June 6

Sri Chinmoy Answers

questions by his disciples at Friends Meeting House in Ealing, London, England

Question: How can we overcome fear in the spiritual life?

Sri Chinmoy: In the spiritual life there should be no fear. Why should you be afraid of anything or anyone? Since you are praying to God the Almighty, meditating on God the Almighty, why should you be afraid of anything or anyone? A child feels his mother has all the power of the world. So when he is afraid of anything, he runs to his mother because the mother has all affection for him. Here also, you are a spiritual child of God, so when you are attacked by any kind of fear — either in the physical, the mental or the vital — immediately try to run towards the sweet Supreme, who is all Compassion, all Love, all Blessings.

When ordinary human beings pray to God, their prayer is full of desire. We pray to God to grant us Peace, Light and Bliss in infinite measure, but unaspiring people pray to God to give them material wealth, worldly prosperity. When one prays to God with desire, it is all through fear, because one has no idea whether God is going to fulfil one's desires. But if the prayer is soulful, there will be no fear. Say you are praying to God for Peace, but you are not getting it. But just because you are praying for something good and divine, God will come to you and give you the necessary patience to wait for God's Hour. In one hour you cannot get a Master's degree. You study in school from kindergarten to university in order to get your Master's degree. In the spiritual life also, when you ask for something very high, very deep, very profound, it takes a long time. So if you pray for divine things, for Peace, Light and Bliss, you are bound to feel that there is something called God's Hour. If you live in His Hour, there can be no fear. But in the ordinary life, if you crave earthly or mundane things, naturally fear will always assail you. In your case, since you are a seeker, there should be no fear, for you are taking shelter inside the infinite Affection of the Absolute Supreme.

Question: How can we be conscious of God all the time in our mental work, such as when we are studying?

Sri Chinmoy: When you are driving a car, your hands are on the wheel, your feet are on the gas and your eyes are looking forward and sideways. Look how many things you are doing. It is the same thing when you are studying. Easily you can keep God in mind. Before you begin to study, before you open up your book, pray to God most soulfully that your study will be no different from your prayerful thought. Then, while you are studying, you have to feel the prayerful consciousness which you had just before you started studying. It is like a flow. Once you start running properly on the right track, automatically you continue along that same track. But if you go the wrong way or take a wrong turn, then you follow in that direction.

An ordinary person will study so that he will get a diploma and become extremely great or prosperous in life. In your case, you are not studying for name and fame. No, you are studying to please the Inner Pilot. You are studying in order to become a good, divine instrument of God. And there shall come a time when the Inner Pilot will utilise you in His own Way to serve others. You will acquire knowledge and this knowledge you will distribute to aspiring mankind. So your studying will be totally different from the studying of others.

If you have that kind of attitude towards your studies, then there will be no problem. When you are studying, you have to try to feel the purpose behind it: you are studying to please the Supreme in His own Way. Then, when the time comes for you to teach, you will not teach like other teachers. You will try to bring to the fore the divinity inside each of your students so that they also can become chosen instruments of God. If you can have this idea when you study, you will see that your mental life will not be an obstruction to your spiritual life. But if you separate the outer study from the inner study, which is your prayer and meditation, then there will always be problems. At that time, you will see a yawning gulf between your mental study and your psychic or spiritual studies. They have to be blended. The capacity of the mind has to be illumined by your psychic capacity, spiritual capacity. Then there can be no problem.

Question: If we are in a place or circumstance where we feel our consciousness falling, is there a way we can immediately raise it again?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to become more alert, more soulful. You have to feel that once upon a time you had the capacity to climb up the consciousness-tree, but now you are climbing down. The capacity you had to climb to the highest, topmost branch you still have. And this same capacity you can apply today. Only you have to feel that your goal is to remain as high as possible. Always try to keep the goal right in front of you. You always have to be conscious of your purpose, the reason you are following the spiritual life, the reason you must remain in your highest consciousness.

