Question: Is it possible for someone to raise the global consciousness just by raising his own individual consciousness?

Sri Chinmoy: We have to inspire the world to meditate by aspiring in and through the heart of the world. We are all peace-dreamers and peace-lovers, and we are all inspired to serve the world. But sometimes a particular individual comes to the fore with boundless inspiration and transforms our universal peace-dream into reality. Here is an example:

The Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is only a single individual, but his consciousness has entered into the global consciousness and transformed the entire global consciousness. On the strength of his inspiration, aspiration and love for humanity, he is not only liberating a few bondage-bound countries, but also enlarging the illumining and fulfilling vision of tomorrow’s freedom-oneness-life for all of humanity. One individual has begun singing the song of world-harmony, and the rest of the world has lovingly and eagerly joined in. As a result of one individual’s consciousness, a oneness-world-peace-song is being sung by people throughout the length and breadth of the world.

The One is part of the many, and the many are part of the One. Similarly, the individual consciousness and the global consciousness are inseparable, like a flower and its petals or like a tree with its trunk and its branches. The trunk without the branches is not a tree. Again, there can be no branches without the trunk. So the individual has to feel his oneness with the universe, and he has to aspire and meditate in and through the heart of the entire world.

From:Sri Chinmoy,World-destruction: never, impossible! part 1, Agni Press, 1994
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