Part I — Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossoms

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These Peace-Blossoms are our heart’s cries and our soul’s smiles in the service of mankind for the transformation of human life and the perfection of the human race. These Peace-Blossoms claim each and every human being on earth as their own, very own, as part and parcel of one peaceful, blissful world-family.

Mactan-Cebu International Airport — a Sri Chinmoy Peace Airport¹

I bow and bow and bow and bow to the soul, the heart, the mind, the vital and the body of the Mactan-Cebu International Airport. My esteemed brother-friend Captain Oppus, my esteemed brother-friend Mayor Weigel, and my dear sister Mrs. Erediano, to each of you I offer my heart of love, oneness and gratitude.

To start with, in all sincerity I wish to tell you all that I am not a teacher of peace and I am not an ambassador of peace. What I am is a student of peace. A student of peace has the opportunity to learn and unlearn. A student of peace learns how to receive divine qualities from his Inner Pilot and he learns how to listen in the inmost recesses of his heart to the blessingful Messages of his Inner Pilot. Again, he unlearns the experiences of division and supremacy that the mind has given him over the years. The mind has taught us the song of supremacy as well as many other undivine lessons. The mind has given us many unfortunate experiences. As a student of peace, these lessons and experiences I try to unlearn.

The experiences of the heart strengthen us, expand our horizons, make us feel that we are all one family and we have only one home. Our life-tree has countless branches, flowers and fruits. Each individual is a beautiful, beautiful flower with fragrance. Each individual is a sweet, delicious fruit of that life-tree.

Here we are at the International Airport. An airport is the home of aspiring, evolving humanity. From this home we start our journey. Again, we come back here to this home at the end of our journey’s close. This home teaches us the importance of speed. Faster than the fastest its child, the aeroplane, takes us to another part of the world. This home gives us the message of adventure. From here we go to another part of the world with enthusiasm and love to experience the beauty, divinity and fragrance of people from other countries and to become inseparably one with their joys and sorrows.

Aspiration and dedication are the two wings of our soul-bird, the inner reality. We aspire to fly higher and highest and we dedicate ourselves to become one, inseparably one, with the rest of the world. Each individual is a pilgrim. With his ever-new dream he is flying in the sky of hope, in the sky of promise. So this International Airport is our soul’s promise and our heart’s love. With our love we shall see the world and feel the world as our own, very own. With our promise we shall increase the beauty and divinity of each and every human being and each and every nation.

My esteemed brother-friend, the Mayor, spoke about the League of Nations and the United Nations. I am extremely fortunate to be a servitor of the United Nations. I have been serving the United Nations for about a quarter of a century. These last 23 years I have been serving the United Nations with my prayers and meditations. Twice a week I go to the United Nations. About 60 students of mine work at the United Nations, and also there are many seekers, right from the highest officials — ambassadors, delegates and diplomats — down to the general staff, who come to pray and meditate with us. The League of Nations was a tiny plant. Now the plant has grown into a huge banyan tree, the United Nations. The United Nations is the hope of mankind. There the representatives of various countries come and offer their goodwill and exchange their lofty ideas on how all the people of the world can become inseparably one.

Unfortunately, peace is still a far cry. This world of ours has not yet seen the face or felt the heart of peace. Why, why, why? Precisely because we are trying to bring about world peace with our mind’s brilliance, splendour and scientific capacities. As long as we try to establish world peace on the strength of our mind’s capacities, we shall sadly fail. We shall succeed only when we exercise our heart’s capacities.

The very nature of the human mind is division. The mind gets pleasure only in lording it over others, in exercising its supremacy. When I live in the mind, I always want to be at least one step ahead of you, or I want to be a few inches above your head. But as long as I am ahead of you or higher than you are, I will never be able to give you the real happiness, and inside this happiness is peace. We have to walk side by side, or we have to carry the other individuals inside our heart-garden. At every moment we must see the aspiration and dedication of all world-citizens. Each citizen is a flower and his heart is its fragrance.

I am a student of peace; I am a student of the heart. I pray to God to expand my heart at every moment. This heart alone will be able to make me feel that each individual on earth is not only mine but also an ever-climbing oneness-breath.

