Question: How is it that the memory of first seeing you has such capacity to lift our consciousness up very quickly?

Sri Chinmoy: That is a very good experience. I have been telling everybody to remember that first experience — the first day you applied. The day you sent your picture or became a disciple, that particular day your life-story became totally different. On that day you made a solemn promise. Your heart, mind, vital, physical existence, everything made a solemn promise to me to be an excellent disciple, and becoming an excellent disciple means to please the Master in his own way.

Then, over the years, the story changes. After three months or six months most disciples come to feel that the Master has to please them fifty per cent and they have to please the Master fifty per cent. They are prepared to meet him half-way. After a few more years the disciples feel that the Master has to come ninety-nine steps, and they will go one step. And then, what is worse, some disciples do not want to take even one step. The Master has to come the full one hundred steps.

So I beg each and every disciple to remember that golden day when he or she accepted the spiritual life, what kind of attitude you had at that time. You wanted one hundred per cent to become an excellent disciple. I am begging you once again to become an excellent disciple, to have constant love for the Master and constant surrender to God’s Will. Each individual started with an excellent attitude. But unfortunately each year a heavy, heavier, heaviest burden of demand and expectation covers your inner wisdom.

To all of you I am saying, just remember the first day you became a disciple. For one week, one month or two months how sincere, how pure, how surrendered you were. Then after five or ten or fifteen or twenty years, what inner demands you began to make. In the beginning, you wanted to establish inner, direct contact with my highest consciousness. Your inner cry like a magnet drew my heart’s love for you and my pride in you. But now there is no disciple who is unconditionally surrendered.

Another thing which applies to all the disciples without exception: if you see that somebody is even one step in front of you, all your inner joy disappears. And if you see that nobody is ahead of you, still you have to look around to make sure there is an audience. Others should see you are the closest. First you see if somebody is ahead of you. If nobody is ahead of you, you feel very, very proud, very happy and pleased with yourself. Then you turn around to see if others are seeing that you are the nearest, you are the dearest. Each and every disciple in that sense has fallen. ‘Fallen’ is an understatement. Previously only you and your Master existed in your life. Now each disciple needs hundreds of witnesses.

I am very happy with your question. That should be the attitude of each and every disciple. Every day you can remember what you first felt in your Master and what you promised to your Master. The day you accepted me was a most significant day in your life. All your simplicity, sincerity, purity, eagerness, willingness, self-giving and other divine qualities you brought to the fore for their complete manifestation. If you can remember this experience, it will be of immense help to you.