AUM

Man is Infinity's Heart.
Man is Eternity's Breath.
Man is Immortality's Life.

III. Our peace is within¹

No price is too great to pay for our inner peace. Peace is the harmonious control of life. It is vibrant with life-energy. It is a power that easily transcends all our worldly knowledge. Yet it is not separate from our earthly existence. If we open the right avenues within, this peace can be felt here and now.

Peace is eternal. It is never too late to have peace. Time is always ripe for that. We can make our life truly fruitful, if we are not cut off from our source which is the Peace of Eternity.

The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions that rob him of it.

Our greatest protection is not in our material achievements and resources. All the treasure of the world is emptiness to our soul divine. Our greatest protection is in our soul's communion with the all-nourishing and all-fulfilling Peace. Our soul lives in peace and lives for peace. If we live a life of peace, we are ever enriched and never impoverished. Unhorizoned is our inner peace; like the boundless sky, it encompasses all.

Long have we struggled, much have we suffered, far have we travelled. But the face of peace is still denied to us. We can discover it if ever the train of our desires loses itself in the Will of the Lord Supreme.

Peace is life. Peace is Bliss eternal. Worries — mental, vital and physical — do exist. But it is up to us whether we accept them or reject them. To be sure, they are not inevitable facts of life. Since our Almighty Father is All-Peace, our common heritage is peace. It is a Himalayan blunder when we widen the broadway of future repentance by misusing and neglecting the golden opportunities that are presented to us. We must resolve here and now that amidst all our daily activities we shall throw our heart and soul into the sea of Peace. He is mistaken who thinks that peace will, on its own, enter into his life at the end of his life's journey. The hope of achieving peace without meditation and spiritual discipline is to expect water in the desert.

To have peace of mind, prayer is essential. Now, how to pray? With tears in our hearts. Where to pray? In a lonely place. When to pray? The moment our inner being wants us to pray. Why to pray? This is the question of questions. We have to pray if we want our desires or aspirations to be fulfilled by God. What can we expect from God beyond this? We can expect Him to make us understand everything, everything in nothing and nothing in everything, the Full in the Void and the Void in the Full.

We must always discriminate. We shall have to feel that the outer world which is attracting our attention is constantly fleeting. To have something everlasting, to attain to a rocklike foundation in life, we shall have to turn toward God. There is no alternative. And there is no better moment to take that turn than when we feel most helpless.

To feel oneself helpless is good.
Better is it to cultivate the spirit of self-surrender.
Best is it to be the conscious instrument of God.

Everything depends on the mind, consciously or unconsciously, including the search for peace. The function of the mind is to remove the cloud of doubt. The function of purity in the mind is to destroy the teeming clouds of worldliness and the ties of Ignorance. If there is no purity of the mind, there is no sustained success in the spiritual life.

We own peace only after we have totally stopped finding fault with others. We shall have to feel the whole world as our very own. When we observe others' mistakes, we enter into their imperfections. This does not help us in the least. Strangely enough, the deeper we plunge, the clearer it becomes to us that the imperfections of others are our own imperfections, but in different bodies and minds. Whereas if we think of God, His Compassion and His Divinity enlarge our inner vision of truth. We must come in the fulness of our spiritual realisation to accept humanity as one family.

We must not allow our past to torment and destroy the peace of our heart. Our good and divine actions can easily counteract our past bad and undivine actions. If sin has the power to make us weep, meditation has undoubtedly the power to give us joy, to endow us with the Divine Wisdom.

Again to pray to God for peace with full concentration and singleness of devotion even for five minutes is more important than to spend long hours in carefree and easygoing meditation.

Our peace is within. And this peace is the basis of our life, so from today let us resolve to fill our minds and hearts with the tears of devotion, the foundation of peace. If our inner basis is solid, then no matter how high we raise the superstructure, danger can never threaten us. For peace is below, peace is above, peace is within, peace is without.

Man

Creation is proud of Man, its crown and peak. Man is proud of his eminence and fulfilment. But in God's vision, even a self-realised man is only the child of the superman to come upon earth.

Man is the son of an ape! But he will be the father of a superman! But how? Both his fast-mounting yearning and the evolving wheel of Life will be responsible for this mighty transformation.

Man is synonymous with impotence. His goal is a far cry from his natural experience. His present is dead in ignorance. But his future will be dead to ignorance. Today brutality gambols within him; tomorrow Divinity.

Alas, man is not aware of the fact that his sweetness and humility go far, yet cost practically nothing.

Man, in essence, is not ugly. But hard is it for a man to appear beautiful, for he has lost the contact with his soul, the child of All-Beauty.

What is it, after all, that gives to a child his charm and beauty? Is it not the soul's glow? When that touch gets fainter and is finally lost, he becomes a dull and cautious adult.

Man is by nature a lover. Only he has yet to discover the real thing of love. This quest awakens him to the fulfilment of his real Self.

Who is man after all? The one whose eye will make him Eternal, the one whose heart will throb with Immortality.

The man who is a sincere seeker of the Infinite must needs always say: "So little done, so much to do."

Man has two weapons: hope and despair. With hope he tries to kill the stagnation of incapacity. With despair he tries to kill the birth of the golden future.

