Where is God

Where is God?

Where is the limit of beauty?

O All-Beauty, where art Thou?

If Thou art all-where why then do my eyes fail to see Thee?

Why is my core not flooded and thrilled with Thy sweet and celestial Smile?

Where art Thou, my Lord, where?

I take great pains and leave no stone unturned to find out even the most trivial thing when it is lost. But, alas, for millenniums Thou hast been away from me. To my wide surprise, I feel no pang within me to vision Thee.

Why is it so?

Boundless is my sorrow, not because our union is severed, but because I have not cried for Thee with a snow-white heart even for a brief second.

My Lord, the face of Truth is at last revealed.

Thou art everywhere when I say

“Yes”,

Thou art nowhere when I say

“No”.

Man and God

Man's Dream is God;
God's Fulfilment, man.
Man's solace is God;
God's hope is man.

Man is God crying;
God is man struggling.
Man's strength is his ignorance;
God's strength is His Grace.

God

Verily, we are the very image of our Father, God. What a great pity that we have neither the eyes to see nor the heart to feel this sober fact.

We think that God will come to us after He has purified us with endless pain. Perhaps God knows that humanity as a whole will be able to realise Him only after He has poured a different consciousness into the atmosphere.

Uncomely blows may be the Divine's plan, absolutely misunderstood.

God tells us that He will gladly stand before us, but there are a few ifs and buts.

What are they?

Sincerity, Humility, Faith and Surrender.

What does ignorance try to teach us?

It earnestly tries to teach us that God is only an imaginary fruit of our mental conceptions.

See God first. Then you will be godlike.

To be truly godlike, talking must give way to becoming.

It is not difficult for a man to speak of God endlessly. But that poor man has to stand agape when he sees even a glimpse of His Light.

You need not go to God. God Himself will run towards you.

When?

The moment you become self-abandonment.

The God who gave us life, gave us the message of fulfilment at the same time.

Even imagined experiences have some power of their own. They enrich our mind with the idea of God's Omnipresence.

When our choice is God and not experience, we get both experience and God.

But when our choice is experience and not God, we get experience; but God is likely to avoid our company.

God is man. Man is God.

This is the only conception that can grow old along with the universe.

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.

What do we get from the inner life?

What do we get from the inner life?

We get simplicity, sincerity, integrity, purity, humility and divinity. He who has all these divine qualities will, without fail, have a life of joy, peace, freedom and fulfilment. And he who does not have these divine qualities will unmistakably have a life of tears, turmoil, bondage and frustration.

What else do we get from the inner life?

We get a growing, flowing and energising consciousness to illumine and perfect our thoughts and feelings and to accomplish our aims.

We can also grow into active and effective participants in God's cosmic experience.

To live an inner life is to become fully conscious of God's existence.

To become fully conscious of God's existence is to love humanity's breath with a boundless heart.

If we need a golden opportunity to see God's Face, the inner life is ready to grant it. If we need a faultless assurance that we are God's chosen children, the inner life is eager to give it.

When I truly live the inner life, I can dare to say, "God is mine." Doubt and fear will forever forget my name, form and address.

I dare to say, "I am God's." The journey Supreme and the Goal Transcendental will forever be mine.

God with his Light awakens my love.
God with his Bliss intensifies my devotion.
God with his Blessings immortalises my surrender.

With my love I discover God.
With my devotion I feed God.
With my surrender I fulfil God.

My surrendering soul's journey begins with God's Concern. My craving life's journey begins with God's Compassion.

At the end of my soul's journey, I shall see God the way He wanted me to see Him. At the end of my life's journey, I shall see God the way I wanted to see Him.

Life is for man.
Man is of life.

Life is man's necessity.
Man is life's ability.

I have two I's, the small and the big. The small “I” is the ego which is still unnoticed, while the big “I” is the Self, which is still unknown. I shall notice the unnoticed to learn the Truth. I shall know the unknown to become the Truth.

It is in our inner life that we come to learn that

The soul is noble. It embodies the Truth.

The heart is noble. It realises the Truth.

The mind is noble. It expresses the Truth.

The vital is noble. It admires the Truth.

The body is noble. It serves the Truth.

Editor's introduction to the first edition

Who is man? Who is God? What do man and God mean to each other?

Since he came into existence, these three questions have echoed and re-echoed inside the depths of each man’s searching mind, longing heart, and revealing soul.

Man has searched and searched continually and continuously, consciously and unconsciously, hopefully and finally desperately for his true Self, his true Lord, his true Source. But throughout man’s soulful quest, God has never, nor will he ever allow one child of His to wander alone and unguided in his search.

God has come to man on earth again and again from time immemorial, in the form of a few God-realised souls who are chosen to guide man and reveal God to man. Sri Chinmoy is one such realised soul. At the inner command of God, the Supreme, he came to the West from his native Bengal, India in 1964 for the sole purpose of serving the Divine in humanity. Since then he has established spiritual centres in his name throughout the West, including New York, London, Puerto Rico, Connecticut, Jamaica West Indies, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Miami, Dublin and Glasgow. He also holds a weekly meditation at the United Nations in New York.

Sri Chinmoy is the Supreme’s chosen instrument. Through him God speaks to all His spiritual children, to all sincere seekers. He tells us that conscious, constant and inseparable oneness with God, our destined Goal, is not an impossible task, but rather a simple and joyful one when we can open our hearts to Him and love Him as our very own. Here in “Man and God”, Sri Chinmoy imparts to us his inner wisdom-light in a clear and direct language that all seekers can see, feel and realise.

Man asks, “Where can I find the Truth? Where can I find the answers to my lifelong questions?”

The Truth is here; the answers are here, not only in this book, but in each and every one of Sri Chinmoy’s divinely inspired writings.

To conclude, our Master’s philosophy runs: