Talks delivered at the United Nations

1. Sri Chinmoy Meditation at the United Nations

United Nations: the Heart-Home of the World-Body.

The General Assembly¹

The General Assembly begins today. It is a most significant event. The General Assembly is a family gathering of a very special family. Unlike most families, this family knows what to say, what to do and what to become. It knows how to love, how to serve and how to fulfil. What to say? The members of this family say that they wish to live together forever. What to do? They try to understand one another; they try to share with one another their teeming ideas and glowing ideals. What to become? They try to become a cry; they try to become a hope; they try to become a promise; they try to become a smile — a cry that elevates them, a hope that feeds them, a promise that reveals them, a smile that immortalises them. How to love? They try to love with their illumining souls. How to serve? They try to serve with their searching minds and their striving vitals. How to fulfil? They try to fulfil by steering God’s Dream-boat towards the Golden Shore.

The General Assembly signifies interdependence. It represents a song of the community of nations, a song of group-souls. While singing this song, these souls will climb high, higher, highest until they one day reach the transcendental Vision of world union. While singing this song, these souls will march far, farther, farthest until they one day reach the transcendental Reality of universal Peace. There is also another reason why this time of year is most significant. Thirteen years ago tomorrow, one of the great pilots of the United Nations passed behind the curtain of Eternity: Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash. But before his soul flew to the highest realm of consciousness, it left behind the quintessence of its love for humanity, its wish for peace within humanity and its feeling of oneness with humanity. Dag Hammarskjöld was a man of God and servant of humanity. The body and soul of the United Nations treasure the quintessence of his love of truth, light, peace and universal oneness.

Here we are all seekers. We, too, belong to a family, a spiritual family. We are all praying for world peace, world harmony and world union in a divine and supreme way. Today the General Assembly begins with new hope, new determination and new aspiration to discover something more illumining and more fulfilling. We, too, the seekers of infinite Truth and Light, can begin today with new hope, new determination and new aspiration as we try to become more spiritual, more sincere, more dedicated. In this way we can serve the Inner Pilot of the United Nations and the Inner Pilot of the entire world-family in a most illumining and fulfilling way.

Comments about the Secretaries-General²

I have also served the UN, for six years. But unlike you, who have served officially, I have served unofficially. With your kind permission I wish to offer two most striking experiences of mine. The first was when I met with Secretary-General U Thant in his office. His simplicity, sincerity, humility, purity and divinity made me immediately feel that I had found in him a true and genuine spiritual brother. In him I also discovered a heart of universal oneness. Then, a few years ago, I had the golden opportunity to pay my most soulful respects to the soul of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld at his grave in Uppsala. While I was offering my most soulful love, appreciation and adoration to this divinely great soul, I discovered immediately the luminosity of his mind. In his mind I found the most illumining and fulfilling vastness. Two supremely giant souls — Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant, U Thant and Dag Hammarskjöld. Inside the vastness of Dag Hammarskjöld my heart felt the love of oneness, and inside the oneness of U Thant my soul envisioned the vastness. Their oneness and vastness and vastness and oneness make me feel and realise that this UN — their dream-fulfilling reality and reality-transcending dream — will forever and ever be cherished and treasured by the aspiring, self-giving and truth-loving humanity.

Meditation for Dag Hammarskjold³

This is the first time that all the members of the Meditation Group have gone to the Meditation Room and meditated together. This is a significant occasion for us. But something infinitely more important, this is our soulful tribute to the immortal memory of the UN Pilot, Dag Hammarskjöld. We went to the Meditation Room to observe the anniversary of his death. According to human wisdom, death is a halt, where all movements cease for good. But according to divine wisdom, death is a step we take while walking along Eternity’s road.

We went there to observe the passing, or the extinction, of Dag Hammarskjöld’s body-consciousness. This is what the outer world will say. But the inner world tells us that we did not go there to observe the extinction of anything. We went to observe the illumination of a great soul, a sublime soul. His mind was illumined, his heart was totally awakened and his soul was fulfilled.

When we think of the Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, we come to realise that in him the great battle, the age-long battle between mind and heart, had come to an end. In him, the mind and the heart became good, intimate friends. We all know that when there are two friends, both friends walk together towards the same destination. But in his case, we observe something extraordinary. The mind went along the road of illumination and the heart marched along the road of liberation. However, they were in perfect conformity to one another, in perfect understanding. We think that if two persons are true friends, then they must walk together. But this is not necessary. If there are two goals that eventually merge into one goal, then these subordinate goals must be reached before we reach the ultimate goal. Illumination was the first goal, which his mind wanted to attain, and liberation of the aspiring heart was the second goal, which his heart wanted to achieve. So his mind went to the illumination-shore and his heart went to the liberation-shore. Then from the liberation-shore and the illumination-shore, the mind and the heart together went to the Perfection-shore. The Perfection-shore is the ultimate goal of each human being.

When we observe a thing with our physical eyes, with our naked eyes, we see a loss and gain, failure and success. But when we use our inner eye, our third eye, we see that there is no such thing as loss or gain, failure or success. On the physical plane, definitely it is a terrible loss for such a great soul, such a good soul, to leave the body in a plane crash. What an unfortunate experience for humanity to have. But from the spiritual point of view, it was not an accident, but a glowing reality that was entering into the ever-glowing, illumining and fulfilling Reality. Here we are all seekers. Dag Hammarskjöld was a seeker in the purest sense of the term. He was a seeker of the highest order. His heart cried for the satisfaction of mankind. His mind cried for the illumination of mankind. His body, his physical consciousness, is nowhere to be found — it is all in the elemental sheaths. But his soul is not only in Heaven, it is also on earth. The soul-bird flies from Heaven to earth, from earth to Heaven. When it comes to earth, it comes with new hope, new light, new illumination, new compassion and new consolation. Then it becomes one with us. And when it flies to Heaven, it carries our inner cry, inner thirst and inner hunger. It also carries our insufficiencies, our weaknesses, our misunderstanding, our lack of sympathy and oneness. It carries to Heaven all the darkness of the unlit, strangling world that we live in or have created for ourselves. Each time the soul of this great seeker, Dag Hammarskjöld, comes down, it brings down for us at the United Nations and for seekers all over the world the hope that awakens mankind, the consolation that sustains mankind and the compassion that eventually lifts up humanity’s fate to the golden Heights of Tomorrow’s Dawn.

Inner Flames at the United Nations⁴

Inner Flames signify aspiration. Aspiration illumines the undivine in us and fulfils the divine in us. Our doubting mind is the undivine in us. Our loving heart is the divine in us. The doubting mind unconsciously and consciously tries to destroy the whole world. The loving heart consciously and unreservedly creates a new world: a world of hope, a world of light, a world of delight.

Aspiration is the inner cry. Both God and man have this inner cry. With His inner Cry, God claims us. With our inner cry, we follow God. God’s inner Cry is for our perfection and our outer cry is for God’s satisfaction.

We, the members of the United Nations Meditation Group, are each inner flames, and we are each trying with utmost humility and sincerity to be of service to each member of the United Nations, to the dream of the United Nations, to the pristine purity of the United Nations. Our capacity is very limited, but our willingness, our eagerness to be of service to each member, to each ideal of the United Nations, is sincere. And this sincerity will one day be proved and marked.

Here at the United Nations, all are inner flames. No matter what an individual’s post is, whether he holds the highest post or the lowest, he is undoubtedly an inner flame, for his is the cry which is genuine. Each individual server of the United Nations, irrespective of his nationality or religious and cultural background, is undoubtedly an inner flame. And each flame serves the community of nations according to its capacity and according to its receptivity.

The original and pioneer flame was President Wilson. His dream of the League of Nations has blossomed into the United Nations. Once it was a tiny plant, but now it has grown into a huge banyan tree. It was the plant that embodied the inner flame and now, as a huge banyan tree, it has countless flames.

God and Truth are one and inseparable. Truth and Light are also one and inseparable. Truth, when it starts manifesting itself, takes the form of Light and this Light illumines and fulfils the seeker in us.

The seeker in us always wants to satisfy the little world and the big world. The world that we claim at the beginning of our life — our home, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our relatives — is the little world. But as our vision increases, as we look around and see a bigger world, an unhorizoned world awaiting us, at that time we claim the big world as our very own.

Each individual who has come to serve the United Nations represents his own country, his small world. But when he becomes part and parcel of the United Nations, the big world, at that time he is for all, for the entire humanity. He started his journey with his own country and then he arrived at the goal of goals: universal oneness.

The United Nations wants to solve all the world problems. It is more than eager to solve all the problems that the world could ever imagine. In various ways it is trying to solve the world’s problems lovingly, devotedly, soulfully and unreservedly. A problem indicates confusion, a problem indicates the dance of ego, a problem indicates human weakness. Each problem can be solved and will be solved by only one thing and that is the message of union. This union comes to the fore only when we kindle the inner flame. We, as seekers, know perfectly well that it is the inner flames that are burning inside all the members of the United Nations that are inspiring the members to solve all the problems of the world.

Today’s meeting is honouring the General Assembly. At the General Assembly each individual nation comes to offer its light, truth, willingness-capacity and sense of oneness. Each country embodies truth and light in its own way. But each country feels and knows in the inmost recesses of its heart that the light and truth it embodies cannot be sufficient. Therefore, it tries to accept and receive light from other countries. Similarly, each flame that each individual embodies cannot be sufficient to solve any world problem or to illumine world-ignorance. What is needed is the unification of all the flames that are here, there and everywhere. So all the flames that are here have to be collected so that they can muster their joint strength. At that time, the ignorance-dream that separates one country from another, one man from another, can no longer last. It will be replaced by Wisdom-Reality. And what is Wisdom-Reality? Wisdom-Reality is the song of oneness. This song of oneness is founded only on self-giving, which is nothing short of truth-becoming. And truth-becoming is oneness with the all-embracing, all-loving, all-illumining and all-fulfilling Reality.