Peace does not have to remain a far cry. Now we are like patients in a mental hospital, but we have to come out. We can only come out of the mental hospital if we use the proper medicine, and this medicine is the feeling of oneness. This oneness we can feel only when we claim the entire world as our own, very own. By dividing the world, we are only taking ourselves away, far, farther, farthest, from our Source, which is Immortality.

The way of the heart has no U-turn. Once we start our journey, we only walk, march, run and sprint along Eternity’s Road. Here each step reminds us of what we eternally are: happiness, happiness and happiness. Happiness and peace are inseparable. They are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. Happiness is the beauty of our soul, and peace is the fragrance of our soul. Our soul is the direct representative of our Absolute Lord Supreme, who is at once omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

Let us pray and meditate to be the beauty of our heart-flower and fragrance of our heart-flower. It is in the beauty and fragrance of our heart-flower that we shall have peace, abiding peace, infinite peace, that will inundate the length and breadth of the entire world.

I wish to offer my heart’s very special gratitude to all those who serve this august airport. Each server plays a most significant role in welcoming, in helping and in giving joy to thousands of pilgrims who come to this home to be blessed with hope, promise and fulfilment.

Rizal Memorial Library and Museum — A Sri Chinmoy Peace Museum, Cebu City²

My art is a beautiful flower from my aspiration-heart. My art is a sweet fragrance from my dedication-life. My art is a God-searching and God-longing cry and a God-revealing and God-manifesting smile of my life-breath.

With my art I have attained a high altitude in my aspiration-flight. With my art I have obtained an unmistakably free access to all the inner worlds. With my art I have transformed my mind’s untold tragedies and miseries into my heart’s enlightening rhapsodies and ecstasies.

My art is a master-builder of my sterling faith-temple, indomitable confidence-fort and immortal promise-tower. My faith tells me that my Lord Supreme’s Heart is for my life. My confidence tells me that my very existence on earth is sleeplessly and breathlessly only for God’s God-Satisfaction in His own Way. My promise tells me that there shall come a time, either in the near future or in the distant future, when this world of ours will be inundated with Infinity’s peace.

Peace, peace, peace. What is peace? Peace is the embodiment of abiding happiness. Peace is the revelation of perfect perfection in a human being. Peace is the complete manifestation of God’s transcendental Dream here on earth.

I am now offering my prayerful gratitude to the heart and soul of this Museum. When I drew these paintings, I had only love, devotion and joy. Now I am adding gratitude to my love, devotion and joy. From now on, the paintings that are here will embody my gratitude as well.

These paintings of mine are like tiny drops, and the Museum is like the vast ocean. When the tiny drops enter into the ocean lovingly, soulfully and self-givingly, they immediately become part and parcel of the mighty ocean. They lose their finite existence and become the Existence infinite and immortal.

I am offering my heart of boundless gratitude to the Vice Mayor, the Curator, the Cultural Affairs Officer and all the others who have so kindly accepted my peace-service to humanity. These Peace-Blossoms are our heart’s cries and our soul’s smiles in the service of mankind for the transformation of human life and the perfection of the human race. These Peace-Blossoms claim each and every human being on earth as their own, very own, as part and parcel of one peaceful, blissful world-family.

Davao International Airport — a Sri Chinmoy Peace Airport³

My dear friend, my dear brother, my dear manager of this Davao International Airport, Mr Angel Rongcal, I wish to offer you my heart’s deepest love, deepest gratitude and deepest joy for allowing my name to be closely associated with your International Airport.

The term “international” at once frightens the human in us and gladdens the divine in us. The mind quite often gets frightened by the term “international” because it refers to something so vast, so enormous, and the mind is frightened by vastness. But the heart, on the strength of its oneness with the world-family, feels tremendous joy, tremendous love and tremendous satisfaction when something is international. The heart is like the tiny drop identifying with the vast ocean. When the tiny drop enters into the ocean, it becomes so happy that it has become part and parcel of the ocean. Similarly, I as an individual feel so much joy and satisfaction that I am becoming part and parcel of the International Airport of Davao.

Every day thousands of people are arriving and departing from this place. They are coming from so many countries around the world to share their hope, joy, inspiration and aspiration with the people of Davao. At the same time, they are carrying the message of hope, inspiration, joy, love and oneness from Davao to other parts of the world.

