Diary Entry
by Sri Chinmoy
while in residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India
26 January
In the morning, while I was going through the money order coupons, Nolini-da said to me: "This evening I shall read out something very special and significant about my first meeting with Sri Aurobindo and then I shall read out Amrita's autobiography. Sisir has asked me to read out the English version of my meeting with Sri Aurobindo. Sisir feels that if it is read in English, the non-Bengalis can also enjoy it. What do you think of this idea?"
"Your Bengali will always be matchless," I said. "When you read out your articles in Bengali, I get tremendous joy, and when you read out your English articles, I also get tremendous joy. But when you read out others' translations of your Bengali articles, unfortunately I do not get the same joy. I feel something is missing, though I don't know what it is."
He said: "You do know what is missing from my writings which have been translated by others. It is my original depth. Anyway, what can I do? This time I shall listen to Sisir's request. Next time I shall definitely read in Bengali.
"Today is Republic Day. More than half a century ago we tried to bring about independence in our own way. I shall read out to the Ashramites about our revolutionary activities."
After reading out his article he said: "Now I am going to read out Amrita's story of how he met — rather, did not meet — Sri Aurobindo for the first time."
At the end of his reading, Nolini-da's comment: "Indeed, it is an excellent experience, but Amrita stops very abruptly. It is just like eating half a rasgulla. I hope later on we will be supplied with a full one."
On the way back to Nolini-da's room, Yogananda-da and I were following him. I was carrying his thermos. He said to me: "I am glad that you brought the thermos today, and I am also glad that Yogananda gave me water to drink the moment I needed it so badly."
Published in A Service-Flame and a Service-Sun
Ego
A discourse by Sri Chinmoy
To feel the absence of ego is as difficult as to feel the presence of God in one’s heart. To feel the absence of ego is as difficult as to feel the presence of God in one’s self.
Man is ‘I’. God is ‘We’. Similarly, the ego is ‘I’; the soul is ‘We’. On the strength of its absolute oneness with God, the soul feels the entire universe as its very own. The soul knows and feels the omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God is within us. The soul sees and feels that it can sooner or later manifest the infinite Truth here on earth.
The ego does not see the truth; it does not feel the truth. The ego binds. The ego separates. The ego casts asunder the wisdom in us. When the ego expresses itself through self-delusion, it tells us that we can do nothing. Again, before we have achieved our soul’s liberation and perfection, the same ego tells us we are everything, we can do everything.
Ego is selfishness. He is lucky indeed who has freed himself from selfishness. God is in self-dedication, in selfless service. At the same time, he is blessed who sees God emerging from selfishness itself. In the process of evolution we have to go beyond selfishness, beyond the ego. But we have no right to deny the existence of God in the ego. Even in the ego God abides. He also abides in doubt, in fear, in ignorance and in bondage, but that does not mean that we will cherish fear, doubt, ignorance and bondage. No, God’s Consciousness in these things is extremely limited. We have to transcend our limitations. Today’s achievements are not enough. We are the children of tomorrow. There is no end to our progress. There is no end to our soul’s journey. We are running towards Infinity, and the shore of Infinity always transcends itself. There is no limit to our realisation.
No doubt we are infinitely superior to the wild beasts. Yet we consciously drink two bottles of ignorance-wine. One is the bottle of ego. The other is the bottle of self-doubt. Self-doubt has to be transcended. Ego has to be transcended. Man uses the terms ‘I’ and ‘mine’ because he feels that these things constantly feed him. But the real God-lover wants to be fed by God’s Grace and God’s Compassion. A true seeker of God, a true lover of God, will use the terms ‘Thou’ and ‘Thine’. He dines with illumination and God’s Compassion. He drinks the nectar of divine delight. He enjoys the bliss of oneness.
There are many thieves, but the worst of all these thieves is undoubtedly our ego. This thief can steal away all our divinity. Not only are our experiences afraid of this ego-thief, but even our realisation, our partial realisation, is afraid of it. We have to be very careful of this ego-thief.