If man's life is given for living, then Truth can have its inevitable reason for existing.

Man's joy in forgiving is a joy worth having. Man's joy in being forgiven is a joy worth aspiring for.

Neither admiration nor critical penetration can make one see the secrets of another's life. Self-sacrifice alone can do it.

Man's unseen strength is in his uncertain hopes. His hope's strength is in his sacrifice. His sacrifice's strength is in God's Grace. His Grace's strength is the All-Fulfilling Delight.

Man and woman

Equality is a shaky bridge between man and woman. Both man and woman desperately need love and love alone. It is love that is Bliss and never the sense of equality.

Man will be a beggar if he does not get sweetness and sacrifice from woman. Woman will suffer the same fate if she does not get strength and security from man.

If woman's strength is in the beauty of her tears, then man's strength is in the sacrifice of his heart.

If woman's strength is in her silence and reserve, then man's strength is in his vision and action.

If woman's strength is in her quick rejection, then man's strength is in his life's new orientation.

Man thinks of what to say. Woman thinks of how to act.

Man and woman in ignorant love see only one subtle thief: Time. Man and woman in wise love feel only one faithful and inspiring servant: Time.

Man and woman are at their best when they give to each other not only what they have but what they are.

Man brings the message of Heaven. Woman brings the message of Divine Earth. Woman, even in her highest aspect, creates her fulfilment on earth, as Prakriti. It is for her to bring the glorious perfection of heaven to the material base of earth.

Be it in art or literature,
Be it in scholarship or teaching,
Be it in administration and commerce,
Be it in service to society,
Be it in wifehood and motherhood,
Be it in philosophical quest or religious aspiration,
Be it even in spiritual realisation —

Woman is intended by the Supreme to bring the Divine Perfection to earth. Every sphere and aspect of earth, its grossest needs as well as its subtlest nuances, must feel the touch of woman's radiant emanation.

Four eyes

God's Tears in doubting eyes.
God's Hope in aspiring eyes.
God's Smile in conquering eyes.
But God in all-giving eyes.

Delight you need

Delight you need?
Sacrifice you feed.
Precious is love
Below, above.
And precious more
Surrender's Door,
Breathe in the One
Won Golden Sun.

Fear

Whom do I fear?
The Lord?
The One?
Not true.
I am
My Father's son.

What do I fear?
My ignorance vast —
The sleepless spear,
The eyeless dust.

Why do I fear?
Because my eyes
See not the Smile
Of the golden skies.

And what is fear?
A tempting call
From the bondage-sphere
Of an airtight ball.

And where is fear?
It is everywhere,
Death's atmosphere,
Shameless and bare.

Problems and difficulties

We agonise ourselves in trying to make a problem vanish. We would like it to cease existing. "Let it end," we cry. And God laughs at us. But as soon as we accept a difficulty as inevitable, ordained by God, it slowly melts away until the day comes when we wonder where it has disappeared.

As soon as you have conquered a difficulty, you find that it repeats itself on a higher and subtler level. It is the same essential weakness in yourself which you are made to face in a more refined form.

A problem exists only in our own consciousness. The same external situation becomes a problem for me but not for you. Why? Because it disturbs some element of my inner harmony, while yours is left untouched.

There is no other way to spiritual success than to sit at the feet of Patience, trusting to her lords, Time and Progress.

Adversity makes you dynamic. Adversity forces your eyes wide open. Adversity teaches you the meaning of patience. Adversity endows you with faith in yourself. Adversity opens the secret door through which you can see the ultimate future fulfilment of God's Will.

Is there anyway left for man to be free? Certainly there is. The moment he feels his mind to be a thought of God, he can be at large like a bird in the sky; his life, however fleeting, is a breath of his inner Pilot.

Aspiration can be raised to meet the Peace above; but Peace must be brought down to remove one's difficulties.

Are you casting about for true happiness in life? If so, yield not to reason, yield not to fate, but yield only to the dictates of your Inner Voice.

Difficulty is often fed by its master, Distrust. What is the function of Distrust? Its function is to interfere in the action of the Divine Grace.

An absolute surrender to the Divine is the only strength that can help an aspirant to wrestle with all the outer and inner problems of life.

Today properly guarded can easily escape tomorrow's snare. It can even nullify yesterday's stumbles.

To think that pain is a well-deserved punishment is wrong. To think that pain is an unavoidable heritage of karma is worse. To think that pain can never be surmounted is worst of all. Pain is a momentary experience of one's limited self before it enters into the sea of Bliss.

Scorn, deprecation and misunderstanding are the usual step-parents of true genius.

As our very existence depends on God alone, we must be independent of the values of others, the opinions of others, the demands of others.

AUM — A monthly journal of spiritual philosophy and yoga²

"AUM" is a sacred Sanskrit mystic syllable which prefaces all Hindu prayers. The first issue of the journal AUM (Vol.1, No.1) deals with its full spiritual significance.

© Chinmoy Kumar Ghose 1966

AUM is a monthly journal devoted exclusively to the spiritual writings of Chinmoy Kumar Ghose. It will deal with the spiritual life and its problems from the point of view of Indian philosophy and yoga.AUM is intended to help aspirants of the West in their search for a true inner life by acquainting them with the realisations of a seeker of the Supreme.