Each airport is a home to so many aeroplanes. The aeroplanes are the children of the airport. The children of the airport bring thousands of people to their home and carry thousands of people from their home to various parts of the world. I was born in India, and I was brought from India to America by the airport-child Air India. Now I was brought to Davao by another airport-child, Philippine Airlines. So the children of the airport carry the members of the international family lovingly, affectionately, compassionately from one place to another. It is by virtue of their affection, love and concern that vastness is transformed into sweetness and a feeling of oneness-home.

Peace means happiness. This happiness comes when we see and feel the Infinite inside the finite. Today I am extremely happy because I have become part and parcel of the international existence of this International Airport. My happiness and gratitude know no bounds, for you have given me the opportunity to become inseparably one with something very vast — an international existence, a universal existence. For that I am extremely grateful to you, dear manager of the Airport, dear friend and brother of our Peace-Blossoms oneness-family.

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Peace is the embodiment of abiding happiness. Peace is the revelation of perfect perfection in a human being. Peace is the complete manifestation of God’s transcendental Dream here on earth.

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The silent profundity of the mountain reminds us of our own origin peace in infinite measure.

Mount Apo — A Sri Chinmoy Peace Mountain⁴

I am deeply grateful to the Mayor of Davao for bestowing upon me this signal honour and most graciously blessing me with the key to the City. This key has come from his heart and has entered into my heart of aspiration and my life of dedication. My heart-door shall always remain wide open to serve the City of Davao with utmost love and humility.

Out of his tremendous kindness, the Mayor has also dedicated Mount Apo as a Sri Chinmoy Peace Mountain. A mountain signifies peace, tranquillity and inner depth. When we are at the foot of a mountain, it reminds us of our own highest aspiration-heights. When we are on the top of a mountain, we feel that we have climbed high, higher, highest to our own divinity’s celestial heights. The silent profundity of the mountain reminds us of our own origin: peace in infinite measure.

I am extremely happy and proud to be so closely associated with the aspiration and dedication of the City of Davao. Our Peace-Blossoms are part of our oneness-heart. This oneness-heart we try to offer wherever we go. We have been here in the Philippines for about three weeks. Each day we have been in this country, whether it is in Manila, Cebu City or Davao, we have felt very special blessings, love, concern and a feeling of oneness from the people that we have met. Also, Mother Nature has been most significantly blessing us. My students and I are extremely fortunate to have been able to bask in the atmosphere of the Philippines — the air, the water, the sunshine. In so many ways the country of the Philippines has bestowed its kindness, affection and compassion upon me and my students.

In a week’s time we shall leave for America and other countries. But we shall carry with us in the inmost recesses of our hearts your boundless love, concern and affection. My special gratitude to the heart and soul and life of each citizen of Davao I am offering now.

Tonight I shall be offering a Peace Concert here, and I invite you with all my heart. This peace concert will make you feel that we all belong to one family. When we see the world with our affection and love, the farthest corner of the globe becomes nearer than the nearest. When we use the heart, the entire world we can unmistakably claim as our own, very own. It is the mind that divides us, but our heart constantly sings the song of oneness. And inside oneness alone abides peace.

Let us fervently pray to the Almighty Lord to blessingfully bestow upon us the genuine feeling of oneness and oneness and oneness. When we see and feel oneness in our day-to-day activities, this world of ours will definitely be transformed into a cherished paradise.

Once more to the Mayor of this beloved city I am offering my heart of gratitude for his extreme kindness to my students and myself and for being a true lover of peace and oneness. In him we feel a real oneness-home and we offer our heart of love to the Mayor and his oneness-home.

Province of Negros Oriental — A Sri Chinmoy Peace Province⁵

My Dumaguete friends, my brothers and sisters, I am a man of prayer; I am a student of peace. I am praying to the Heavenly Father to bring to the fore all your divine qualities and to increase them in boundless measure. I am praying to the Heavenly Father to bestow upon each of you His Dream Message, which is peace. And I am also praying to the Heavenly Father to give you joy in infinite measure and to give you ceaseless and indomitable strength to love both Him and His Son, the Saviour Christ, and to please Them in Their own Way.

This is my prayer to the Heavenly Father for you, my dear friends, my sisters and brothers of Dumaguete.