This is the time for you to go up high, higher, highest and discover yourself. Then you have to come down to distribute the Peace, Light and Delight that you have achieved. Right now your brothers and sisters are hungry and you don’t have the means to feed them. If you stay with them, you will be one other hungry person, and there will be no one to feed you. So you have to climb up the tree and pluck the mangoes. If you just climb up and come down without plucking any fruit, then what will you have to distribute to mankind? You won’t be able to give anything to mankind. You go up and collect the fruits and then you come down to distribute the fruits to your brothers and sisters. Then again you have to go up.

But before you are well established in your inner life, spiritual life, it is always advisable to be alert. If you see that by mixing with someone your consciousness is brought down, then don’t mix with that person. That person is not bad. No, in everybody there is God, so you can’t say that person is bad. Only you have to know that right now you do not have enough inner strength and capacity to mix with that person. Right now God is giving you the opportunity to mix with those who have already established some Peace, Light and Bliss. Birds of a feather flock together; you are a spiritual person, so you should mix only with spiritual people. But once you become strong, there shall come a time when you can mix with unaspiring people — not out of self-indulgence, but out of love, out of compassion, so that they shall also be lifted. Their consciousness also has to be elevated, but for that you need aspiration and determination. First you have to ascend the consciousness-tree yourself; only then can you help others ascend.

So right now, if your consciousness is descending when you are mixing with unaspiring people, do not mix with them. Mix only with those who will help you increase your aspiration. But it is not forever. There shall definitely come a time when you will be sufficiently strong that you will be able to go out and help them.

Question: When a child asks you, "Who is God?" what is the best answer to give him?

Sri Chinmoy: When a child asks you, “Who is God?” just ask the child to look into a mirror and to smile as soulfully as possible. The word “soulfully” the child may not understand, but the child can easily see how beautiful he looks. Tell the child to try to give the most beautiful, absolutely the most beautiful smile, and to look at himself. The child will know whether it is a beautiful smile or just an ordinary smile. So, the more beautiful the smile the child gives, the more divinity comes forward. When the child looks at his own face, at his most beautiful, glowing consciousness, you tell him that that is God and nobody else.

Who is God? God is our own highest reality. If you can give a most soulful smile that will immediately illumine you and the whole world, that smile is nothing other than God. Let the child remain in the consciousness of his most beautiful smile, a smile that pervades the length and breadth of the world. The child’s most beautiful smile is the most convincing answer. In the case of adults, they have to pray and meditate and develop a divine consciousness. But for a child, this is the easiest and most effective answer. And at the same time, it is absolutely true. You are in no way fooling the child.

Question: Is the feeling that the outside world is futile really a form of aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: If you feel this, it means that you are approaching the truth in a complicated manner, a perverse manner. You should not think that the outside world is futile. You have to feel that the outside world is yours. You have to accept it, but not the way the world wants you to accept it. You will accept the world with the idea that a day will come when with your own light, with your own delight, with your own divine capacity, you will transform and illumine it. Right now, if you accept the world the way it wants you to accept it, you shall only wallow in the pleasures and meshes of ignorance, for the outer world is much stronger than your own capacity. But one day you will be strong, you will be stronger, you will be strongest. While you are developing your courage and strength, you can’t say that the outside world is hopeless, useless. Only you have to feel that you don’t have enough capacity to illumine it. If you criticise the outside world, if you feel that it is futile and useless, then you will cherish a kind of superior feeling. That superior feeling will bloat your ego and you will feel that it is beneath your dignity to mix with the world even after you get Power, Light and Bliss.

The outside world is like a child, the youngest member in the family. You know your little brother or sister is not doing the right thing. At the same time, you do not have the capacity to correct and perfect the child. But a day will come when you will have enough strength. At that time when you request the child to do something good and divine, the child will do it because he will see something in you that is divine, luminous, supreme. But if you look down upon the child, thinking that the child is doing everything wrong and leading an undivine life, then you will automatically cherish a kind of superior feeling. This superior feeling will separate your reality and existence from that of a child. Today you are aspiring only to strengthen yourself; tomorrow you will aspire to strengthen the ones that are around you. But if you think that everything in the outer life is futile and meaningless, if you do not feel your oneness with the world, then how are you going to illumine it?