The higher reality is the soul in us; the lower reality is the body-consciousness, which we are right now. The lower reality aspires to grow into the higher reality. The higher reality inspires us. A great many individuals think only of the lower reality, the body-reality, as the United Nations building, where thousands of human beings are serving the one cause. The building-reality, the body-reality, of the United Nations immediately captures their minds. The outside world does not easily think of the soul-reality, which is the real reality of the United Nations. But it is the loving souls, the illumining souls of the United Nations that guide the body-reality, or try to guide it. The day will come when the outer world will realise that looming large inside the body-reality is the soul-reality.

We the seekers and members of the United Nations Meditation Group are trying to serve both the soul-reality and the body-reality according to our very limited capacity. Our capacity is very, very limited, but our sincere efforts we place at the Feet of the Inner Pilot of the United Nations. This Inner Pilot is our fate-maker, the Author of all Good, God. It is the Creator in God and the creation-fruit that is all light and life and perfection.

The face of truth⁵

A seeker wishes to see the face of truth in spirituality, in religion, in love, in brotherhood, in every field of reality, in every branch of the reality-tree. But unfortunately, the face of truth is not to be found there. The face of truth is found only in longing, in the longing for truth. Not only the face of truth, but the very heart of truth, is to be found only in the longing itself. What is truth? Truth is the longing, the birthless and deathless longing which we have and which we are. This is the only truth nothing more, nothing less.

Some seekers are of the opinion that truth is not to be found here on earth, that truth belongs to the hoary past, that it is a memory of the past which we are carrying and dragging. But this is not true. Truth was there before, truth is here now and truth will also be present in the future.

The truth of the past is the truth-beauty in God’s cosmic Vision. The truth of the present is the truth-duty in God’s cosmic Realisation. The truth of the future is the truth-infallibility in God’s cosmic Manifestation.

Here on earth, a seeker notices three kinds of truth: peripheral truth, median truth and core truth. Peripheral truth says that there is no love. “Love is the essence of life, but there is no love on earth.”

Median truth says love and be loved. “I have mankind. Therefore it is obligatory on the part of all human beings to love me.”

Core truth, the truth of the inmost reality, says, “I love God the Creator, for He is none other than Love. I love God the Creation because it is nothing other than love.”

Truth needs a possessor, a revealer and a fulfiller. The truth-possessor is he who is at least a few centuries in advance of his time. The truth-revealer is he who stands in front of humanity, facing humanity. He enters into humanity’s countless needs and transforms humanity’s needs into deeds. The truth-fulfiller is he who lives only for humanity, for humanity’s sake. Unless and until each human being becomes a perfect instrument of the Absolute Supreme, the task of the truth-fulfiller is not complete.

A seeker of the highest, ultimate Truth, a seeker who has established his constant oneness with the Absolute, can at once be a truth-possessor, truth-revealer and truth-fulfiller on the strength of his oneness with the perennial Source, his oneness with the Transcendental Light, the ever-transcending Transcendental Light.

Here we are all seekers, seekers of the United Nations, for the United Nations. The United Nations itself is both the seeker and the truth. When we look at the body-reality of the United Nations, we see that the United Nations plays the role of the seeker. But when we look at the soul-reality of the United Nations, then we see that the United Nations is nothing short of Truth and Light and Delight.

The seeker in the United Nations is becoming and growing into the truth-reality, and the truth-reality is constantly unveiling its hidden treasures — its immortalising, all-illumining and all-fulfilling treasures. These treasures are concern, sympathy, union, oneness, justice-light, perfection and, finally, satisfaction in all that the United Nations does and all that the United Nations is going to do. The United Nations is growing into the perfection-tree that will offer its branches of concern, sympathy and oneness to humanity.

When we seek, we long for a reality. When we long for a reality which is other than our true self, this reality will always remain a far cry. If we live in the body-reality and, from the body-reality, if we want to reach the soul-reality, then we shall never succeed. But if we can dare to say and feel there is only one reality — the soul-reality — which is founded upon our oneness-reality, our universal oneness-reality, our transcendental oneness-reality, then only can we safely say that inside our longing itself is the birthless and the deathless Truth. Then we can say that our longing itself is the everlasting Truth, the immortal Truth, the eternally transcending Truth, the infinitely fulfilling Truth.

They say and we say⁶

They say that the United Nations is a mere dream. We say that it is a dream that can grow into reality. Dream is the seed-essence. Reality is the fruit-substance.

They say that the United Nations is not independent. We say that there is no necessity for the United Nations to be independent, for the United Nations lives in the illumining heart of humanity and lives for the aspiring life of humanity.

They say that the United Nations is not powerful. We say that unless the world has given the United Nations the opportunity to show all its strength, outer and inner strength — but especially inner — how can it say that the United Nations is not powerful? The world knows what the outer strength is. But what is the inner strength? The inner strength is revolution. The possessor of inner strength revolts against disappointment-bondage. He revolts against ignorance-night. He revolts against imperfection-mortality.

They say that the United Nations is not stable, that it is constantly changing its policies. We say that if a new policy embodies more light, more perfection and more satisfaction, then naturally it is the bounden duty of the United Nations to adopt the new policy instead of unwisely clinging to the old policy.

They say that the United Nations is losing its moral authority. We say that if it is true, then the world is losing its sanity very rapidly and heading towards an explosion of a devastating character.

The way ahead⁷

I wish to offer some soulful comments on this divinely illumining and fulfilling utterance made by our dear seeker-friend John from Portugal’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations [Mr Joao Teixeira da Motta, Second Secretary of Embassy, Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations], before the Second Committee of the 31st General Assembly on 14 October 1976.

Our John — I cannot pronounce his Portuguese given name, but I have taken his kind permission to call him John — is young in terms of earthly years, but old in terms of heavenly years — young in body, old in soul, ancient in spirit. He is short; that is his physical height. But he is tall, very tall in his spiritual height.

From the strict spiritual point of view, “the way” signifies aspiration-flame. Aspiration is the inner flame which ever ascends and transcends, and while ascending and transcending, it illumines our earthly life. The aspiration-flame shows us how to see the Truth, how to feel the Truth and how to grow into the Truth. It helps us see, feel and grow into God’s transcendental Vision and God’s universal Reality.

There are two ways: the human way and the divine way. The human approach is the approach of separativity; the divine approach is the approach of unity in multiplicity and multiplicity in unity. There the Eternal can grow in the fleeting reality and the Infinite can grow in the finite.

The human way leads us to our destination. In this case the way and the destination are two separate realities. But in the divine way, the destination and the way are the same. Here there is no sense of separativity. Two thousand years ago the Saviour, Christ, taught us, “I am the Way, I am the Goal.” He also declared, “I and my Father are One.” In these two most significant utterances, we can easily see and feel that the way and the destination are inseparably one.

Again, on the strength of his boundless compassion, when he identified himself totally with earth’s ignorance, it was he who said, “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

When we speak about “the way ahead”, we have to know that the starting point and the journey’s goal, or the journey’s close, are two different points. When we say that something is ahead, it means that the starting point is here and the reality that we are seeking, the culmination, is elsewhere. This is what our human eyes and our human mind teach us.

But there is another teacher that we can claim as our own, our very own, and that is our inner eye, the third eye, the eye of God-Light. This eye, which is between our eyebrows and a little above, has a different story to tell us. It tells us that God the cosmic Vision and God the cosmic Reality are one and the same, one and inseparable. When we think of God the Vision, we must realise that we are talking about the cosmic Vision, which embodies Reality itself. And when we think of God the cosmic Reality, we must feel that inside the cosmic Reality is nothing but God the cosmic Vision. The cosmic Vision is the Reality within us in seed form. And cosmic Reality is the Vision in its fruit form, which is for us. The cosmic seed is within us and the cosmic fruit is for us.

“The way ahead may be difficult.” Anything that is as yet unachieved may appear difficult. Difficulty is an experience which we go through before the realisation-sun dawns on our devoted and illumined heads and aspiring and surrendering hearts.

“But the future of mankind is bright.” The future is something that grows in the immediacy of today. The past has given us the capacity to become great. The present is giving us the capacity to become good. The future will give us the capacity to become perfect. Greatness, goodness and perfection. When we are great, consciously or unconsciously we want to rule the world and lord it over the world. When we are good, consciously or unconsciously we love the world according to the power of our willingness and our receptivity. When we are perfect, we try to love and serve God the Creator in His entire creation, in His own Way. Two thousand years ago, the Christ said, “Let Thy Will be done.” This is the supreme prayer; this is the supreme message that humanity has received from above through the Christ consciousness.

“The future of mankind.” — Who is man? Man is God yet unrealised. Who is God? God is man yet unmanifested. When it is a matter of realisation, man has not yet realised who he eternally is. When it is a matter of manifestation, unfortunately God remains unmanifested. Therefore, man and God are two complementary entities. Man manifests God through his self-giving and God helps man realise who he eternally is through His own Self-giving.

“The future of mankind is bright.” What is bright in our outer life? Inspiration is the only thing that is bright in our outer life. There is nothing else in our outer life that can claim to be bright. Inspiration is the only thing that has the light, so he who has inspiration is bright and nobody else. The possessor of inspiration is the only bright person in the outer life.

What is bright in our inner life? Aspiration is the only bright thing in our inner life. As inspiration is bright in our outer life, so aspiration is bright in our inner life. Without inspiration, the outer life is worse than meaningless; without aspiration, the inner life is worse than useless.

When we have inspiration, we feel that there shall come a day when our inspiration will show us God’s Face. And when we have aspiration, we discover that a day shall dawn, at God’s choice Hour, when our aspiration will show us God’s Heart. God’s Face is Infinity’s Beauty and God’s Heart is Eternity’s Duty.

Prayer for the New Year⁸

This will be our last meeting for this year. May we most soulfully invoke the presence of the soul of the United Nations to bless us and to guide us, and to illumine the road to world peace, world harmony and oneness-world, where God’s Truth God’s Light and God’s Bliss shall reign supreme.