Part II — Press conference at the Manila Hotel

PBP 9-15. 31 December 1992.

Question: What is the purpose of your visit to the Philippines?

Sri Chinmoy: The purpose of my visit is very simple: I have come here to offer my prayers and meditations to the heart and soul of the Philippines, and at the same time to receive blessings from the soul and the heart of the Philippines.

Question: As you know, there is an ongoing communist insurgency in this country. When do you think peace will be achieved?

Sri Chinmoy: Certainly your country will be inundated with peace, but at God's choice Hour. This world of ours is composed of brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters do quarrel and fight from time to time, but they know that they belong to one family. So eventually they stop quarrelling and fighting. They become one, inseparably one, in their inner feelings and in their outer activities.

Question: We understand you are going to meet with Cardinal Sin and President Ramos. Do you have any special peace message for them?

Sri Chinmoy: Tomorrow I will be meeting with Cardinal Sin. I will go there only to receive blessings from him. He is a spiritual person, and I am a spiritual seeker. So it is only to have blessings from Cardinal Sin that I will be going to visit him. Two years ago I met with Cardinal Hume in England. I went to him with the same purpose — to be blessed by him.

Question: Is yours a religion?

Sri Chinmoy: Ours is not a religion; ours is a way of life. I was born a Hindu, but I do not promote Hinduism. My religion is love of God. Whoever loves God is my brother and sister. This is my way of life.

Question: Could you tell us your experience in Viet Nam?

Sri Chinmoy: I am extremely grateful to the Vietnamese. They have been extremely kind and compassionate to me. As you know, the Viet Nam War between the Americans and the Vietnamese took place in the 1960s. One of the places where the worse fighting took place, the Mekong Delta, will be known as a Sri Chinmoy Peace Delta. This is a blessingful gift from the heart and soul of Viet Nam, and I am extremely grateful to Viet Nam for that.

Question: What is the best way of bringing about peace amongst the people of the world as you see it?

Sri Chinmoy: I feel that it is through prayer, meditation and dedicated service that world peace can take place. Each individual has to try and make others happy, for it is only through happiness that we can have peace. If we can offer happiness to someone lovingly and sincerely, then that particular person will have only goodwill towards us. So from happiness we get peace and from peace we get happiness; the two are inseparable.

Question: I notice that you have a Filipino instrument here. Are you going to play it?

Sri Chinmoy: The day after tomorrow is our Peace Concert at the Manila Cathedral. I will play it then. I have many, many instruments from various countries. When I play an instrument from a particular country, I invoke the blessingful presence of the soul of that country. Then I get immense joy, for I feel that I am receiving the blessings from that particular country.

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When I am in the heart, with the heart and for the heart, there is no such thing as impossibility because of the heart’s oneness. When I am in the heart, I become one with each and every human being on earth.

Part III — Press conference at the Cebu Midtown Hotel

PBP 17-19. 5 January 1993.

Question: To be able to lift with just one arm the weight of 7,000 pounds is seemingly as impossible a task as trying to establish peace among the peoples of the world. Is it possible for you to explain how you are able to do such a feat, which is scientifically and logically impossible?

Sri Chinmoy: First of all, from the very depth of my heart I wish to thank you for asking me this question. Your question is, for me, more illumining than the answer could ever be. Impossibility is a word that we find in the English dictionary. But this particular word we do not find in our heart's dictionary. Our heart recognises no such word. In our heart we are all the time expanding our own reality and growing from the finite into the Infinite. There what we are dreaming of today is becoming the reality of tomorrow.

There is the reality of the mind and the reality of the heart. When we live in the reality of the mind, we are constantly separating ourselves from others. We sing only one song: my and mine. We know only one truth: division. When we live in the heart, we are constantly expanding on the strength of our oneness with everything around us. There is no division in the heart; there is only multiplication. At every moment we are multiplying our capacities and our inner divinity.

If I ask my mind whether I can lift 7,000 pounds, immediately it will say, “Impossible!” I do not need anyone else in the world to doubt my capacities. My own mind is by far the best doubter. It will do the job better than anybody else. But when I am in the heart, with the heart and for the heart, there is no such thing as impossibility because of the heart’s oneness. When I am in the heart, I become one with each and every human being on earth. If countless human beings are with me and for me, then lifting 7,000 pounds is not a difficult task.

