Question: Can we identify with the person whose birthday it is so that we can also receive something?

Sri Chinmoy: If it is somebody’s birthday and you are sincerely identified with that particular soul, then it is like sharing. The person whose birthday it is will definitely receive blessings, and you will receive part of it. Unfortunately, if one hundred people are singing “Happy Birthday”, perhaps ninety-nine are not getting anything. You are singing “Happy Birthday”, which you learnt in your childhood, but you are getting zero. When you see that I am very seriously meditating on the soul or the heart of the person, at that time, if you can identify yourself not with the person but with me, by looking at my eyes or feeling my heart, then you will be able to receive something. Otherwise, while you are singing “Happy Birthday,” you may be in your restless vital-consciousness and you will get nothing.

Again, sometimes it happens that even the birthday person is thinking of rubbish things: “Guru observed so-and-so’s birthday more significantly; many more people came. Here on my birthday nobody brought a cake even, and the entire day nobody said ‘Happy Birthday’ to me.” When all these thoughts come, you receive nothing. I may be meditating on you and you may be getting nothing, whereas a third party may be receiving the special birthday Blessings which I have brought down for you. You may not receive them, but somebody else may get them. They may be receptive. Again, the birthday person alone may receive. For two or three minutes, or an hour or so, she may become receptive and she may receive because it is her birthday, while others are not identifying themselves with me or with the birthday person so they are getting nothing.