A visit to the United Nations Gift Center⁹

As far as I know, I was not scheduled to give a talk today, but with your souls’ kind permission I wish to say a few words.

Dear friends, dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers, when I use the term “seeker”, please do not be scared to death. Some of you are afraid of the term “seeker”, while others may be attracted to it out of sheer curiosity. Still others may feel something haunting or illumining in the term.

A seeker may be aware of what he is doing, or he may be totally unaware of it. There are conscious seekers and unconscious seekers, but we are all seekers here. This world of ours is quite vast. There are many, many places on earth where you could have worked for your living and gained earthly and heavenly experiences, but you have chosen this particular place. Why? Some of you or even all of you may give outer reasons, but actually it is your souls that have brought you to the United Nations. Some of you may outwardly convince your minds that because of this or because of that you wanted to work at the United Nations. But I wish to say there is only one inner reason and that is that your heart cares for union and oneness with the world at large. Your heart of aspiration wants to be inseparably one with the rest of the world. Therefore, you found a job here or your soul decided on your behalf to accept a job at the United Nations. You represent not only this beautiful, meaningful and soulful gift shop; you represent not only the United Nations, but you represent also the Almighty Father’s Oneness-Heart here, there and everywhere.

Every day people come to this shop from various parts of the world. They come here to identify themselves with the large, larger and largest world. Let me give you an example. I come from a tiny, obscure village in Bengal, India. If I buy something from this place and take it back to my little home and show it to my friends, immediately a new world dawns before them — a world of vastness, a world of oneness, a world of satisfaction. The tiniest possible world is my village, Shakpura, in Bengal, India. The tiniest world comes into this shop and gets a gift which comes from another part of the world. Perhaps that part of the world where the gift was made may also be a small village. But my coming to this shop from one tiny place and your offering this gift from another tiny place makes a happy union between the two places.

We come to the United Nations to be united and to serve humanity with one heart, with one soul and with one body. In this way the little, little worlds become one with the big world; and again, the big world gives to the little worlds what it has and what it is. There are countless drops in the ocean. Each drop is a world of its own, by virtue of its very existence. When all the drops are together inside the ocean, they represent the world itself. So the ocean is the largest world and each tiny drop is also a world, but a little world. This moment the union of countless drops makes the vast ocean and the next moment the vast ocean feeds and nourishes the tiny little drops.

Here in this shop at the United Nations you have ample opportunity to unite the little worlds with the big world, the finite with the Infinite. Each little gift that you sell represents the beauty of the finite and, at the same time, welcomes the Blessings of the Infinite. By welcoming, by invoking and by imploring the Blessings of the Infinite, the little beautiful gift becomes immortal. Then it flies from one part of the world to another, from here to the so-called most insignificant village on earth; it covers the length and breadth of the entire world. The United Nations is extremely fortunate to have you and you are also extremely fortunate to have the United Nations, for from here you offer your heart’s magnanimity and your mind’s luminosity to the world at large.

In conclusion, I wish to say a few soulful words about your leader-boss, June. She has been with our little spiritual family for about a year. With all my heart’s sincerity and my soul’s effulgence, I wish to say that she is an extremely sincere, devoted and earnest seeker. In her there is a very rare and unusual combination of the aspiring heart and the illumining mind. There are many, many, many good qualities of hers which I am sure all of you know, for you work with her. But the thing that strikes me most is that she practises what she preaches. Her life of illumining discipline is at once the embodiment of what she has and is and the revelation of what she has and is. Some of you may think that she is a strict disciplinarian, but I wish to say that this very discipline she practises in her own life for the betterment of her own life and the world-body.

The word “discipline” frightens the physical mind and the human in us. But the divine in us knows that inside the so-called earthly discipline there is boundless joy and boundless satisfaction. Punctuality is discipline. We know that our goal, let us say, is three metres ahead of us. If we are punctual, then we go towards our goal. By virtue of the regularity of our course we cover one metre, two metres, three metres. Then we reach our destination. Until we reach our goal there is no satisfaction at all. When we reach our goal we get tremendous satisfaction. So satisfaction looms large inside discipline.

Punctuality is severe punishment if we remain in the mental world. But if we remain in the heart-world, then immediately we will feel that punctuality is just an outer means to reach our goal. It is like our legs. If we are supposed to walk, we desperately need our legs in order to reach our destination. So discipline is the way to reach our destination there can be no other way.

June’s heart of aspiration and her life of dedication both are exemplary. In the union of her aspiring heart and dedicated life, she has been contributing something very soulful, meaningful and fruitful, both to the tiniest possible world, the tiniest village in a corner of the globe, and also to the largest possible world, to this earth-planet. Her dedicated service is undoubtedly satisfaction to the soul of the United Nations. All those who are working with her are sailing in the same boat. They are doing the same thing, pleasing the soul of the United Nations in a most significant manner. By pleasing the soul of the United Nations you are pleasing the Real in you, and this satisfaction is the supreme satisfaction of God, our Heavenly Father. Satisfaction He infinitely has and satisfaction He eternally is, and this Existence-Oneness-Reality of His He wants to share with us.

[To Ms Henneberger] My heart’s boundless light and my soul’s infinite blessing I am offering to you. What I said about you is all from the very depth of my heart. You are uniting the little world and the big world, the finite and the Infinite. It is a most significant achievement of your soul, far beyond your imagination, which we are placing at the Feet of our Eternity’s Beloved Supreme.

Meditation¹⁰

Exactly five years ago I was extremely fortunate to see U Thant. It was a most memorable day for all the members of the Meditation Group. His blessing and his concern we have been carrying from the day I met with him. Today in silence I am offering and I am requesting all the United Nations Meditation Group members to offer their soulful gratitude to this great lover of truth and brother of humanity.

AUM

Every Tuesday and Friday we come here to pray and meditate on various planes of consciousness: physical, vital, mental, psychic and so forth. Then we offer the fruits of our prayer and meditation to the soul and the body of the United Nations. I wish to say a few words about meditation.

What is meditation? Meditation is not a kind of prayer of the mind and it is not a prayer in the mind. But it can easily serve the purpose of a soulful prayer for the mind.

We meditate for various reasons. Peace of mind we all badly need. Therefore, when we meditate, either consciously or unconsciously we aim at peace of mind. Meditation gives us peace of mind without a tranquilliser. And unlike a tranquilliser, the peace of mind that we get from meditation does not fade away. It lasts for good in some corner of the inmost recesses of our aspiring heart.

Meditation gives us purity. There are various ways to achieve purity. Some people advocate the traditional Indian system of breathing. By breathing systematically and also through some occult techniques of breathing in and out, one can definitely purify one’s internal system to some extent. But this purity does not last permanently. However, when one prays and meditates soulfully and, at the same time, brings the soul to the fore, one is bound to achieve lasting purity. The purity that we get from our soulful meditation lasts forever in our aspiring consciousness.

When we pray, we feel either that we have done something wrong or that something can be invoked from above so that we do not do anything wrong. When we pray, we feel that the mistake-world is looming large. Either we have made a mistake by having done something or we have made a mistake by not having done something. Then our sincerity compels us to confess our mistake. So, prayer and confession very often go together.

But meditation does not believe in that kind of confession. Meditation says, “Why do you have to make a mistake and then confess it? Do not remain near mistakes. Remain millions and billions and trillions of miles away from mistakes. Then you won’t have to confess anything.” Meditation is not an escape exercise. When we pray, we try to bring down into us a higher reality or enter into a higher reality that will separate us from the world of suffering. We try to escape from the suffering of the world. But when we meditate, we do not try to escape. The seeker who meditates is a warrior, divine warrior. He faces suffering, ignorance and darkness, and inside the very life and breath of suffering he tries to establish the kingdom of Wisdom-Light.

The true seeker who meditates also knows that whatever he is doing is not for his own personal salvation. If everything that he is doing is only for his own salvation, then he and the world will always remain two different entities with two different ideals or goals. So, sincere seekers always try to assimilate world-truth, world-light and world-capacity and meditate for world transformation, illumination and perfection.

Real meditation never forces us to do something, to say something or to become something. It is the desiring vital or the desiring mind that enters into our meditation and forces us to try to achieve something. But meditation proper will never compel us to do something, to say something or to become something, for it knows that everything has to be natural and spontaneous. It only helps us enter cheerfully into the current of spiritual life.

Human life is beset with difficulties, dangers and so forth, but we can overcome these difficulties. We can take each difficulty as a powerful warning and we can take each warning as a blessing-light in disguise. The meditation-world invites us and leads us to the highest Reality. We see ahead a light, perfection-light. But as soon as we see this light that perfects us, we are frustrated. A red traffic light is frustration to us, especially when we are in a hurry to reach our destination. But we forget that it is the red light that saves our precious life from destruction. The red traffic light is regular and punctual. Regularly and punctually it is warning us, saving us. Similarly, regularity in meditation saves us, illumines us and fulfils us. The life of our outer smile is strengthened by the regularity of our prayer, and the light of our inner cry is increased by the regularity of our meditation.

When we meditate, we discover something and we invent something. From our regular meditation we discover faith inside us. This discovery we do not get from anything else. Immense, continuous, illumining and fulfilling faith we get only from our pure and sure meditation.

During our daily meditation we also invent. What do we invent? We invent gratitude. Our heart becomes the possessor of something which it did not possess previously, and that something is boundless gratitude. Each meditation creates a gratitude-flower inside our heart, and petal by petal this flower blossoms in worship of our beloved Lord Supreme. So we invent gratitude and discover faith from our meditation.

Meditation helps us hear the Voice of God. It not only helps us hear the Voice of God, but it also helps us listen to the Voice of God and the Choice of His Hour. After hearing the Voice of God, either we can stop or continue further and actually listen to the Voice. If we listen to the Voice of God, if we listen to the inner dictates at every moment, then the world of confusion that baffles us or that we ourselves create will no longer exist for us. The confusion-world we will no longer create for ourselves if we listen to the Voice of God.

