News of the mission⁹

Since most of you are disciples, on the strength of my love, affection and oneness, I wish to tell you some of the news of our mission.

In our past few visits, I have been telling you that the time is ripe for us to enter into the wide world. Now the time has come, the Hour has struck and we have entered indeed into the wide world. To start with, you will be happy to learn that we now have a Centre in Toronto, Canada, Alo’s birthplace.

It was her father’s wish that we should have a Centre in Toronto. Before he passed away in 1968, he said to Alo, “Since you have spiritual Centres in other parts of the world, why not have one in the place of your birth, here in Toronto? You could hold the meetings right here in our house, 31 Alberta Avenue.”

Alo replied, “To do that, I would have to come and live in Toronto for a few months, since we have no one who could actually run a Centre here.¹⁰ I would like to be here with you and Mother, but Chinmoy would not be able to manage our Centre in New York without me. It is a tremendous amount of work and even with the two of us, the operation of the Centre takes from six in the morning until 2:00 am. I feel God will send someone to help us here in Toronto. After all, my soul entered into the manifested world right here. Chinmoy and I both want a Centre here and one in Shakpura, East Bengal, India. I feel that your vision will become a reality and that the Toronto Centre will come very soon. Dad, the Supreme will turn your soul’s wish into a Reality.”

Well, you will be happy to learn that finally we have been able to establish a Centre in Toronto and Alo’s father is seeing it from Heaven. And you people in Puerto Rico will be happy to learn that, for the first time, one of our Centres is being run by an Indian. After Alo’s eight long years doing sadhana in India, and my lifetime, up to the age of 32, in my Bharat Mata, our souls knew that it was the Supreme’s doing. The man who is running our Toronto Centre is an Indian who happens to be my colleague. I used to work at the Indian Consulate in New York City and there I met him. He was an accountant and a very devoted disciple of Sri Ramakrishna. He became an admirer of mine and now has become my truly devoted disciple. So he is running our Centre in Toronto. Alo is very happy. She had visited his native state, Kerala, in India several times and always had great admiration for the alertness, intelligence, social awareness and dynamism of the people of southwest India. “All those qualities, plus the deep, traditional spirituality of his Brahmin family, will make him a very fine Centre leader,” she said. So he is now running our Centre in Toronto, Canada.

Two weeks ago, I myself was in Canada. I gave talks at York University, the University of Toronto (where Alo received her BA and MA in Cultural Anthropology) and McGill University. We were most successful up there. Also there was an article on me in the Ottawa Star, a very significant article.

Now how many of you here read The New York Times? About five of you? Have you read the article on me in the Times? No? Nobody has read it? Well, last Saturday there was a wonderful article on me in The New York Times. Since nobody has read it, Sudha will now read it out to you. [Sudha reads.]

Another piece of news which I’m happily repeating: we now have our own publishing company in Queens, New York, right near our Centre. This [holding up the book] is the first book, published by the Chinmoy Publishing Company. I told you about it in July; it is entitled My Ivy League Leaves. As I explained to you last time, there are seven principal universities and one college in America which are known as “The Ivy League”. They are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University and Dartmouth College.

I wish all the disciples to read these talks. They are significant talks, and the disciples must read them for their inner nourishment and outer knowledge. I am sure by this time that the disciples have read My Lord’s Secrets exposed.[^7,10] Oh, you have read it? All of you, without fail? Well, now we have the second part, which came out the day before yesterday. From this second part, I would like to read out a few passages. [Sri Chinmoy reads.]

In publishing this book, My Lord’s Secrets exposed, ¹¹

they were extremely interested in my other books. But Food for the Soul is actually being published by the well-known publisher, Harper and Row. Food for the Soul will be out in December, and another book is being published by the Tower Publishing Company: here is the cover for it… very interesting. It will be called Yoga and the spiritual life: the journey of India’s Soul. Every article and talk in this book was originally beautified, corrected and enhanced by Alo, so she is very, very thrilled to see them printed by a professional company. This is our first book published by this particular company: Tower Publishing Company.