Right now the capacity that you have is very limited. But one day you will have boundless capacity and then, at God’s choice Hour, you shall be a perfect instrument to serve the weak ones. But if you think that others are useless, you shall never do any service for the outside world. There will always be a big gap between you and others: “I am all good and they are all bad people. So let good people remain together and forget about the bad.” No. Good people will stay together in the beginning only to gain strength. But once they have gained strength, good people will go and mix with others. The rest of the world is not bad; only you have to say that it is less good. But if you say you represent day and they represent night, then that will be a serious mistake. You have to feel that you have an iota of light more than the world has, and with that iota you are trying to be of help.

Question: If somebody is angry with you, what should your reaction to the person be?

Sri Chinmoy: There are a few ways to solve this problem. Anger is undoubtedly a negative power, a destructive power. When that negative power attacks you, you can resort to an infinitely superior power. That power is the Supreme’s Compassion. When anger has come and attacked you, at that time if you invoke the Compassion of the Supreme, which is infinitely more powerful than human anger, then you will be able to inundate the other person with the Supreme’s Compassion. Even if he hurls all his anger-arrows at you, if you can invoke the Supreme’s Compassion, then these arrows will not be able to hurt you. On the contrary, these arrows will eventually illumine you. This is the best approach, the divine approach, for only this approach will bring abiding satisfaction. But if you cannot go to the Highest and get the highest power, then you have to take the second-best course, the human approach.

Just remain indifferent. Your power of indifference is extremely powerful. You have no idea to what extent indifference-power can solve your problems. With your indifference-power you can create a solid, adamantine wall that nothing can approach. If you remain indifferent, then between you and the other person there will be a wall, a solid wall, which his anger will not be able to pass through. If somebody is angry with you and wants to destroy you, just feel that you don’t belong to him and he does not belong to you. Feel that there are two worlds and your world is totally different from his. When you are indifferent, automatically you create another world inside you. So you remain in your indifference-world and let him remain in his anger-world.

But if you take this approach, the human approach, and use your indifference-power, you have to know that you won’t be able to remain indifferent for a long time. Your own aggressive power will come forward: “If he can strike me, then I can also strike him: tit for tat.” But in the spiritual life it is not like that. If somebody attacks you, your attitude will be different. He will attack you to destroy you, but you will only touch him in order to transform him. So your view is totally different from his. He is trying to devour you; but you will only touch him, for if you don’t touch him, how are you going to transform him? If the potter does not touch the clay, then he cannot give shape to any pots. If someone is angry, he will catch hold of all the pots and smash them, break them to pieces. But the potter will only touch them and give them shape. When you have superior power, you will touch the earth-consciousness in order to change it, transform it, illumine it.

We are all seekers of the infinite Truth and Light. If unaspiring persons attack us, they will attack us according to their capacity, according to their understanding, according to their realisation. But our understanding is far superior to theirs, so we have to illumine them. If we do that, then their vital will feel that it is the worst possible punishment that we have given. Their soul will immediately be grateful, but their vital, their unaspiring or aggressive vital, will feel that it has received a most powerful punishment.

Published in My Rose Petals, part 5

Oneness-Education

A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at West Road Concert Hall, University of Cambridge, England

Peace is not
In my mind's world-rejection.
Peace is
In my heart's world-acceptance.

You are a Truth-seeker. I am a Truth-seeker. You are a God-lover and I am a God-lover.

You and I have the same God, yet we quarrel and fight. God asks you to trust me; you fail to obey God. God asks me the same thing, He asks me to trust you; but I certainly fail.

You and I have the same God. God asks you to see Him in me, and He asks me to see Him inside you. Both of us fail our Lord Beloved Supreme. You see in me countless imperfections when you look at me. I do the same when I look at you. You do not see in me the Presence of God. I do not see in you the Presence of God. You do not see anything divine, inspiring, aspiring, illumining and fulfilling in me. Alas, I also fail to see in you anything divine, inspiring, illumining and fulfilling. Both of us fail our Lord Beloved Supreme.