There is a special way to listen to the Voice of God, and that special way is to meditate in silence. Silent meditation is the strongest force that can ever be seen, felt and executed. So silent meditation we must learn.

How do we meditate silently? Just by not talking, just by not using outer words, we are not doing silent meditation. Silent meditation is totally different. When we start meditating in silence, right from the beginning we feel the bottom of a sea within us and without. The life of activity, movement and restlessness is on the surface, but deep below, underneath our human life, there is poise and silence. So, either we shall imagine this sea of silence within us or we shall feel that we are nothing but a sea of poise itself.

Then, if we start meditating, we are bound to hear the Voice of God and we are bound to listen to the Voice of God. Once we become accustomed to listening to the Voice of God, at that time we feel that there is no tomorrow. There is no such thing as the future, there is no such thing even as today; it is all now. God is now; His Vision is now. The eternal Now is the only reality. In the eternal Now we grow and glow; in the eternal Now we please God, fulfil God and become perfect instruments of God.

The seeker's mind¹¹

O mind, what are you doing to me? You are destroying all my divine possibilities. You are delaying indefinitely my supreme inevitabilities.

O mind, what are you doing to me? I thought that you would teach my vital and my body — the younger members of our family — how to enjoy the strength of vastness. Alas, instead of doing that, you are teaching them how to enjoy the weakness of meanness.

O mind, look, what are you doing to yourself? I thought that you were wise enough to see and feel the happiness that my heart enjoys by becoming inseparably one with the soul and its unfathomable ecstasy. Alas, instead of doing that, you are enjoying base jealousy towards the heart.

O mind, what are you doing to me? What have I done to you? My life — human life — is for happiness. The moment you think of me, all my happiness disappears. The moment I think of you, I suffer the same fate.

O mind, why, why on earth do you have to become so cruel to me? You torture me ruthlessly. I forgive you unreservedly. But alas, I fail to forget you, your jealousy, your meanness, your destructiveness. Deathless have become my excruciating pangs.

O mind, cruelty incarnate, you have bound me taut to your pitch-dark, tenebrous and wee world. As if that is not enough, you are strangling me there. Death is undoubtedly preferable to the untold torture that you continuously inflict upon me.

Truth to tell, you have been punishing me since you have known me with your doubt-dart and suspicion-gun. In you meanness has reached its zenith height. In you jealousy plays with the darkest night. In you insecurity fails to see the face of purity’s beauty.

O mind, you are nothing but your own unparalleled stupidity. Even when God Himself with His infinite Compassion-Light enters into your sordid existence-hole for its radical transformation and perfect perfection, you suspect God openly, strongly and unreservedly. Your fertile, nay, to be precise, futile imagination instigates you to think that God has an ulterior motive. Not only do you know what a suspicion-snake is, but you are nothing but that and that alone.

Helpless, God enters into His own two birthless and deathless Realities — Transcendental Height and Universal Delight — to hear all at once one solitary message: “Endless patience, endless patience.”

God the Compassion is not enough. God the Patience is needed, too.

O mind, you need some retribution which you so richly deserve. I give you my word of honour. And who is the witness? God the Pilot Supreme. Do you know what I am going to do? I shall compel you to be eternally one with my heart that enjoys inseparable oneness-delight with Infinity’s Light, Eternity’s Peace and Immortality’s Love.

World Gratitude Day¹²

The United Nations Meditation Group celebrated World Gratitude Day twice in 1977 — once on 12 September in a special programme in the United Nations Secretariat for delegates and staff; and again on 21 September in World Gratitude Days New York Headquarters when the Group's Director, Sri Chinmoy, was honoured at official ceremonies. The plaque, presented to him by Mrs. Edna Lemle, president and founder of the organisation, dedicated to promoting the cause of world-wide gratitude, cited Sri Chinmoy for having "enhanced the spirit of globalism with his compassion, his creativity and nobility of spirit." The first 21 September World Gratitude Day celebration was held thirteen years ago. In 1977, citations were presented to nine religious leaders and representatives of organisations. Among others recognised were the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, whose Director, Dr J Ottley, came from Salt Lake City for the ceremony; Judith Hollister, founder of the Interfaith Temple of Understanding; Dr. Russell Barber, producer of the NBC television programme "The First Estate", and Rabbi Sally Prisend, the first woman in American Judaism to attain the ranks of the clergy. Past awards have been given to UNICEF (as an organisation) and to former General Assembly President Angie Brooks Randolph.

Following are the texts from both programmes, which included music and the performance by the United Nations Meditation Group singers of a song by Sri Chinmoy dedicated to World Gratitude Day./

Mrs Edna Lemle, President, World Gratitude Day: Welcome, Sri Chinmoy, Mr Muller, Mrs de Sola Pool, Kevin Keefe, the United Nations Meditation Group and all you good people who have come here to help us herald World Gratitude Day. I will begin by asking Sri Chinmoy to stand here as he did before and get everyone into the mood which is the absolute essence of Gratitude Day.

[Sri Chinmoy meditates facing the audience.]

Now look inward and find something to be grateful for and remember this feeling. Now open yourself up and share this emotion with everyone here. Know that everyone in this room is sharing the same emotion… I feel it! It surges though the room… Thank you. This is the basis of the day.

On 21 September gather together some friends and observe Gratitude Day by repeating this with them, it can be a simple gathering or an elaborate party, depending upon how you would like to do it. The important part is that each one gives thanks in his own way. To whom and for what is for each personal and private. It is the essential emotion that should be universally shared.

The official beginning of this world holiday was in 1965 at the East-West Center in Hawaii where a Thanksgiving Dinner was held for ninety Grantees who came for the most part from Oriental countries. We discussed the need for a globally unifying holiday and everyone was thrilled with my idea of Gratitude Day. Each person in the room pledged, therefore, to hold a Gratitude Gathering the following 21 September, when they returned to their own countries. That was the beginning. And since then Gratitude Day has been observed all over the world.

Each year the Board of Directors of World Gratitude Day presents an award to someone who we feel has done something outstanding in the spirit of globalism. In the past we have honoured such distinguished individuals as Angie Brooks Randolph, first woman president of the United Nations General Assembly, Maurice Strong of Canada and the Nobel Prize Laureate, Rene Cassin. In addition we have honoured UNICEF and Japan, which, incidentally, was the first country to declare World Gratitude Day a national day of thanksgiving.

And so, I am most pleased to present this year's World Gratitude Day Award to Sri Chinmoy, who is most deserving of this honour:

WORLD GRATITUDE DAY is pleased to honour SRI CHINMOY who has enhanced the spirit of globalism with his compassion, his creativity and his great nobility;

Whose being and achievements reflect the spirit of our Proclamation:

WHEREAS, humanity has come to recognise devotion and allegiance to immediate family, to clan, to city, to state, and to nation, and now must experience the concept of globalism; and

WHEREAS, words of praise and positive thoughts generate dynamic harmony, and

WHEREAS, decisions made from a grateful heart are endowed with intrinsic wisdom and engender prosperity; and

WHEREAS, gratitude, the opposite of "taking for granted," is a positive emotion which generates good will, is a basic emotion which is indigenous to all people, is a peace-engendering feeling;

AND WHEREAS, September 21 is a special day. It is an equinox: one of the two times of the year when the sun passes over the equator and night and day are everywhere of equal length and everyone is equal under the sun;

THEREFORE let us proclaim World Gratitude Day, a holiday for all peoples, a day of meditation for all religions, a day of celebration for all humanity, united by knowledge of simultaneously shared emotion, a day when triumph of the spirit can make a world community.

Sri Chinmoy, I think the world should be grateful to people like you. I am honoured to give you this award.

Sri Chinmoy: I am accepting this with my heart's boundless gratitude, and this gratitude is something that is glowing and growing within me. Every day I offer to the Beloved Supreme only one thing: gratitude.

Man's greatest gift to God is gratitude. Man's self-giving and his gratitude are one and the same.

I am extremely grateful to you, Mrs. Lemle, for you are opening a new chapter in humanity's evolution. The world is in the process of evolution. You know the utmost significance of gratitude, and the awakened soul in you is awakening others. Gratitude is man's conscious oneness with his Beloved Supreme. I am sure that your soul has felt this supreme oneness with the Beloved Supreme and your soul has come to the fore to urge your illumined mind to offer this loftiest message to the world at large.

Gratitude in the inner world is nothing but self-expansion. It is through self-expansion that we become aware of our true reality, which is Infinity itself. Your contribution to the world at large, to the inner world especially, is momentous. As a seeker, I know that there is nothing on earth as valuable and significant as gratitude. In God's Eye there is nothing more meaningful and precious than man's gratitude. Therefore, to you, to the illumining soul in you, I wish to offer my boundless and ever-growing gratitude.

14. Mrs. Lemle's remarks when presenting the official award to Sri Chinmoy, and Sri Chinmoys reply.

Mrs Edna Lemle: Now we're going to conclude with an extremely special, unusual man. Sri Chinmoy comes from India. He makes everything seem possible. He is the head of the United Nations Meditation Group and he has people from the different United Nations countries meditating together. By golly, if you can do that, I guess you can do anything. And he is also a very creative man. He is a painter; he is a writer. I met Sri Chinmoy just last week when, Heaven-sent, he offered to have a programme to herald World Gratitude Day at the United Nations. Sri Chinmoy stood there and just meditated, and everybody felt it. He does, of course, so much; I have to strain to reach it.

He is currently having an art exhibit at Grand Central Station with his magnificent paintings. He has written 300 books. There are Sri Chinmoy Centres in fifty or sixty countries or places around the world. We’re grateful for your presence, Sri Chinmoy.

[Reading from the plaque] World Gratitude Day is pleased to honour Sri Chinmoy who has enhanced the spirit of globalism with his compassion, his creativity and nobility of spirit, whose being and achievements reflect the spirit of our proclamation.