Our human ego wants to do something great, grand and magnificent. But this unique thing need not be the thing that God wants us to do. It is always nice to be able to do great things, but perhaps God has not chosen us to do that particular thing. God may have chosen us to do something insignificant in the outer world. In the Eye of God, he is the greatest devotee who performs his God-ordained duty soulfully and devotedly, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Each man is a chosen child of God. Similarly, each man is destined to play a significant part in God’s divine Game. But each person has to know what God wants from him. When one becomes aware of God’s plan for him, then he abides by God’s decision. When God sees that particular person performing the role that He chose for him, then only will God be filled with divine Pride. Our ego will try to achieve and to perform great things, but in God’s Eye we can never be great unless and until we do what God wants us to do.
Ego comes to us in the form of self-flattery. When we remove the mirror of self-flattery from our eyes and in its place we hold the mirror of truth, what do we see? We see that we are nothing but semi-animals. We are afraid of seeing the truth face-to-face. Truth seems painful. But the ultimate Truth is not painful. It is our ego, our doubt and our self-styled pride that make the truth painful. The truth seems destructive, but that is not the real truth. Truth is sweet. Truth is harmonious. Truth is all-fulfilling. But we do not see truth the way truth has to be seen. We see truth according to our self-conceived ideas. Truth has to be seen in its own way.
The ordinary, common human ego feels that it has achieved everything and that it knows everything. This reminds me of an anecdote which Swami Vivekananda related to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. It is called “The frog in the well”. It happened that a frog was born and brought up in a well. One day a frog from the field jumped into the well. The first frog said to the other, “Where do you come from?”
The second frog said, “I come from the field.”
“Field? How big is it?” said the first frog.
“Oh, it is very big,” said the second.
So the frog from the well stretched its legs and said, “Is it as big as this?”
“No, bigger! Much bigger!” said the frog from the field.
The other frog jumped from one end of the well to the other and said, “This must be as big as the length of a field.”
The second frog said, “No, the field is infinitely vaster.”
“You are a liar!” said the first frog. “I am throwing you out of here.”
This kind of thing is also the tendency of our human ego. Great spiritual Masters and sages speak of Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. The beginner who is just starting his spiritual life will immediately doubt. “Is Infinity a little larger than the sky?” he will ask. The sage will say, “No, Infinity is infinitely larger than your imagination, larger than your conception.” Immediately the sage will be criticised and will become an object of ridicule, because our ego binds us and makes us feel that what we have seen and what we have realised can never be surpassed by the realisation and experience of others. The ego does not like to feel that someone else has more capacity or that someone else can do something which it cannot do.
I am sure all of you have heard of Shankara, the great Vedantin. A Vedantin is one who follows the truths embodied in the Vedas or the Upanishads and who has realised the Vedic Law, the Vedic Truth. The great Vedantin Shankara, after a bath in the Ganges, was walking home along the street. It happened that a butcher carrying a piece of meat brushed against him. Shankara became furious and said, “I am a Brahmin! How dare you touch me! I am absolutely pure!”
The butcher said, “O Shankara, you are the Self, I am the Self. The Self does not touch anybody, and at the same time the Self is not touched by anybody.” Shankara came back to his senses.
In our day-to-day life, each human being feels that he is purer than others. He may do absurd things, he may be the prince of emotional affairs, but still he feels that he is superior to others in the realm of purity. Now, who is responsible for his foolishness? It is again his ego. If we live in the soul, we do not have problems of superiority or inferiority because the soul immediately makes us feel that we are one, absolutely one with the entire world.
Brahmosmi means in Sanskrit, “I am the Brahman.” It is the expression of the soul which has attained conscious oneness with the Absolute. But the tricky ego sometimes makes us say, “I am God.” Shankara had a disciple who used to imitate him in every way. When Shankara realised God, the absolute Brahman, he started saying, “I am the Brahman.” So this disciple also used to say, “I am the Brahman.” All the other disciples used to mock and scold him. “You must not dare to say that you are the Brahman,” they said. “Master Shankara can say this, for he has realised God, but you must not.” But the disciple would say that he wanted to imitate his Master in every way. One day Shankara asked this disciple to follow him. They came to a foundry and Shankara took a lump of molten gold and devoured it. Then he told his disciple, “Since you imitate me in everything, you should imitate me in this, too.” The disciple was scared to death and left the place. The other disciples then knew that they had been right, and they must never utter the word Brahmosmi unless and until they had actually attained that conscious and inseparable oneness. When that disciple transcended his ego and his emotions, he became a real, intimate devotee of Shankara. But first he had to get rid of the ordinary human ego and enter sincerely into the world of aspiration and realisation.