So through my prayer and meditation I am able to expand my love for my fellow citizens of the world and enter into the Universal Consciousness. For the Universal Consciousness to lift up 7,000 pounds is absolutely nothing. It is like lifting up a grain of sand.

We pray and meditate so that we do not remain in the mind-reality, which is constantly dividing us. We want to remain only in the heart-reality that claims the whole world as its very own. If we remain in the heart and sing the song of universal oneness, we will be able to accomplish everything. The capacity of our heart far transcends the capacity of science. Our prayer-life and meditation-life can take us far, far beyond the domain of scientific capacity.

Question: Would it be possible for our provincial and city officials to unite in peace through your presence here and through the Peace Run?

Sri Chinmoy: We can only pray and meditate. Then it is up to God whether or not He fulfils our prayer and meditation. If we do anything with expectation, most of the time we are frustrated. But if we do the needful and say, as the Saviour taught us, "Let Thy Will be done,” at that time we are offering the best prayer and doing the right thing.

You may say that it is something noble that you are praying for. It is something noble, true. But God has His own time. We use the term “God’s choice Hour”. People often feel that if they ask for something good, then their prayer ought to be fulfilled immediately. But it does not happen that way. It is not like instant coffee.

First we sow a seed. Soon it germinates and becomes a tiny plant. Then it becomes a small tree, and finally it becomes a huge tree. So everything takes time. But just because something takes time, we must not lose patience. Overnight we cannot become the best human being on earth. A stairway has many steps, and we have to climb all of the steps to reach the highest height.

So I will pray, my students will pray, you will pray and the heart and soul of Cebu will pray. Just because we pray, we can hope and even be certain that there shall come a time when our prayer will be fulfilled. It can be in the very near future or in the distant future. We are doing the right thing by praying. And if we do the right thing, then naturally God will shower His choicest Blessings on our devoted heads and surrendered lives.

On the other hand, if we do not do the right thing, then nothing good will ever be accomplished. So let us start our journey by praying for oneness; God will blessingfully appreciate us. Then, at His choice Hour, He will definitely fulfil our most sincere longing.

Question: Do you have a message for the people of Cebu?

Sri Chinmoy: I wish to offer a soulful prayer to the Inner Pilot of Cebu on the strength of my heart's oneness with each citizen of Cebu.

O Inner Pilot, Supreme Pilot of Cebu, You have given us simplicity in our lives. You have given us sincerity in our minds. You have given us purity in our hearts. You have given us many, many good qualities out of Your boundless Compassion-Light.

Now we pray to You only for one thing: poise, poise, poise — inner poise in our central being. We feel that once we can establish ourselves in the beauty, light, delight, power and fragrance of inner poise, at that time all the divine qualities that You have already given us out of Your boundless Bounty will supremely and completely blossom.

Right now the divine qualities that we have are not enough to make us absolutely perfect citizens of the world. But if once we can swim in Eternity's sea of infinite inner Poise, then we are bound to arrive at our destined Goal. At that time our lifeboat will definitely arrive at the Golden Shore of the ever-transcending Beyond.

Part IV — Television interview at Davao International Airport

PBP 20-22. 13 January 1993.

Interviewer: What do you hope will be accomplished by the dedication of this Peace Airport?

Sri Chinmoy: Every day we are trying to have happiness in our lives. This happiness we can get only from peace. If I love you and you love me, then inside our love is peace. If we have peace, then we have everything.

Every day so many people are coming and going through this International Airport. From now on, if they feel a sense of oneness, then they will be happy and peaceful. This is a new idea, a new hope, a new dream and a new promise.

Interviewer: What is your message to the people of Davao City?

Sri Chinmoy: My prayerful message to the people of Davao is very simple: together we have to walk, together we have to dream, together we have to feel the necessity of oneness. Each individual in this beautiful place I regard as my own, very own. So to each individual I am offering my love, my affection and my oneness, as I am offering to the General Manager of the International Airport my affection, love and gratitude. He has done us a great favour by allowing us to be associated with this International Airport. For that, to the Manager and Engineer here, I am offering my deepest gratitude.