Sri Chinmoy: Dear Mrs Lemle, dear sister in the Universal Compassion-Heart of the Supreme, your searching mind's World-Gratitude dream is astonishingly beautiful. Your aspiring heart's World-Gratitude reality is supremely fruitful. I am extremely grateful to you and to the Board of Directors for bestowing upon me, upon my devoted heart, this signal honour. You have discovered in me a world-server. A world-server is he who is a God-lover. A God-lover and a world-server are one and the same. Just because God, out of His infinite Bounty, has granted me the opportunity and capacity to love Him, today I am in a position to be of service to humanity, His creation. Your discovery will be a great asset in my service to mankind. I shall try to serve more devotedly, more soulfully and more unconditionally this creation of our Beloved Supreme.

Here many religious faiths are proclaiming the oneness, absolute oneness of our absolute Pilot Supreme. An hour ago when I arrived here, my dear friend and seeker-brother, Dr Russell Barber [producer of NBC’s _The First Estate_] and my dear seeker-sister, Pat Parker, greeted me at the entrance. During our conversation, Dr Barber said to me that he was very pleased that he and I were getting the award together on the same day. I said to him, “So, we are sailing in the same boat.” He immediately and lovingly corrected me. He said, “Not exactly so. We are sailing towards the same destination but in different boats.” Many roads lead to Rome. But here we are arriving at the same destination.

God is the gardener. In His garden there are many beautiful flowers. One flower cannot make a beautiful garden. Many flowers are needed in order to make a beautiful garden. Again, it is the garden that embodies the many flowers and the flowers’ fragrance. So the one became many and, finally, the many are reaching the self-same goal and becoming one. We all came from the One, and now the one Tree is having many branches. But each branch knows that there is a trunk, a Source. God is evolving in and through us in various ways, in many forms and many colours and then He is returning to the one destination. So the One became many in order to enrich and fulfil and finally to reach one Goal.

During his short but momentous speech, dear Dr Barber has told us that the United States is next to India in spirituality. With his soul’s permission I wish to correct his experience or his pronouncement. It is not because I am here in America that I feel bound to extol America to the skies where spirituality is concerned, but it is because I happen to be a seeker of the Absolute Supreme. Our Beloved Supreme has two most illumining and most fulfilling qualities or attributes: Peace and Power. They are inseparable. They are mutually illumining and fulfilling each other. India embodies and represents the Peace aspect of our Beloved Supreme and America embodies and represents the Power aspect of our Beloved Supreme.

Peace and power we can take as two legs of an eternal runner, who is eternally running along Eternity’s Road to reach an endless destination an ever-fulfilling destination. At any moment when we observe the runner running, we will see one particular leg ahead. That doesn’t mean that that leg is actually leading or winning the battle. No, sometimes the right leg is in front and sometimes the left leg is in front. We need two legs in order to run properly towards our destination. So peace is one leg and power is another leg. Neither of them is slower, or behind the other. Both of them are equally important. Each one is needed and each one is helping the other to run fast, faster, fastest towards the destination.

My gratitude-heart is my thoughtful inspiration. My gratitude-heart is my prayerful aspiration. My gratitude-heart is my soulful meditation. This inspiration, aspiration and meditation of mine have been helping me to become a devoted instrument of my Beloved Supreme. Today you are honouring me for what I have done to serve the world at large. My contribution is an infinitesimal iota of self-giving. Again, I have to say that there is Someone who is celebrating in the inmost recesses of my heart not only what I have done but also what I have not done. Out of His boundless Bounty God has helped me not to dine any more with ignorance-night, and He is very pleased that I have not done so. So not for what we do but also for what we do not do, God is equally pleased with us.

My inspiration-wings, my aspiration-bird and my soulful life I am offering to each seeker present here, especially to you, Mrs Lemle. You are the head of this organisation, World Gratitude Day. Gratitude is our self-expansion. It is the liberation of the finite reality inside the infinite Divinity. When we offer gratitude to someone, in no way are we showing insufficiency, inadequacy or an inferior existence-reality to that person. He has given us what he has and what he is and we are giving him what we have and what we are. Let us take God, for example. He gives to us what He is: infinite Compassion. This is by far the best Reality that He embodies. For us our best achievement is our gratitude-heart. Our gratitude heart will make us inseparably one with our Beloved Supreme. There is no other way. Consciously, soulfully and unreservedly we become one with Him only by the expansion of our aspiring heart.

Gratitude is what at every moment we must try to grow into in order to fulfil the divine in us. Gratitude is an earth-born and earth-grown fruit which not only nourishes the Heaven-born cosmic gods but also pleases most the Heavenly Creator, our Eternity’s Beloved Supreme.

Finally, I wish to invoke the presence of an immortal poet, Shakespeare, whose soulful prayer I wish to share with you all: “O Lord who lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.”

Mayor Beame honoured¹³

Mayor Beame How are you? [Shaking Sri Chinmoy's hand as Sri Chinmoy greets him outside the Gallery]:

Sri Chinmoy: I am extremely grateful to you. It is so kind of you to come. I wish to offer you my deepest gratitude.

Mayor Beame: Thank you.

/Sri Chinmoy: May I play for a couple of minutes on an Indian instrument, the esraj?

Mayor Beame: Yes.

[Sri Chinmoy plays several of his own compositions on the esraj.]

Sri Chinmoy [Presenting a plaque to the Mayor and reading out the inscription]: To Mayor Beame, the unparalleled champion pilot of New York. Mayor Beame, the soul of New York will eternally treasure your matchless contributions to change the face and fate of each and every New Yorker. With deepest appreciation and admiration, the United Nations Meditation Group and Fountain-Art.

Mayor Beame: Thank you. May I say something? I’m very deeply moved by this presentation and I want to say that I could have used a lot of these moments of meditation during these last months and years. And I certainly didn’t think, the first day I met you, that I’d ever have the pleasure of meeting you again tonight. I want to thank you very much for your kindness and your warmth and your expressions. I appreciate it and I want to thank everybody here as well. [Applause]

Sri Chinmoy: Now we have something else to offer you. Just two hours ago I composed a song in your honour and my students now are going to sing this song. I wish to offer this soulful song to your soul.

Mayor Beame: Thank you.

The singers sing "O Great Pilot, Mayor Beame."

Mayor Beame: What are you doing next week? [Laughter] Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it; I appreciate it. I wish Mrs Beame were here so she could hear it.

Sri Chinmoy: Now, with your kind permission, I wish to paint something. It will take only a few minutes. Right here, in front of you, I would like to paint one painting, and then I wish to offer it to you.

Mayor Beame: All right, fine.

Sri Chinmoy: This will be our third soulful offering to you.

[In a matter of minutes, Sri Chinmoy paints a 16 x 20" original with acrylics.]

Sri Chinmoy: This is my humble offering. [Presenting the painting]

Mayor Beame: Thank you. Thank you very much. If I knew I was going to get so much, I would have brought a valise or something. This is more than I've received in a long, long time, and I not only appreciate it for its material good, but more particularly for your sentiments. I very much appreciate it. Thank you. [Applause]

I wanted to thank the singers. Could I do that?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, please.

Mayor Beame: I just want to thank you. It was wonderful. Thank you. [Shaking hands with all the singers]

[To everyone] Thank you, you've made my evening wonderful.

Woman from the audience: You made New York great! [Applause]

The United Nations Meditation Group With Muhammad Ali

On the morning of his championship fight with Earnie Shavers on 29 September, Muhammad Ali met with Sri Chinmoy and members of the United Nations Meditation Group for an hour of prayer, meditation and discussion. Sri Chinmoy garlanded the champion and presented him with a trophy, saying, “Along with this is my heart. My heart is inside this.” Later, some thirty United Nations Meditation Group singers sang a song which Sri Chinmoy had composed in the fighter’s honour, and the group meditated together in silence for about twenty minutes. Afterwards, Ali told Sri Chinmoy, “I was so deeply absorbed, I couldn’t do anything.” As the group was leaving, he added, “This really got my spirits high. It might end in one round now. God bless you.” This is a short excerpt from the conversation, as well as a commentary about the meeting which Sri Chinmoy gave at the United Nations the next day.

Sri Chinmoy: Yesterday it was our strong desire to honour you at the United Nations. Unfortunately, you could not be at the United Nations.

Muhammad Ali: I was so obligated; I couldn’t make it. I appreciated it. I was real honoured to get that invitation, but we couldn’t make it. What do you do there?

Sri Chinmoy: We pray and meditate twice a week. On Tuesdays and Fridays we pray together with the delegates and staff. There I was going to offer you my deepest gratitude for what you are doing — not only for the black Muslims but also for mankind. You are changing the face and fate of mankind. Your very name encourages and inspires. As soon as people hear “Muhammad Ali”, they are inspired. They get tremendous joy. They get such dynamism to be brave and face ignorance. Your very name does that. That is why I am so grateful to you, so proud of you.

Muhammad Ali: My goal is to be like you one day — to be peaceful and out of this sport working for humanity and for God. I was telling Jeremiah that after we finish boxing I want to learn how to get out of this life and use my popularity and my intelligence for humanity — to help people in whatever way I can. I don’t know how, but I want to do something — bring people together, work for God and help people. I know there is something I am supposed to do, but I don’t know really exactly what its purpose is; but it’s something.

Sri Chinmoy: You know the purpose. It is only a question of Allah’s Hour. You are the supreme instrument of Allah. Today He is utilising you as the greatest boxer. One day He will utilise you as the greatest preacher. The other day I was reading in the newspaper about you as a preacher and minister. So, now your heart of love you are using for a special purpose.

Muhammad Ali: I’ll only say one thing, Brother, not to cut you off. But I don’t want and I never wanted the image of being the greatest preacher. Boxing is all publicity. In this country this is how we promote: “I’m the greatest. I’ll get him in round seven.” But this is not really my heart. This is just outer appearance to promote fights. I don’t really feel this way. Ministry is so serious, and there everybody is equal before God. Therefore, I don’t want to get the image of being the greatest preacher, because that’s boastful; it is not humble, it is not spiritual. So I don’t want to go into the thing that I am the greatest preacher: just a minister, just a lecturer or helper.

