Part VI

SCA 609-610. Sri Chinmoy answered these questions on 14 February 1990 at his home in New York.

Question: How can I be more obedient?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to change the boss. You are saying that you are not obedient. But you are obedient. The question is to whom. Suppose early in the morning you have to get up, but you went to bed very late. Your body is not co-operating. Something inside you is telling you not to get up, and something else is asking you to get up. The something that is asking you not to get up is one boss, and the something that is asking you to get up is another boss.

You have to choose which boss you are going to obey. You have to ask yourself if the one that is asking you not to get up is telling you the right thing. In the morning if you do not get up when you are supposed to get up, you will feel miserable when you want to do the next thing. At eight o’clock if you have to go to work, you will feel miserable because the first thing — your meditation — you have not done. Then at eight o’clock if you do not go to work because you have gone out running, more problems will arise. If you are late for each activity, you will get pain when you want to do the next thing. The first thing will come into your mind and ruin all your joy. When you are going to work — the second thing — you will feel sad about the first thing — that you did not get up to meditate. Then, if you do not go to work, if you do something else, you will say, “O my God, first I did not get up, and then I did not go to work.” Now you have missed two things. So it accumulates, accumulates.

We say the past is dust. All right, early in the morning you could not get up. That is past. But now do the second thing. In the examination the teacher has given you five or six questions. If you cannot answer one, do not look at that question. If you look at it, you will only waste your precious time and energy saying, “O my God, I am unable to answer it.” That kind of worry and anxiety will ruin all your joy. Then you will not be able to answer the four or five questions which you know so well. Your mind will be loaded with anxiety and worry: “What will happen? I will not get 100 out of 100.” Instead you have to forget about that question immediately. There are six questions and you are able to answer five, but the sixth one will bother you if you do not throw it out of your mind.

In the same way, during the day you have so many things to do. If you have missed the first one, forget about it. There are still five, six, ten things you have to do. If you do all the rest of the things, then you will again have strength. You will have tremendous joy that you have done this, this and this.

Obedience must come from the heart. In the morning the mind or the vital asks you not to get up. So you listen to that boss, but you do not listen to the real boss: your heart. Always you have to see where the command is coming from. Do not think that you are the boss. When you do not get up, you simply say that you did not get up. No, what actually happened is that somebody asked you not to get up. You have to identify that someone. When you do something wrong, you have to feel that somebody has instigated you.

When you do something wrong, you immediately say, “I did not do it,” or if you are clever, you put the blame on another human being. But if you put the blame on something inside you, if you know that it is something within you, your mind or your vital that instigates you to do the wrong thing, then you can challenge that something and eventually it will surrender. Again, your heart is there to inspire you to do the right thing.

We always obey, positively or negatively. So always try to take the positive way. First your heart has to come forward and say what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong. Then you must listen to your heart.