This coming Friday we have a very special programme: twenty-five universities will meet together at New York University in Greenwich Village. New York University will be the host. Each university of these twenty-five has a meditation group, either large or small, where they meditate on my picture. They keep flowers in front of my picture and they meditate. The leader of the meditation group, always a student of that university, speaks on my philosophy.

So there will be Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Brandeis University, Columbia, Boston… all of these big universities. There will also be a few colleges including Hunter College. So each institution’s meditation group will come up to the front of the hall and meditate with me for a few minutes. Then I shall give a talk on meditation. We shall start at 7:00 pm and those who want to join us spiritually are most welcome. At 7:00 pm (your time will be 8:00 pm) please meditate on us and you will feel our spiritual presence and we shall feel your oneness-blessings.

Either next week or the following week, we will be going to Europe. We will visit twelve or thirteen countries, perhaps more. In England alone, I shall give six talks: at Cambridge, Manchester and some other institutions. Then we shall go to Italy, Germany, Denmark, Holland and back to Scotland. All these places we shall be visiting. There will also be a few talks at gatherings of certain spiritual organisations. The month of November is going to be a month of great labour and trial for me.

As I have told you before, every Tuesday we hold meditations at the United Nations Peace Room. Last week a disciple of mine received a wonderful letter from the Chef de Cabinet, Mr Narasimhan, who works with the Secretary-General, U Thant. Secretary-General U Thant had read my talk, “The Garland of Nation-Souls”. You remember that deplorable incident when I was invited to give a talk to the world-body on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the UN. My talk then was “The Garland of Nation-Souls”. The Secretary-General was also kind enough to read My Ivy League Leaves and also our published meditations and talks at the United Nations. He sent me a letter saying that he deeply appreciates my Blessings and also that he feels that my writings will be of great value to humanity. That was his comment. Now in my conversation with all of you here today, in Puerto Rico, I am aiming at one particular point. This is what I am aiming at: quite a few times I have told you that our mission is growing. It is growing very rapidly and flourishing beautifully at the same time. This is happening this year, 1970. Next year we will have one hundred meditation groups at various universities in the United States. The way the universities are responding to our spiritual activities is most gratifying to our souls. And at the end of this year three books will have been published by professional publishers. So our message will be spread all over the world. It will be spread to the farthest corners of the globe.

Those who are with us in spirit, in heart and soul, naturally will feel the same satisfaction, fulfilment and pride that we feel. I am not alone. My mission is your mission. You can rightly claim that my mission is your mission. So all these pieces of good news that I am offering you, you rightly deserve because you have been aspiring to be in my Boat, the Boat that promises to carry you to the Golden Shore of the Beyond.

To this particular Centre here in Puerto Rico, I wish to say: there are quite a few newcomers. I am sorry that I will not be able to do justice to them because I will be here only for two days, today and tomorrow. But to the members of my spiritual family, I wish to say a few things. As I’ve said so many times before, this Centre happens to be our first, very first, and most promising Centre. But now, right now, I am seeing that the Centre is not functioning well. Who is to be blamed? I myself am to be blamed. I cannot blame anybody; no individual, no collective members. I blame only myself. I take the entire blame upon myself. All the other Centres are functioning well. There was a time when other Centres did not do well, but this Centre functioned extremely well. Now this Centre is not behaving well at all, to my extreme sorrow. We started this Centre four and a half years ago, with a very few selected members. Now most of the old members have fizzled out, and those who are staying… most of them… have no sustaining faith in the spiritual life, in the spiritual activities of our mission. The spiritual life is a life of spontaneous growth. But if you feel that your normal life of eating, sleeping, working and talking is the real normal life and the spiritual life is something abnormal, then I wish to say that you do not belong here any more. My philosophy is well known to you, and it differs from your philosophy and your lifestyle.