My message to the people of Davao is the same: my heart of love, my heart of joy and my heart of gratitude I am offering to each individual for the establishment of a world family, which will be flooded with peace, love and joy. This is my message of oneness that I am offering to each person in Davao City.

Interviewer: Thank you very much, Sri Chinmoy. I would like to express my deep gratitude to you for giving us the opportunity to talk with you.

Sri Chinmoy: I am very grateful to you, for you have given me the opportunity to be of service to so many of your countrymen. Thousands and thousands of people will have the opportunity to see that my heart of oneness is sincere and that I have come to serve all the people of Davao through my prayers and meditations.

Part V — Press conferences at the South Seas Hotel

PBP 23-28. Dumaguete, 19 and 20 January 1993.

Question: Is this your first time in Dumaguete?

Sri Chinmoy: I came to Dumaguete for the first time 23 years ago. At that time I gave a talk at Silliman University to the medical students. In my talk I said that spirituality and medicine must go together because our goal is the same: to conquer disease, ignorance and, finally, death. God is inside spirituality and He is also inside medicine. In a tug-of-war, when there are two persons on one side and only one person on the other side, the side that has two persons will definitely win. So spirituality and medical science must join together on one side in the tug-of-war. Since only one enemy stands against us — disease — we are bound to win.

God is inside you, inside me, inside everybody. No matter what you are, no matter what I am, deep inside us is the same God. In a family, one person may be a lawyer, one may be a doctor, one may be a military man and one may be a politician, but each one has the same father. So the more people in our world-family that we can get on our side, the easier it will be for us to fight against disease and death.

Question: Do you notice many changes on your return to Dumaguete after so many years?

Sri Chinmoy: I see that the inner, spiritual qualities of Dumaguete have been kept intact, and for that I am so happy. Again, modernism and scientific development also have entered. On the one hand, that is good, but sometimes we surrender our inner qualities, our heart's qualities, when we develop the material life. Then we lose the most precious thing in life.

I am so happy that in Dumaguete you have kept a balance between them. You have kept your spirituality and, at the same time, you have adopted modern, scientific ways. I am seeing that you are able to derive benefit from technology and, at the same time, keep your precious qualities of the heart.

Some countries, unfortunately, become very hungry or greedy. They want only outer development, outer achievements, material success, material prosperity. They neglect their inner qualities; their simplicity, sincerity, purity, humility and other good qualities they lose or destroy. They know what they are destroying, but they do not care. They feel that people have only outer eyes, and they want only outer appreciation and admiration. You do not know at this moment whether I am having a good thought or a bad thought, whether I am thinking well of you or inwardly criticising you. But if you see me wearing a nice suit or something very gorgeous, then immediately you admire and appreciate me. Outer appearances can easily fool us.

If we allow modern technology to lord it over us, it can and will, but at the same time we may lose our heart’s main quality, which is love. The call letters of your radio station are LUV — love. Our philosophy is love, devotion and surrender. We start with love. In everything we do, we try to express our love of God. We love both God the Creator and God the creation and feel that He is not only high in Heaven, but also here on earth. He is not only above us, but also within us and around us.

Again, we have to know there are two kinds of love — human love and divine love. Human love is all possession. Divine love is expansion. With human love we are only thinking of loving and being loved by one individual. Divine love wants to love everybody — the whole creation. Human love is very limited. If you are born in Dumaguete, your love will be confined only to Dumaguete. But if your love is divine, then it will spread throughout the length and breadth of the Philippines and enter into the farthest corners of the globe. Divine love, which thinks of God first, is all-pervading, like the boundless ocean.

Through your radio station, you are using your love properly. Because of your radio station, so many thousands and thousands of people are getting joy every day. If you didn't have this station, they would have only talked to the members of their family. Their love and their wisdom would be confined only to their own tiny house. But you are bringing to them the message of something far beyond their domain. You are bringing the message of universal love and oneness.

Question: How did you start your crusade?

Sri Chinmoy: We call it a pilgrimage. Pilgrims are people who have new dreams and want to envision new realities in life. We are not discarding the old dreams, but we feel we have to take a new step. I have already covered a certain distance, let us say, but now I want to take a second step, a third step and a fourth step. It is the pilgrim in us that wants to enjoy new adventures with love, purity, simplicity and humility. We use the term 'pilgrimage' because we go to various parts of the world with affection, love, concern and the feeling that the rest of the world is part of our own family.

