Part I

SCA 305-323. These questions were answered in 1995 and 1996.

Question: How often do the disciples' souls come to you for blessings and how often do they come with complaints?

Sri Chinmoy: The disciples’ souls come to me for blessings infinitely more often than they come to bring complaints. Although your mind may not need my blessings even once a year, your soul needs my blessings every day. But every day your soul does not have complaints against you. I do not think that even one of my disciples is so bad that his or her soul comes more often to complain than to receive blessings. Some people’s souls have very serious complaints, but they do not bring them up every day because the problem is like a chronic disease. When you have chronic pain, you do not make complaints all the time, even though the pain is so severe, so severe!

If you do not want your soul to bring complaints against you, then you have to run very fast in your life of love, devotion and surrender. Love, devotion and surrender are like a 100-metre race. Let us say the first thirty metres is love, the next thirty metres is devotion and the last part is surrender. For most runners in the 100 metres, the speed increases after the first thirty metres. Some have a very powerful start and some have a poor start. Again, some people do well up to sixty or seventy metres; up to love and devotion they do quite well. But when it comes to surrender, the last part of the race, all their energy and speed go away. Again, some people go fast right from the beginning to the end. But no matter how fast you run any particular segment, you have to complete the entire distance — love, devotion and surrender — if you are doing the 100 metres.

For some people, it takes several years before they are able to run well. Other people run well for the first five or ten years and then something goes wrong. Then again after some time they regain their previous speed. But no matter how well you are running, if you want to become a champion, then every day you have to practise your love, devotion and surrender. Some days, the first part of the race you will do to your satisfaction, but the second part will not be as satisfactory; other days the opposite will be true. Again, there will be some days when you will run all three segments of the race at top speed, doing well from the beginning to the end. There is not a single disciple of mine who at one time or another has not experienced love, devotion and surrender according to his fullest capacity. On that day you were a totally different person. But then the mind came forward and you did not value your achievement, so your speed and eagerness diminished. But if you can remain all the time in the soul, then you will always run the fastest, and your soul will have no complaints at all — only the greatest joy.

Unfortunately, many people used to run fast when they were young, but after practising the spiritual life for fifteen or twenty years their speed has gone down considerably. This is to be expected in the outer race because the physical body ages. But it should not happen in the inner race; here there is no age limit. Because you are dealing with Eternity, at every moment you have to try to increase your capacity. Whether you think of yourself as twenty-two or fifty or ninety is up to you. Only your mind is keeping the record; your soul is not keeping that kind of earthly record. Your soul is seeing only how fast you are ready and willing to go, which depends entirely on your receptivity to your soul’s light.