Here, unfortunately in this Centre, the aspiration is lax. It is low, very low. The old disciples who have been here for a long time, have, most of them, lost interest in the spiritual life. They have lost faith in the spiritual life, have lost all faith in me. All right, I don’t blame them. If they have lost faith in me, it is up to them, but if they have lost faith in their own spiritual lives, they cannot make any spiritual progress. I am an individual. If they do not have faith in me, it is up to them. But if they have lost faith in their spiritual lives, how can they make progress? They have to have faith in themselves or in God or in both. If I have disappointed them, it is up to them to be away from me; but if they have lost faith within themselves and in the spiritual life, then they are totally lost.

I happen to be the pilot here. If they want to jump out of my Boat, what am I going to do? I have other passengers who are in the Boat. Naturally those who are seated in the Boat want me to carry them to the other side, to the Golden Shore of the Beyond. I have to carry them; it is my divine duty. I cannot wait for those who have left the Boat. And also those who are sleeping in the Boat do not see how hard it is for the Pilot to steer and sail the Boat. They think it is something very easy, something like drinking water. No, it is not so. It is most difficult.

True, the spiritual life is natural, but God-realisation is something most difficult. Try to believe it, somehow. Now if you disappoint the Master, rest assured that you are disappointing the Inner Pilot. The Master and God are one for the disciples, not for others. If a disciple feels that I and the Supreme whom I represent are two different consciousnesses, two different ways of guiding or leading, then that particular disciple is deceiving himself outright. He who consciously becomes my disciple must realise that I am the mouthpiece of the Supreme. The Supreme speaks through me. Those who are not my disciples are under no obligation to listen to me or to pay any attention to what I say. But those who are my disciples must bear in mind that for them, God-realisation can take place only in and through me. There is no other way.

If they feel that they can directly approach God, then let them try. Let them see how many millions of lives it will take them to realise God through their personal effort. However, if they feel the necessity of a Pilot, then let them have complete and implicit faith in the Master, for the Master is a private tutor. He is not an examiner, far from it. The examiner tests what you have learned in school or in college. But the private tutor will only help you expedite the progress you are making at your spiritual school.

So if you feel the necessity of having a Master, then listen to him wholeheartedly. The old disciples have, unfortunately, most of them, disappointed me. Now new disciples who came with great enthusiasm, love and joy are also disappointing me. They are not serious enough. They were serious in the beginning, but they have not been able to maintain that seriousness, that devotedness, those qualities of devotion. And now they are lagging behind. Many of these new ones came with tremendous enthusiasm and zeal. But now their spiritual life, it seems to me, has become a picnic, a playground. They are running and jumping and enjoying themselves. But they have to understand that the spiritual life is not an amusement. It is a life of strict discipline.

Last year, when I saw quite a few new, young, energetic disciples here who had given up their hippie-life, I was extremely proud of them. I was bloated with pride that here in Puerto Rico I had achieved a tremendous success. These disciples had given up their drug-life, hippie-life, overnight. Why? They saw something in me. Those new disciples got considerable spiritual growth from me; they have had many spiritual experiences.[^7,23] Otherwise they would not have stayed with me.

But again, the Goal is very far; the Goal is a far cry; the Pilot is constantly battling the waves. When these disciples see that the journey is long, they begin to feel lethargic. They become lazy and they start sleeping. They once again want to sleep and to wallow in the pleasures of ignorance. This is what most of the young boys and young girls, those newcomers, new aspirants, are now doing.

I am extremely sorry. I am your spiritual father. That is why I am under an obligation to warn you people, because you started in the old days with sincerity, with devotion, with surrender and many other divine qualities. Now you are enjoying a life of relaxation, a purely unspiritual life.

I think that if you really cared for God, for Truth, for Light, then you would be most serious in your spiritual life. To my sorrow, to my extreme sorrow, there are disciples who came with tremendous promise but are now misbehaving in various ways. The most deplorable way is that you are not listening to the leader. I made someone here the leader. Sudha is and has been our first and only leader. I consciously made her the leader. You know that she is the President and she is the life of this Centre. But you people are not listening to her. She tells you to do something, and you do something else. You do what pleases you most.