There are so many people who are great but only God, Allah, is really great. Therefore, I want to get out of this brashness, this image. We’ve got to stop that “I’m the greatest” thing and forget it. I am just a humble servant and I have a lot to learn. I need people like yourself to teach me what to say and what to do and how to approach certain things. So I don’t want to talk that “I am the greatest” attitude and preach it. Do you understand what I mean? I don’t want that.

Sri Chinmoy: You don’t have to say that you are the greatest, but your heart of oneness with all humanity makes you the greatest.

17.¹⁴

Sri Chinmoy: I wish to say a few words about the world-champion, Muhammad Ali. Yesterday was a most significant day both for the members of the United Nations Meditation Group and for the champion, Muhammad Ali. [Pointing to the two photographs] This is Muhammad Ali in his physical consciousness and this is Muhammad Ali in his soulful consciousness. Each individual has two aspects: the physical aspect and the spiritual aspect. This moment he expresses himself or reveals his capacities through physical means; the next moment he expresses his reality’s divinity through spiritual means. In this picture we see Muhammad Ali in a devoted, soulful, cheerful and powerful consciousness. Right beside it is another picture which brings forward his other aspect: physical strength. We believe in evolution. From the stone life we go to the plant life, then to the animal life, then to the human life and finally to the divine life, where we are striving for perfection. From the physical and vital consciousness, slowly and steadily we have to evolve to the psychic consciousness, the supreme consciousness.

The very name “Muhammad Ali” inspires millions of people on the vital plane. We cannot say that the vital plane is not good, that only the spiritual plane is good. No, all the planes are good; only some planes have to be elevated to a higher consciousness. Some planes need more purity, more determination, more awareness and more acceptance of light. The physical, the vital, the mind and the heart are all members of the same family. They must be amalgamated; they must be illumined and perfected.

What can achieve this perfection? It is our inner cry, our aspiration. And what carries the greatest responsibility for elevating the consciousness of human beings all over the world? What place carries the utmost responsibility for elevating, illumining, perfecting and fulfilling the length and breadth of the world? The answer is the United Nations. The United Nations carries the heaviest burden of human problems and the United Nations is responsible for bringing light into these problems.

Right now the physical is wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance-sleep; therefore, the physical needs to be awakened. The vital is aggressive quite often; therefore, the vital needs dynamism. The mind is full of doubt and uncertainty; therefore, the mind needs faith and certainty. The heart is full of insecurity; therefore, the heart needs confidence. When the wakefulness of the body, the dynamism of the vital, the faith and certainty of the mind and the confidence of the heart come forward and become one, then only does the individual become perfect.

Each individual as well as each nation has these good qualities. Since it is the individuals who form the country, it is always advisable for the individuals to bring these qualities forward first; then, whatever the country has will also come forward. When the individual brings forward his good qualities, it becomes easier for the country to bring forward its qualities.

Who is giving us the capacities, the inexhaustible capacities, that are needed to bring these qualities forward and illumine our imperfections? It is the soul of the United Nations. The deeper reality in the United Nations is blessing us at every moment. If we think that we are glorifying the United Nations by working here, then we are making a mistake. It is the United Nations, the soul of the United Nations, that has blessed us by giving us the golden opportunity to be of service to it.

Right now, in the political world, the mental aspect is predominant. In political ways the countries are trying to establish oneness, peace, harmony and so forth. But in our Meditation Group we are trying to bring to the fore the psychic qualities, the inner qualities, which are peace, light, love, harmony and the feeling of oneness. The Meditation Group is aspiring soulfully and devotedly and, according to our inner capacity, each individual member here is receiving light directly from the soul of the United Nations. The soul of the United Nations has given us ample opportunity, out of its boundless bounty, to share with the rest of the world the peace that we get from it.

All religious faiths, all countries, are one on the inner plane. Outwardly they are still not seeing eye to eye with one another, but in the inner world, definitely they have got the message of the United Nations. Therefore, they have all come together here. They see that they are from one Source, and that only in the One will they get their ultimate satisfaction.

When Muhammad Ali accepted our invitation to be with him, it proved in abundant measure that the physical and the vital in him wanted illumination. The interview lasted for about an hour and for about twenty minutes we meditated together soulfully and devotedly in pin-drop silence. If he had not been spiritual, he would not have granted the interview; nor would he have meditated with us and accepted the fruits of our prayer and meditation. But he did meditate with us and receive what we offered to him, so we know definitely that he is spiritual in the purest sense of the term. He prayed with us and meditated with us and he shared with us wholeheartedly his inner divinity.

Many times I have been misunderstood when I see famous people. Some people think that I am going out of my spiritual domain, that I am entering into another world for name and fame. But those who have faith in me do not misunderstand me. Here I wish to say that each individual, no matter in which field he shines, has received some light from above. Since I am a seeker of the Absolute, the Supreme, out of his infinite Bounty, has also given me some light. This light I want to share with others who have received light from above and who are sharing it with the rest of the world in different fields and in different ways. We are all God’s children. One son of His has achieved something. The other one comes to soulfully congratulate him and, while congratulating him, he brings with him his appreciation, admiration, good will, love and oneness. This is the exchange of our light.

To be with Muhammad Ali is not just a coincidence; nor is it a display of our vital emotion or exuberance in order to get name and fame. No, here the soul of the United Nations has given us a golden opportunity to spread its light and its message of universal oneness. We are all seekers; we are all in the same boat. Therefore, I can safely say that this morning, while I was running from my house to the playground where we practise sports, I vividly saw — not with my third eye but with my human eyes — the soul of the United Nations. It was extremely happy and delighted at what we have achieved. As a matter of fact, it is the meaningful and fruitful blessing of the soul of the United Nations that has manifested in a tangible form in the divinely inspired meeting between Muhammad Ali and our Meditation Group.

Millions of people will see what we are doing. The heart of each individual who sees this picture in The New York Times will definitely feel that the United Nations is the only answer for humanity’s oneness and divinity’s satisfaction in human life, which is aspiring to be totally transformed and illumined. So this meeting with Muhammad Ali is a supreme achievement for the United Nations which each member of the United Nations can embody and treasure and this achievement is nothing short of a supreme gift from the soul of the United Nations.

Miss Lillian welcomes the Meditation Group

Mrs Lillian Carter met with Sri Chinmoy and the members of the Meditation Group in Americus, Georgia, on 7 October, charming them with tales of her experiences in India and vignettes about what it is like to be the President's mother. The group, in turn, meditated with Miss Lillian and sang a song composed by Sri Chinmoy in her honour, which brought tears to her eyes. This is a brief part of their conversation. Here Miss Lillian was talking about the U.N. Meditation Group's public concert that evening.

Mrs Lillian: Well, this is going to be a lovely night. I hope you have a crowd. People don't understand this. I don't know whether many people will be here or not. Have you heard?

Mr. Steven Hein: We really don't know if a lot of people will come or not. There was a little article in the newspaper.

Mrs Lillian: Yes, and weren't you in Plains this afternoon?

Mr. Steven Hein: Yes. There are a few posters up there.

Mrs Lillian: But here they don't understand I am the only one who does, and I wouldn't miss it but I hope you are going to have a nice crowd.

Sri Chinmoy: With your kind permission, may I meditate for a minute?

Mrs Lillian: Oh yes. [To the group] He wants me to be quiet!

Sri Chinmoy: Not in the least! Far from it. Please forgive me. My students had informed me that you would like me to meditate for a minute that's why.

Mrs Lillian: Y'all better be quiet now, we're going to meditate. [Silent meditation for four or five minutes.]

Sri Chinmoy: Thank you.

Mrs Lillian: Thank you. Very nice.

Sri Chinmoy: Now I wish to offer a soulful song to you, which I composed yesterday. It is about you. First I would like to sing it and then my students will sing it for you. Could my students come in now, please?

[They open the door and additional members o the United Nations Meditation Group come in.]

Sri Chinmoy: Just yesterday I composed it in honour of you.

Mrs Lillian: Wonderful! Y'all come in! [Turning to the Secret Service agent accompanying her] Ray, you should see the little piano, little organ, or what-do-you-call-it! [To the members of the Meditation Group] Good afternoon.

Sri Chinmoy: These are the members of the United Nations Meditation Group.

Mrs Lillian: Beautiful, beautiful. The saris are gorgeous. I never could wear one because I couldn't put it on. Hello! Hello! How many are there?

Sri Chinmoy: Here there are about forty.

Mrs Lillian: Wonderful.

[Sri Chinmoy sings the song Compassion-Ocean, Mother Lillian, accompanying himself on the tote-a-tune.]

Mrs Lillian: That's beautiful.

Sri Chinmoy: Now they will sing.

[The members of the United Nations Meditation Group sing Compassion-Ocean, Mother Lillian.]

Mrs Lillian: You just don't know me. I'm not that good! Oh boy, this is wonderful! But I just really don't deserve all this.

Sri Chinmoy: You deserve all this and much, much more.

Mrs Lillian: Oh, no, no, no, I don't. This is just beautiful.

Sri Chinmoy: And we mean it. What we have sung, we literally mean it.

Mrs Lillian: Thank you, thank you, Sir.

Sri Chinmoy:...It is all of our hearts' feelings.

Mrs Lillian: Thank you very much. It is a great honour that you are doing this for me. But you don't know me. Ray knows me, though. He knows that I'm not that good. Don't you, Ray? It's beautiful. Let me ask you something. Do you go everywhere with…I call him Mr. Chinmoy… all together all the time?

UN Meditation Group member: As often as we can.

Sri Chinmoy: We have many more students. We have about eight hundred or so.

Mrs Lillian: I envy you your calmness. It took my best to sit still, much less meditate. I'm not much of a meditator. I did go to the meeting every Thursday night and I did meditate with them.

