Question: The other day you asked me to bring gifts for you to give out and I forgot. In a case like this, if we displease you, how do we keep from getting depressed?

Sri Chinmoy: Next time, don’t displease me. How many things you forget. Here I have asked you to bring gifts, but just because you didn’t bring them, what problems you made for me. These two disciples are poor people. It takes them ten hours to drive to my place. So out of my compassion, I thought I would give them some gifts. When new people get gifts from me, they feel that I really care for them.

When this kind of thing happens, then immediately say inwardly, “Guru, forgive me. Next time I won’t do it.” You don’t realise that if I had given one of them a sari and the other a tie, then during the whole night they would have had sweet dreams. Their energy, enthusiasm and aspiration would have gone up tremendously. You people get so many material gifts from me. “Who cares for these things?” That is what you say. But inside my gifts are boundless love and concern for you. Material gifts are like magic. Inside the tie and the sari is a big story. I am depending on my instruments like you, and this is what happens.

Sometimes I ask one of the disciples to do something for me, and in my mind I keep a fixed time. Sometimes when I ask one disciple to bring food, I don’t set a time limit outwardly, but inwardly I put a force so that in fifteen minutes he will bring it. Now fifteen minutes, forty-five minutes go by and where do I stand? I am a beggar. Outwardly, I am not telling him to bring it in a specified time; but inwardly the force that I have put gets annoyed because nobody is receiving my message. The other day I went to a disciple’s store. I was not restless, but I was in a hurry. Now one boy was absolutely in Heaven because I had come. The Goal was right in front of him. But either through nervousness or because he was showing off how fast he could work, the food was not coming. At that time nobody else was there. I was the only customer. They were trying to do it quickly, but the forces were working against them. When I ask someone to do something, inwardly I fix a time, but it is not done. I put a force on the workers, but the result does not come in the time I have allotted because concentration in the workers is missing.

Whenever I ask disciples to do something, inwardly I fix a time, but I may not tell it outwardly. You may say, “Guru, you are a deceitful person,” because I say only, “Please bring it as soon as possible.” You can call it my weakness, but immediately I fix an hour in my mind. Again, outwardly I may fix a time — say half an hour — but inwardly I may set another time. Most of the time, in my mind I expect it in a shorter time, say eighteen minutes, and I put a force on it also. But it never comes in eighteen minutes. With greatest difficulty it may come in half an hour. The same thing happens with my literary work. I will tell you that I want the work to be done in three or four days, but in my mind I keep a fixed time that is much shorter. Those books say that they are written by Sri Chinmoy, but I know in each case that not one page could have been done without my spiritual children. I know how much I owe you people, but even a beggar expects something. When I go and knock at your heart’s door, at that time I expect something from you. I do not feel that I am a beggar.

So in the future, try to do the right thing first. Try to please me. Then depression will be nowhere in your life.