When I come here, I get three months’ work out of you in three days. I am not exaggerating; in three days’ time, I get things done by you people which otherwise would take three months. When I come here, everybody is perfect. Each person is a nice instrument. How much I do, how much we accomplish in my short stay! And the moment I leave, as soon as I am physically away, you lose all interest, and nothing gets done. Nothing is accomplished. Almost everyone fails me, disappoints me. Whoever is entrusted with work… he disappoints me. I give some work to a person; that person does not do it. Now where do we stand?

I have come to this island at least twenty times. I have been to Jamaica, West Indies only three or four times, but they already have a big Centre there and do various types of selfless service. Various types of activities are going on there. Here I stay one month at a time… sometimes, two months. How many times have I come here and how many days, in all, have I spent here! Then I find that this place is not responding satisfactorily to my inner voice and my inner guidance. Now what?

The simple reason for all this is that you do not take the spiritual life as something important. You take your business career, your office-work as something most important, but for you, the spiritual life is secondary. You feed the body three times a day without fail, but when it is a matter of the soul, you don’t get time to feed it even once a day. Some seekers here don’t meditate even once a week. Now, how do you expect God-realisation? God-realisation is not for these idle, spiritually indifferent persons.

Now it is my request, it is my fervent request to the disciples who really want to be in my Boat, who want this Centre again to stand up and be in the vanguard of spiritual progress, to go deep within. They must listen to the leader, Sudha, and do everything with her knowledge, concern and approval. Otherwise this new generation of disciples will also start exploiting my compassion and my blessings. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not for a spiritual aspirant. You are spiritual people, and I am also a spiritual man. God has given each of you a heart. You can feel whether or not I think of you, whether I concentrate on you or not. Outwardly you may write twenty letters to me; perhaps I don’t have time to answer your letters. Then you say, “Where is your concern?” My concern is not in writing but is in the feeling in my own heart. Every day without fail I meditate on you, on those who have taken me as their spiritual teacher. If you meditate on me, you are bound to feel this. There can be no one, no sincere disciple, who can say that he or she does not feel me inwardly. If he or she does not feel me, that means that that person is not meditating on me but meditating on someone or something else. If you don’t meditate on me, how do you expect me to be in your heart, guiding you, shaping you and moulding you? You can’t. If I meditate on you, I do feel your ignorance, your stupidity. Again, if you are meditating sincerely and devotedly on me, I can feel your aspiration and your concern for me. So try to meditate on me.

Now this year has practically come to an end. When we take our mission as a whole, in one year, by the Grace of God, you have made tremendous progress, as I told you before. It is also true that “slow and steady” wins the race. You know the story of the hare and the tortoise. But the Supreme has told me that in our case, it is not “slow and steady”, but “fast, faster, fastest” that will win our race. Why? Because the Supreme is within us and of us and for us. Now outer success and inner progress are made only by those who have meditated during the whole year. They are the ones who notice it, because they embody the outer success resulting from inner progress.

The outer achievements this year I have spoken about before. I have given talks in about forty major universities this year. Many, many spiritual Masters have tried to have meditation groups at the universities, and your Master is the first and foremost. If this is not a tremendous achievement, then what is it? Whose success is it? The success of the Supreme, the success of the members of our spiritual family.

This year also three major publications have seen the light of day and twenty-five universities are meditating on this particular spiritual Master. Now you will see how other universities respond to the spiritual call.

As I mentioned, at the end of the year I will be in Europe and you will see the Supreme’s tremendous success there. We will have a most successful Centre in England. So there will be Centres in England, continental Europe and America. When I speak of America, rest assured that I am referring to you in Puerto Rico. You yourselves always refer to North America, Central America and South America as “Las Americas”. So now the wide world has entered into us and we have entered into the wide world. Every Tuesday, at the United Nations, new representatives from various countries come to the Meditation Group. New persons come each time, and what do they get? Peace… Peace… Boundless Peace and Light. The meditation room is inundated with the Light of the Supreme.