Sri Chinmoy: But you have meditated with me extremely well.

Mrs Lillian: Do you want me to tell you the truth? I don't know what I was thinking about, but I had a thousand thoughts. I can't get everything out of my head like you can. When you meditate, you completely bare your mind, don't you?

Sri Chinmoy: At that time, we do not have a mind at all. When we meditate, we only live in the heart and we become the heart itself.

Mrs Lillian: I have heard that and I think it is beautiful. But the only way I can meditate is to go somewhere by myself. I go to what I call my Pond House, I can go out and sit and look out over the pond, and then I can meditate.

Sri Chinmoy: We belong to the United Nations Meditation Group. This is for you, Mother, this is our offering. [Sri Chinmoy presents Miss Lillian with the United Nations Meditation Group banner.

Mrs Lillian: Oh, this is beautiful. Thank you. Oh it is beautiful.

At the concert that the UN Meditation Group presented later that evening, Sri Chinmoy played the Indian esraj and members of the Group sang several Bengali and American songs, including India's National Anthem and "America the Beautiful."

During the concert Sri Chinmoy commented:

Sri Chinmoy: I am a seeker. I have been here for six or seven hours. On the strength of my aspiration, I wish to say what I feel about Plains. Simplicity, sincerity, spontaneity, humility and self-giving are the birthright of this town. This is what my inner aspiration tells me and I wish to offer my soulful gratitude to the soul of this town where our dear President was born.

Inspirational talk at the beginning of the New Year¹⁵

O soul of the United Nations, we wish to serve you more soulfully and more devotedly, and for that what we need is more peace. Do tell us where peace is in abundant measure.

"Where is peace? Peace is in joy."

Where is joy?

"Joy? Joy is in love."

Where is love?

"Love? Love is in oneness."

Where is oneness?

"Oneness? Oneness is in vision."

Where is vision?

"Vision? Vision is in aspiration."

Where is aspiration?

"Aspiration? Aspiration is in self-giving. Aspiration is in truth-becoming, in light-becoming, in life-becoming and, finally, in God-becoming."

O soul of the United Nations, from the very dawn of this New Year, we wish to serve you more soulfully, more devotedly and more unconditionally.

World Leaders[fn:: SM 20-21. During January of 1978 Sri Chinmoy gave these short inspirational talks as part of a series of lectures on world leaders.

Swami Vivekananda¹⁶

Yesterday was the birthday of Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda was a supreme seeker and supreme lover of mankind. He was also the preserver of the universal vision. I am invoking his presence.

Was Swami Vivekananda a man? Yes, he was. Something else he also was: a lover-hero.

Did Swami Vivekananda really conquer America? Yes, he did. Truth to tell, it was a mutual conquest. Vivekananda conquered America's seeker-heart. America conquered Vivekananda's vision-eye.

What did Swami Vivekananda preach in the West? The Vedantic philosophy. Something he also did. In supreme secrecy, soulfully and lovingly on the vital plane, persistently and unconditionally on the mental plane and compassionately and unreservedly on the physical plane, he distributed Sri Ramakrishna's universal oneness-heart and blessingful joy.

Sri Ramakrishna loved at once Vivekananda's silence-heart and his sound-life. To his Naren what he gave was his own realisation-ocean. In his Naren what he found was his own vision-manifestation. Where? Here, there and all-where.

To the weak, Vivekananda had only one thing to say: "Fear not."

To the strong, he had only one thing to say: "Stop not."

To God, he had only one thing to say: "Delay not."

And to himself, he had only one thing to say: "Ask not."

President Roosevelt¹⁷

Yesterday was President Roosevelt's birthday. We wish to observe it today.

President Roosevelt, we, the members of the United Nations, salute you! O man of lofty ideals, O hero-warrior, O prophet of the world-illumining dawn, we soulfully salute you!

Admiration you received in abundant measure; condemnation too. One more thing your soul rightfully deserved-your dear countrymen should have seen life clearer and should have seen it as a whole, as you so surprisingly did.

The supremacy of your soul's will power over your body's revolt, your physical paralysis, was unparalleled. Your very existence was a stranger to fear. Your indomitable courage was far beyond the flight of our wildest imagination. It was your heart's wisdom-light that so lovingly and convincingly taught the entire world: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Indeed, the vision-light of this loftiest message can illumine the length and breadth of the world.

The embodiment of your vision-height and action-power will always be treasured by the freedom-loving and peace-spreading world. It was your own aspiration-mind and dedication-heart that planned for this organisational conference of the United Nations. Therefore, today's flowering United Nations to you bows with its gratitude-heart.

Peace and faith: these two divine qualities abide in each other. Your last message to the American nation can most unmistakably and most profitably be accepted and treasured by the vast world: "To all Americans who dedicate themselves to the making of an abiding peace, I say the only limit to our realisation of tomorrow will be our doubt of today. Let us move forward with strength and active faith."

O great good illumining, inspiring fulfilling soul, Franklin Roosevelt, to you we bow.

Do we have the capacity to help others?¹⁸

Do we have the capacity to help others? Yes, we do. Do we have the capacity to help others in words? Yes, we do. Do we have the capacity to help others in deeds? Yes, we do. Then how is it that we do not help others? We do not help others for various reasons. I wish to cite a few deplorable and painful reasons.

The most deplorable reason is a very simple one. We do not want to see happiness in others; we want only our own happiness. By nature, we human beings are cruel to one another. By nature, we do not want to see others happy. When we see that others are happy, we feel that our own little world is totally shattered and destroyed. The animal in us gets happiness from destruction. The human in us gets happiness from division and a sense of separativity. But the divine in us gets satisfaction only from oneness. The divine in us knows nothing else save and except oneness.

So the main reason that we do not help others is because we do not want to see others happy. This is the root cause. This root cause branches into several subsidiary causes. One of the subsidiary causes is that we want the rest of the world to see how important we are. When others come to us for help, we feel that we are indispensable. But when we come to learn that the same people have gone to others for help, we feel that we were right in not helping them. We feel that since the other party did not feel that we were indispensable, since the party went to others, we did the right thing in not helping. In this way we justify our unwillingness to help.

There is human friendship and divine friendship. Human friendship says, “Give me; I need.” Divine friendship says, “Take me, for I am all yours.” When we exercise our human friendship, we tell the world, “Give us; we need.” When we exercise our divine friendship, we tell the world, “Take us, for we are all yours.” The human in us has not only failed us time and again, but it will always fail us. The divine in us has always succeeded and will always succeed. This divine success is nothing short of world harmony and universal harmony, world peace and universal peace, world satisfaction and universal satisfaction.

Divine friendship is founded upon oneness. The source of divine friendship, divine love and divine concern is oneness. For this reason, divine friendship is lasting. On the other hand, human friendship on earth is nothing but a rope of sand. We shall not be an inch from truth if we say that most human beings are fair-weather friends. When we are desperate and facing inclement weather, our so-called friends desert us in a twinkling. We come out in the street and see an individual and ask him, “Are you my friend?” He says, “Of course, I am your friend, but on one condition: that you never ask me for a favour.” Then we see another individual and ask him, “Are you my friend?” He says, “Of course I am, but on one condition: that I shall be at least one inch superior to you. You have to be under me. If you are ready to be at my beck and call, if you are ready to be at my feet, then I will accept you as my friend.”

We see a third individual and say, “Are you my friend?” He answers, “Of course I am, but on one condition: whenever I am in need, you have to come to my rescue. But if ever you are in need, you must not count on me, for I have many, many things to do on earth other than helping you. So, if you want to be my friend, then let your acceptance of me be unconditional.”

So, when we are looking for a friend, we are like a helpless beggar. At that time, God our supreme Source is playing the role of the eternal beggar in and through us. He wants to play the role of a veritable beggar and we are extremely grateful to Him that He has chosen us for this; in and through us He will fulfil His begging task. Then God goes to some other individuals and asks them to assist others. He wants to play another role in and through them: the role of the eternal giver, the divine friend. But to His wide surprise He gets no response. But since God is compassionate to the needy, He continues trying to find some individuals who will allow Him to play this role in and through them. He is looking for some individuals in and through whom He can fulfil the aspiration-life and the desire-life of those in whom He is playing the role of a beggar. Finally, He finds some souls that are receptive. They are more than willing to abide by His express request, and they come to the rescue of those who are desperately in need of help.

When the seeker needs help, he can only do one thing. He has to dive deep within and bring to the fore his adamantine will. This adamantine will he will place at the Feet of the Absolute Supreme. Then the Absolute Supreme grants His all-fulfilling Compassion-light to the adamantine will of the seeker. When the seeker’s will and the Supreme Grace become one and are ready to work together, man’s aspiration-world and God’s Satisfaction-World make God the Beggar and God the Giver totally fulfilled both in the aspiration-world of earth and the satisfaction-world of Heaven.

A soulful promise¹⁹

Dear brothers and sisters, while walking along Eternity's Road, I shall love and serve you. Just because you have given me the opportunity to love and serve you, I shall constantly and eternally offer you my life of concern here on earth and my soul of oneness in Heaven.

We are all of the One, our Beloved Supreme. We came into the world to fulfil one soulful promise which we made to Him before we entered into this world arena. This promise was to please Him in His own Way through our aspiration-heart and dedication-life. We shall without fail fulfil our solemn promise, for we know that our Inner Pilot, our fate-maker, will never allow us to remain unfulfilled.

As we said, Him to please in His own Way we came into the world. Even so, our Beloved Supreme is always ready to please the real in us, the soul, which is inseparably one with Him. The soul is a blue bird which flies in the firmament of Consciousness, Light and Bliss, eternally singing only one song — the song of our Beloved Supreme's constant Victory here on earth and there in Heaven.

A meeting with Indian Prime Minister Desai

A meeting with Indian Prime Minister Desai²⁰

Sri Chinmoy: Dear Prime Minister, with you India is great and good; in you India is safe and happy

Prime Minister Desai: India can't be saved by one man. India can be saved only if people do their thing properly.

