the Gita, the Pandavas did win the battle. If we are not seekers, the undivine forces will go on winning and keeping us under their control. But since we are seekers, we are bound to conquer our undivine, hostile, unaspiring forces. In the battlefield of life, we are bound to win because we are aspiring.The will-power we have inside the heart is the soul’s power. That power we can never use for a wrong purpose. The safest of the three is the will-power that comes from the heart. When you pray and meditate, try to feel that there is already some power inside, deep inside your heart, which has to be brought to the fore. Will-power from the navel centre we can use for good purposes and bad purposes, for constructive and destructive ends; but will-power from the heart can only be utilised for good. It is very fast, like a bullet. When we use the will-power from the navel centre, it will be very deep and electrifying, but in the heart’s will-power there is motherly affection, concern. Tremendous will is there, but the mother’s will is also full of love and compassion. Will-power from the third eye will be like the father’s will-power. There will be concern, but wisdom will also be there.
The easiest way to use will-power is to take the positive approach. Use will-power to do something positive, not to keep yourself from doing something negative. If we say, “I shall not tell a lie,” that is important. But if we say, “I shall tell the truth,” that will-power is more effective. When we say, “I won’t do it,” already the negative thing has half its power just because we are thinking about it. If we repeat in our mind, “I won’t be jealous,” the word “jealous”, the negative quality that it embodies, ruins our mind and then we do become jealous. If we say, “I won’t be doubtful,” the word “doubt” enters into our mind and automatically doubt comes. But if we say, “From now on, I shall be totally devoted to God. I shall be faithful. I shall be fully surrendered,” these words are very good. Surrender and faith and devotion are very good. If we all the time have positive feeling, and make positive assertions, then automatically our will-power increases.From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy speaks, part 5, Agni Press, 1976
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