But here, this Centre in Puerto Rico must not lag behind. Once upon a time you showed your sincerity. Once upon a time you showed your devotion. Once upon a time you showed your surrender. And this “once upon a time” just changed, just the other day, just a short time ago, let us say, yesterday. Now today, why can’t you go back to your old devotion, your old surrender, your old love for the Supreme? Today why should you lag behind? Your old love, devotion and surrender were pure gold. You can go back! You can, you can! Puerto Ricans have the ideal heart. It was you who accepted me first; it was you who gave me hope and inspiration to launch into my spiritual mission.

Now that my mission is flourishing all over the world, I see, to my deepest sorrow, that you are receding, lagging behind, disappointing me, disheartening me. Why? I myself cannot account for it. Again, I take full responsibility for this so-called failure. Since I am the leader here, I have to take full responsibility if an individual member goes astray or if the collective group misbehaves. I cannot blame them; it is I who have to be blamed. But if you, once again, want to be in the vanguard of our spiritual Centres, I can offer you the same love, the same affection, the same blessings and the same pride as I did before.

You have to know what comes first: God or your outer life. This is the crux of the whole problem. If the outer life comes first, then this Centre is not meant for you. I have made that clear on many occasions. But if God comes first, then since I am involved with God, I have to come first in your daily life. If you are my disciples, then rest assured that it is the Supreme in me Who can liberate you and no one else — nobody else. If you are my disciples, Liberation has to come from me, Salvation has to come from me and from no other source. If you don’t want Liberation, Salvation and Realisation, but you want only a very scanty and limited peace and light here, then you can come to the Centre as you have been recently doing. But you have to be sure that you know what you want from your life. Do you want the highest God-realisation or just a little bit of Light, Peace and Bliss? If you are willing to be satisfied with limited Peace and so forth, you are welcome. But if your aim is the Highest, nothing short of the Highest will be your Path and your Goal. Again you have to know clearly that this Goal can be achieved, can be won only through your Master’s constant guidance and blessingful compassion.

There are a thousand and one ways to deceive oneself. If you want to deceive yourselves, you can do so very easily. Not even God will come to your rescue. But if you love God, if you love the spiritual life, if you love Truth, if you love Realisation, if you cry, if you care for the Highest, then I wish to say that you must go back to your old life of aspiration, your old life of your inner cry, your old life of oneness. These things you must do along with your spiritual Master, who loves you, still loves you and, furthermore, will love you unconditionally forever. My love will remain unconditional, but unfortunately your realisation of the highest Truth and Light will always remain a far cry. My unconditional love will be there, but it will not be able to give you realisation. Why? Because along with my unconditional love what you need is your constant aspiration to be in my Boat and to please me in my own way. Three or four weeks ago, I told you that there are two ways to please me.

One way is to please me the way God wants me to be pleased. The other way is to please me through your verbal flattery or through writing beautiful poems on me or beautiful accounts of me. Now if you feel that by writing things about me or speaking highly of me, that I’ll be the happiest person, you are mistaken. I will be the happiest person if, when I ask you to sweep this floor or to bring me a nail, or to collect the garbage or to do something else, you do so without the least possible hesitation. Then and only then are you pleasing me in my own way. You actually have hundreds of ways to please me, but I tell you that I am rarely pleased with you when you try to please me in your own way. But if you please me the way I want to be pleased, the way the Supreme in me wants to be pleased, then I wish to tell you that I need your constant devotion, constant surrender, constant faith in me. At that time you will see what miracles can be achieved in your day-to-day life, in your life of aspiration.

Dearest Puerto Ricans, I offer my soulful promise to you, to each disciple here, that this Centre can again rise to its highest Goal.

¹²