Prime Minister Desai:: All of you work at the United Nations? So I hope you will unite the United Nations. The United Nations is called "United Nations," but they are not yet united. So you have to unite them.

Prime Minister Desai: I have written a commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita because I could not find the meaning of some verses satisfactorily in all the commentaries that I read. Therefore, only when I committed the Gita to memory, when I was in jail in 1934, and I began to recite it every day and to apply it to myself, then the meaning became very clear, because I had complete confidence and faith in the Gita, that what it says is right. If I don't understand it, it is my fault. And that is why I wrote the commentary, because when a friend asked me questions about two or three verses, I couldn't give him a satisfactory reply. I thought I would put down on paper what I understand. That is my sole writing. The Gita gives a solution to every problem. At any rate, when there is a conflict of duty, it gives the right answer.

Sri Chinmoy: Right at the very beginning Arjuna had that problem.

Prime Minister Desai: It is a problem everywhere. In everyone there is a problem of good and evil. It goes on all the time. So one must accept the Gita's guidance. The gist of it is that you must be at peace with yourself. There should be no tension, no excitement, no anger.

Sri Chinmoy: And for that you have all along taught us to lead a disciplined life.

Prime Minister Desai: To have discipline is not enough. It must be self-discipline.

Sri Chinmoy: That is what you have been teaching us for so many years. A life of discipline is of paramount importance.

Prime Minister Desai: Without that you can get nothing.

Expressions of gratitude

Expressions of gratitude²¹

Today you are celebrating my birthday. I wish to offer my gratitude to each of you, and to say that every day I observe my birthday in the hearts of my dear and near ones, in the hearts of those who are seated in the Boat of the Supreme, the Boat that is destined to carry us to the Shores of the Golden Beyond. I observe my birthday every day in your hearts with my deepest gratitude, and at the same time I observe your birthdays every day in the inmost recesses of my heart with deepest love and pride divine.

I came into the world to be of service to the Supreme in mankind. By forming this United Nations Meditation Group you have given me the golden opportunity to be of service to the United Nations and to the world at large, and for that I am immensely grateful to each member of this group. On Tuesdays in this Chapel and on Fridays in the conference room when we hold meditations, what do we actually do? We try to bring down Peace, Light and Bliss from above. In the outer world we are not in a position to show what we bring down from above, but in the inner world I wish to assure each of you that we do bring down these and other divine qualities. The Supreme out of His infinite Bounty showers His Blessings on us and on the United Nations as a whole. We are the chosen devoted instruments of the Supreme.

Again I wish to offer my deepest gratitude to all the members of the United Nations Meditation Group and to all the seekers who come and regularly, faithfully, devotedly, soulfully meditate for Peace. History will bear witness to the fact that we have tried and we are trying and we shall continue to try with utmost sincerity to bring Peace into our lives and into the life of the United Nations. In the name of the Supreme I wish to assure you that we shall succeed. Our Pilot Supreme is the Absolute Supreme Himself. He will manifest and fulfil Himself in and through all aspiring hearts at His own choice Hour.

26.

Today we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of our Meditation Group at the United Nations. The number "five" has a most special significance. We have five senses. Each sense is of paramount importance. I pray to the Lord Supreme to grant us, out of His infinite Bounty, the capacity and receptivity to perfect our five senses so that we can be of better dedicated, devoted and unconditional service to the illumining soul and serving body of the United Nations. From today on, with our eyes we shall see only the divine Truth in God's creation; with our ears, we shall hear only the divine Truth; with our tongue we shall speak only the Truth. From today on, we shall breathe in inner truth; from today on our physical bodies shall be the torchbearers of the Supreme's infinite Truth. This is the prayer that I wish to offer to our Inner Pilot, the Absolute Supreme, on this auspicious occasion, the fifth anniversary of our Meditation Group at the United Nations.

Finally, I wish to offer my deepest gratitude to Sumedha, the secretary of our Meditation Group, for her constant dedicated service. Also, I offer my sincere gratitude to all the members of the Meditation Group who have been coming here faithfully and devotedly and serving this great body, the United Nations. The delegates and members of the Secretariat are trying to bring about peace. We are also trying to bring about peace in our own way through our prayer and meditation which is equally powerful, soulful and meaningful. The goal is the same, the destination is the same, only we are travelling along two different roads. Once we reach our destination we shall see that whatever is done with real sincerity is true, real and effective. Since the delegates and the members of the staff of the United Nations are also doing the right thing, absolutely the right thing, I wish to offer, on behalf of our Meditation Group, most sincere gratitude to them.

Sweet members of the United Nations Meditation Group, dear seekers, I wish to tell you with my heart's utmost sincerity that I was nothing, I am nothing and I shall be nothing. But there is Someone who was everything, who is everything, and who forever shall be everything, and I know Him. Him I have seen and Him I invoke to bless us out of His unconditional Compassion. He is our Eternity's All, our Beloved Supreme. I pray to Him to bless our devoted heads and our surrendered hearts so that we can be His perfect instruments on earth. Once we become His perfect instruments we shall be able to claim Him as our Eternity's own, very own. Beginning today, let us convince our body, vital, mind and heart that we are not only of Him from time immemorial-from before the very birth of creation-but also that we are for Him, that our purpose is to fulfil Him by accepting Him, claiming Him as our very own and playing our respective roles in His cosmic Game. What we all want is a world with a new heart and a new face. To achieve this what we need is constant self-giving to the Inner Pilot, who in silence is guiding every nation slowly, silently, unerringly. His success will be our progress in our life of aspiration, and our progress will be His success in His total and complete manifestation on earth.

From today on, let us claim the Tree, the Supreme, as our own, as He constantly claims us, the leaves, as His very own. If we claim Him as our very own, then our service will be more soulful more meaningful and more fruitful.

27.²²

My life is a life of gratitude which I wish to offer to the seekers here and all over the world. This year and all the years that I will be on earth I will have only one purpose, and that is to offer my dedication, my dedicated service. Today there are about fifty seekers in this room. But I wish to tell all of you that when we pray and meditate here, the soul of the United Nations observes us with deepest joy, gratitude and pride. What we do here is recorded in the soul of the United Nations, imprinted in letters of gold. And the appreciation that you have offered now on behalf of the Meditation Group, I wish to place at the Feet of our Beloved Supreme, the Inner Pilot, for it is He who is acting in and through me; it is He who is acting in and through all of us.

What we call dedicated service is nothing but His Compassion-fulfilment in and through us. What we do has already been done by Him. He just allows us to act on the physical plane to convince us that we are participating in His divine Game. Otherwise, there is nothing on earth that we do which has not been done by our beloved Pilot Supreme. Out of His infinite Compassion He makes us feel that we have done it, for when we feel that we have done it we get greater glory and we feel that life is more fruitful. But to be absolutely honest with you, what we do here soulfully is actually being done by our Inner Pilot.

Our service to the United Nations will one day be felt by each and every individual who serves the United Nations. Right now their physical minds may not know what we are doing with our prayer and meditation. But every day their souls do feel what we are doing and their hearts at times also feel it. A day will come when all parts of their being will realise that what we are doing is not for ourselves but for the body, vital, mind, heart and soul of the United Nations. We do not need appreciation now, we do not need recognition. What we need is our own constant feeling of oneness with the body, vital, mind, heart and soul of the United Nations. Our feeling of oneness is what we want from our lives. To all of you, only one thing I can offer and that is my ever-growing and ever-glowing gratitude-flower in the heart of the Universal Reality which you are, which we all are.

28.²³

This evening you are honouring the seeker in me. I am not a teacher; I am just a seeker and I shall always remain a seeker. Now here in the United Nations Meditation Group we are all seekers; we meditate on God, we pray to God to grant us out of His infinite Bounty peace in the outer world and peace in the inner world. I wanted to give a talk in response to the most inspiring offering that you have rendered to the Supreme in me. The singers have sung with their souls' aspiration and delight; the singers have conveyed my feelings about the United Nations infinitely better than I could have ever imagined. Therefore, I wish to offer to each seeker here something else which I consider to be the best in me, and that thing is my prayerful meditation. Just before I offer my prayerful meditation, I wish to say just a few words.

Greatness, goodness and oneness. Here at the United Nations, what the seeker in me observes right now is the message of greatness. Inside greatness there shall come a time when we shall hear the song of goodness, and there shall come a time without fail when inside goodness we shall see the dance of oneness. Greatness, goodness, oneness. We have started our journey with our inner cry, which we call aspiration, to become great. This is the first rung of our evolving ladder, which will ultimately reach the highest heights. The second rung is goodness. The third and ultimate rung is oneness. God, the Author of all good, will shower His devoted Blessings upon our surrendered heads and hearts, and at His Choice Hour He will teach us the significance of goodness. He has already taught us the message of greatness; now, at His Choice Hour, He will teach us the significance of goodness. Then finally He will teach us the dance of oneness. At that time, each aspiring soul in God's creation will fulfil God the absolute Truth, the transcendental Light, the universal Peace in His own way. On behalf of the United Nations Meditation Group, to each seeker present here I wish to offer my prayerful meditation, which is the only thing that I have and that I am in God's ever-fulfilling and ever-illumining Vision.

29.²⁴

I wish to offer to each member of the Meditation Group a blessing. From today on we, as members of the Meditation Group and as members of the United Nations staff, shall serve the world body and soul with our heart's soulful gratitude. At times people who are serving the United Nations are assailed with fear, insecurity, worry, doubt and other undivine qualities. But from today on we shall use our best quality; we shall use our soulful gratitude. We shall offer our soulful gratitude to the soul and body of the United Nations every day, every hour, every minute, every second. To serve the United Nations is to serve God's Oneness-Vision, God's ever-transcending, ever-fulfilling Vision of the ever-transcending Reality.

Notes

During January of 1978 Sri Chinmoy gave the following short inspirational talks as part of a series of lectures on world leaders.