A tree has quite a few branches. For us, each country is like a branch of a tree. We don't have to spend the rest of our lives on one particular branch. Like a bird we can fly from one branch to another and let the beauty, purity and fragrance of each branch enter into us.

The great philosopher Socrates said, "I am not an Athenian; I am cosmopolitan." We also feel the same. We claim the whole world as our own. Since we claim the whole world to be our home, each year we visit new countries and share with them our heart-power, joy and feeling of oneness.

Question: Will you be joining tomorrow's Peace Run?

Sri Chinmoy: My students will run, and I will be running inside their devoted hearts. I have run marathons quite a few times, but now my knees are injured and I find I can run only on soft surfaces like a cinder track or grass. But I shall run in and through my students. They are my inspiration, my joy and my pride. I am their spiritual father. When the father grows old and can no longer run, he still inspires his children to run because he knows that running is good.

Here we are running for world peace. I started this movement about ten years ago and I am behind it. God, our Inner Pilot, gave us the inspiration to serve Him in this way. There are so many ways to serve God and love God, but He wanted us to serve Him by bringing peace to the fore. This world of ours has everything save and except peace. Politicians try to bring about world peace. Peace-dreamers and peace-lovers try to bring about world peace. Each one has a different way. You have one way, he has another way, I may have still another way. But we are all aiming towards the same goal.

We are seekers. As seekers, we will always try to do the right thing for humanity because we feel that all human beings are our brothers and sisters. So as a seeker, I will try to be of service to you by bringing peace into your entire being, and definitely you will also do the same for me.

Question: Do you feel that war is part of the human condition?

Sri Chinmoy: There are countless people on earth who love war, as long as other people are being destroyed. People like to watch boxing, but they don't want to be boxers themselves. At a distance people like many things.

The animal propensities are still dominating us. If ninety per cent of the people wanted peace and only ten per cent wanted war, then the face of the world would be totally changed. In their hearts people may want peace, but unfortunately the aggressive vital and uncompromising mind are still dominant.

Question: Can you give us a message for the people of Dumaguete?

Sri Chinmoy: My message is very, very simple. When we talk about God, immediately we think of Heaven; God is somewhere high, higher, highest. We do not feel God's Presence on earth. Often we say that God is everywhere, but as soon as we start praying, we look up to the sky. If God is everywhere, then we have to see Him here on earth as well-inside you, inside me, inside nature.

Dumaguete's beauty, simplicity and purity are inspiring me far beyond my imagination. About an hour ago I was telling my students that Dumaguete is paradise. If I did not have responsibilities — as you know, I have students all over the world — I would have stayed here in Dumaguete for at least another month because it reminds me of the Indian village where I was born.

I was born in a village in Chittagong, which is now part of Bangladesh. Previously it was in India. Dumaguete is exactly the same as that village, especially when it comes to nature's beauty. The only difference is that some buildings here are modern. The same simplicity, the same serenity, the same purity I see all around.

These divine qualities are Dumaguete's contribution to the visitors who come here like pilgrims from various parts of the world. In our case, some of my students are from America, Australia, England, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Sweden, Hungary and other places. For us life is a tree and all the countries are branches. If there were no branches, if there were only the trunk, then nobody would call it a tree. There have to be branches as well as flowers and fruits.

When we visit a different country, we feel we are climbing up a different branch of the life-tree. Here in Dumaguete the branch is offering us such beautiful flowers and most delicious fruits — particularly the life's simplicity and the heart's purity. These two things are of paramount importance, and for that we are very, very grateful to the people of Dumaguete and very, very proud of their natural achievements.

So in one sentence I can say that the simple life, the pure heart and the inquisitive mind of Dumaguete are, for us, genuine blessingful gifts.

Part VI — Millennium Man of the Twenty-first Century Award

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I wish to pray on behalf of all of us to the Lord Supreme to bless us with a millennium of dreams that will elevate the consciousness of humanity and make each and every human being supremely perfect. I am praying to God to bless each and every individual each day with a new dream of world peace and a new dream of world harmony.