You and I have the same God. You think and you know and you feel that your God is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. I, too, see and feel the same. But when you look at me, you think I am imperfection incarnate, you feel I am past correction. You forget that your God is omnipotent. If so is His Will, He can perfect my life in the twinkling of an eye. Similarly, when I see your countless imperfections, I fail to see the Presence—the loving and benevolent Presence—of my Lord Beloved Supreme. I, too, forget the fact that my God, whom I claim to be my God, is omnipotent. If your God is omnipotent and if my God is omnipotent, how is it that we cannot have faith in God's Power supreme? You can pray to God for my perfection; I can pray to God for your perfection. This is one way for us to make God happy, although it may take a long time for you to see my perfection and, vice versa, for me also to see perfection in you. But the very fact that you and I are praying mutually for our mutual perfection will make our Lord Beloved Supreme happy far beyond our imagination.

You and I have the same God, yet we disagree most of the time and we quarrel and fight. You and I pray to God for happiness. We pray to God and we speak to God. You say to God, "O God, please make me happy first and then I shall make You happy. You please fulfil all my teeming desires. Once I am happy, then I shall make You happy, O Lord Supreme." This is your prayer. I, too, have the exact same prayer. I say to my Lord Supreme, "My Lord, please fulfil my desires first, all my desires please fulfil, then I shall definitely make you happy. First make me happy, then I shall unfailingly and undoubtedly make You happy."

Here, in this case, you and I are sailing in the same boat. We want our happiness first, and then God's Happiness. But God says to us, "Since you are begging Me for happiness, pleading with Me, it is you who have to make Me happy first, not the other way around." And, again, God says to us, "My children, if I make you happy first, it will be the fulfilment of your desire-life. No matter how many times I fulfil your desires in order to make you happy, I will not be able to make you happy, never! But if you make Me happy first, on the strength of your aspiration-life, then you will feel that in My Happiness alone your happiness can be discovered, for I am the Source of all happiness. So please, My children, be wise. Make Me happy first. Then you are bound to be happy, and this happiness will last forever."

You and I have the same God. You want to see perfection in me. I want to see perfection in you. By speaking to God day in and day out against me, do you not think you are displeasing God and irritating God? For He is all Compassion for both of us. Again, I do the same. I speak ill of you to God at every moment. I think that by speaking ill of you, I am making my point clear to God, I am making God feel I am far better than you. "Oh no, that is not the way," my Lord Supreme tells me. We have to see all the divine qualities in each other to make our Lord Supreme happy. Our imperfect nature can only be transformed by His Compassion-Eye and Forgiveness-Heart.

You and I have the same God. You are God-thirsty and God-hungry; this is absolutely true. I, too, am God-thirsty and God-hungry. But if our hunger is genuine and if, at every moment, we want to be fed and nourished by God's Nectar-Delight, by His infinite Compassion, infinite Love and Light and Delight, then can we have even a fraction of a moment to think of each other? When I think of you, I think of your imperfections, your weaknesses. You do the same. Such being the case, who is actually our Lord? We pray to God for five minutes a day, but we think of each other for ten or twelve hours a day.

When we accept the spiritual life, we make a fervent promise to our soul, to our heart, to our inner life, to our Inner Pilot, that we shall always think of God, our Lord Beloved Supreme. And yet, instead of thinking of our Lord Beloved Supreme at every moment, you think of me daily for hours and I also do the same with regard to you. You think of God for just ten minutes a day. I do exactly the same, not a minute more than you. So we have made each other our God, and poor God, the real God, is buried in oblivion in our ignorance-mind and ignorance-life.