Millennium Man of the Twenty-first Century Award ¹⁰

I am extremely happy to be here and to be blessed by the immortal souls of Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Krishnamurti: the source and its branches. There are many giants who have offered light to the world at large. But when I think of and meditate on Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Krishnamurti, I am all appreciation and admiration for them. You are carrying their light throughout the length and breadth of your beloved country, the Philippines. For that I offer you my heart’s deepest joy, my heart’s deepest love and my heart’s deepest gratitude.

Now I wish to say a few words with regard to your most blessingful award, your unparalleled award. You are blessing me today with an honour that far surpasses anything I could have imagined either in my life’s desire-world or in my life’s aspiration-world. It is an honour that I do not deserve in the least and, I am sure, that I will never deserve either in this incarnation or in any future incarnation. It is something that I will never deserve but which I shall always treasure here on earth until I breathe my last.

With utmost humility, with utmost sincerity, with utmost soulfulness, I wish to pray on behalf of all of us to the Lord Supreme to bless us with a millennium of dreams that will elevate the consciousness of humanity and make each and every human being supremely perfect. I am praying to God to bless each and every individual each day with a new dream of world peace and a new dream of world harmony.

As long as we love the desire-world, either consciously or unconsciously, our dream will be to possess the world. As long as we live in the world of desire, our dream will be of boundless material wealth so that we can exercise our supremacy and lord it over others. We feel that by being above others or ahead of others we shall be able to derive satisfaction. But this is a deplorable mistake. We will never find satisfaction by either possessing the world or being possessed by the world.

Again, if we live in the world of aspiration, we will cherish other sweet and beautiful dreams. Our dream will be to become conscious and sleepless God-lovers and God-servers. Our dream will be to love and serve each and every human being so that God can constantly manifest His own ever-transcending Dream and Reality in and through us. As seekers of the ultimate truth, we will dream only of realising, revealing and manifesting our Beloved Lord Supreme.

Right now we are a finite existence, but we are trying to become one with God the Infinite. We are tiny drops, but when we consciously throw ourselves into the ocean of God’s Infinity, at that time our finite existence becomes part and parcel of the Infinite. Only then do we get true satisfaction. True satisfaction we get not by possessing the Infinite but by becoming one with the vast, immense, infinite Reality that has been given to us by God the Creator and which is enjoyed by God the creation in us. True satisfaction lies in becoming one with God’s infinite Existence and then revealing and manifesting God’s Dream on earth.

If every day we pray to God to bless us with His Infinity’s Love, Infinity’s Harmony and Infinity’s Peace, needless to say, God will definitely listen to our prayer and make us not only His choicest children of the millennium but also His Immortality’s Satisfaction Delight. Right now we are invoking God the Infinite to liberate us from our finite existence. But a day shall come when God the Infinite will be pleased with us because we lovingly, soulfully and unconditionally represent His own Infinity. At that time God the Immortal will begin playing His Role in and through us by immortalising the Infinity that we have already become.

God the Infinite will be immortalised by God the Immortal — not for a million or a billion years, but for Eternity. God’s Immortality in us will have neither a beginning nor an end, for it is a birthless and deathless Dream that embodies the most illumining and fulfilling Reality — a Reality that will be sung by the universal Consciousness and appreciated and loved by the transcendental Consciousness of the highest Lord Supreme.

So today’s dream shall fly high, higher, highest in the firmament of Light and Delight and eventually grow into God’s immortal Satisfaction-Light, which is constantly transcending its own Infinity. This is our dream of today, but tomorrow it shall become the Reality that God the Immortal has for us and that God the Immortal is in us.

My utmost affection, love, joy and pride I am offering to the members of the Theosophical Society here, to all those who are serving the Society and also to all those who are dreaming of the Millennium. Let us offer our hearts and souls and dedicate our lives to being part and parcel of the divine Millennium, which every day, every hour, every minute and every second is growing and glowing in the hearts of all human beings who are trying to manifest the Song of the Absolute Supreme.

We all came into the world to love Him, to please Him, to manifest Him and to fulfil Him in His own Way. This is our only satisfaction. So let us delay no more. Let us fulfil our God-ordained task lovingly, cheerfully, soulfully and, finally, unconditionally. The satisfaction that the world desperately needs will come only from our love of God and our service to God in His own Way.