No, my friend, since we wish to sail in the same boat, the boat of aspiration, the boat that will lead us to our Destined Goal, the Golden Shore, let us believe in our oneness-education; let us start today with our oneness-education. This oneness-education is founded upon our mutual aspiration and reciprocal dedication. Together we must aspire, in spite of our weaknesses, difficulties and imperfections. Together we must raise our consciousness to high, higher, highest heights. Together let us sail in the same boat, the boat that will take us to our Destination, the Golden Shore. Our Beloved Supreme is eagerly waiting for our arrival. Let us make Him happy in His own Way, and His own Way means our oneness-education, oneness-perfection, oneness-satisfaction.

Published in The Oneness of the Eastern Heart and the Western Mind, part 1

Never Stand Against God’s Will

A story told by Sri Chinmoy
at his home in New York

There was once a very, very good king, a superlative king. He was kind-hearted, compassionate and wise. In every way he was so good, unimaginably good. All his subjects took him as their father. They were so fond of him.

One day the queen was massaging the king's head with coconut water. While she was massaging him, there were tears in her eyes, and these tears were dripping on the king's face and on his whole body.

The king became so concerned. He said, "Why are you crying? Why are you shedding tears? Have I done anything wrong? Is there anything that I will not do for you? Tell me! If anybody has insulted you, I shall punish them. Although I am a very kind-hearted person, I will not forgive anybody who has misbehaved towards you. Please tell me what is wrong. You are dearer than the dearest to me."

The queen replied, "No, no — nobody has insulted me. I am crying because just now I found one white hair on your head." She showed it to her husband and said, "I am crying because you are getting old. One day soon you will die. Then how can I live without you? Who will take care of me?"

The king tried his best to console the queen. He said, "Is there anybody who will not become old? Life is like that. Everybody will eventually be old. I am getting old, you will become old; everybody will become old."

But the queen was still crying and crying. "Oh, you are getting old, you are getting old!" she said. "You will die soon!" Finally, the king said, "You are right." He ruled only for a few more years. Then he placed his son on the throne and went with his wife to the forest. He said, "I cannot deal with the problems of my kingdom any more. Now I am really old. Let me spend the rest of my days in prayer and meditation" In this way the king entered into the spiritual life.

The king's subjects loved him so much that they accompanied him to the forest, and then they would not go home. All of them stopped eating, and then they started praying to the sun god. They prayed and prayed for a long time. The sun god was pleased with their prayers, and he appeared before them. "All right," he said, "what do you want?"

They answered, "We want our king back so that he can rule us for ten thousand years!"

The sun god granted the boon, and then the sun god and the subjects went to the king to inform him. The king said, "I do not want that, I do not want that, no!"

But the sun god forced the king to come back to the kingdom and rule for ten thousand years. The poor king said, "O my God, O my God! What am I going to do?"

As the years went by, the king saw that people who were younger than he were all dying in front of him. One by one, his subjects were all leaving the earth plane. The king cried, "What kind of boon is this?"

Then he started praying and praying to the sun god. His prayer was, "Please, please, please give my subjects also ten thousand years! Since I am supposed to live for ten thousand years, let my subjects be with me."

After many years, the sun god was pleased with the king's prayer and granted the boon he desired, so everyone in the kingdom was living for ten thousand years.

Now it happened that, after a few years, some people became extremely miserable. They were saying, "We are living for ten thousand years here on earth, but there is no joy. This world is boring, boring! We do not want to be here for so many years." They were murmuring that they were not pleased with their boon.

It seemed that nobody was satisfied, so the king prayed and prayed to the sun god once more. This time he prayed, "Please give us some wisdom regarding your boon."

The sun god replied, "Never stand against God's Will! If God wants you to die today, you die. If He wants somebody else to die tomorrow, then that person also has to surrender. It is all God's Will. When God wants you to die, you should take it happily. Otherwise, you will go against His Will."

First the people were thinking, "We are immortal!" But afterwards, they discovered that their life was boring. What were they going to do on earth for ten thousand years? Were they happy living on earth for so long? God fulfilled their desire, true; but when God fulfils our desires, it does not mean that we are going to be happy. On the contrary, we will feel miserable.

God says to us, "You will always be miserable if you want to please yourself in your own way. But if you please Me in My own Way, then only you will be happy."

Published in The Power of Kindness and Other Stories