If we try to imitate the words and actions of the great Masters while we are still immersed in the ordinary life, it will be sheer foolishness. We have to grow in the field of spirituality first. This field is full of experiences. After that we can enter into the field of realisation. Then we will also be able to say, “God and I are one.” Right now we are not one with God consciously. In the realm of the soul we are one, but not in our day-to-day life. In our daily life we feel that God is somebody separate from us. Eventually we are bound to discover that this very God is inside us. One day we will be able to realise Him; we will be able to see Him and feel Him constantly. It is sheer foolishness and stupidity on our part to say that we are one with God while we remain in utter ignorance. We have to come out of ignorance and soulfully and devotedly become one with God. Then, if it is the Will of God, in order to teach humanity, in order to arouse humanity from its age-long slumber of ignorance, we can proclaim that we are one with God, that we are God’s chosen children, here on earth to fulfil God in His own Way.
At one time ego will make us feel that we are nothing and at another time ego will make us feel that we are everything. We have to be very careful of both our feelings of importance and our feelings of unimportance. We have to say that if God wants us to be nothing, then we will gladly be nothing and if God wants us to be everything, we will be everything gladly. We have to surrender unconditionally and cheerfully to the Will of God.
If the ego tells us that we are only God’s slaves, this also has to be renounced. We have only to pray to God to make us what He wants. If He wants us to be His peers, we shall be. If He wants us to be His slaves, we shall be. If He wants us to be His true representatives on earth, we shall be. “Let Thy Will be done.” This is the greatest prayer that we can offer to God. In the sincere depths of this prayer is the extinction or transformation of ego.
Published in Two Devouring Brothers: Doubt and Ego
The Journey’s Start, the Journey’s Close
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
AUM
The journey’s start and the journey’s close. Human aspiration is the journey’s start. Divine manifestation is the journey’s close. Birthless is the journey’s birth, and endless is the journey’s end.
We came; we shall return. We came from the Supreme Being. To the Supreme Being we shall return. We embody the earth-consciousness and the Heaven-consciousness. The earth-consciousness inspires us to meditate on the transcendental Truth and realise the transcendental Truth in the soul of Heaven. The Heaven-consciousness inspires us to meditate on love and manifest love in the heart of earth.
We know, we grow, and we become. We know in Heaven. We grow here on earth. We become the transcendental Truth. What we know is Reality. What we grow into is Immortality. What we eventually become is divinity’s Perfection. Reality embodies Immortality and Divinity. Immortality and Divinity manifest Reality.
The Upanishads teach us the significant truth that each individual seeker must have inner peace and outer freedom. It is in inner peace that we can have true outer freedom. From the Upanishads we learn how to discover God, the inner man, and see man, the revealed God. The Upanishads tell us that the dedicated human beings, the surrendered human souls are God’s necessity, and each realised human being is given God’s unreserved infinite capacity.
Here is the secret of the Upanishads: love, serve, and become. Love God’s Life in man, serve God’s Light in man, and become God’s perfect Perfection here on earth.
In two words we can sum up the message of all the Upanishads: aspiration and manifestation. Aspiration is the way, and manifestation is the Goal. Aspiration is the song of the infinite eternal Consciousness abiding within us. Manifestation is the dance of unity’s multiplicity within and without us. Aspiration is the height of our Delight, and manifestation is the light of all-nourishing and all-fulfilling Delight.
AUM
Each soul needs involution and evolution. When the soul descends, it is the soul’s involution. When the soul ascends, it is the soul’s evolution. The soul enters into the lowest abyss of inconscience. The soul evolves again into satchidananda — Existence, Consciousness, Bliss — the triple Consciousness.
The soul enters into inconscience. For millions of years it remains there, fast asleep. All of a sudden one day a spark of consciousness from the ever-transcending Beyond opens its eye and then the hour strikes for self-enquiry. “Who am I?” it asks. The answer is /tat twam asi,/ “That thou art.” The soul is thrilled. Then again it falls asleep. Again it enters into self-oblivion. More questions arise after some time: Whose am I? I am of That. Where have I come from? From That. To Whom am I returning? To That. For Whom am I here on earth? For That.
Then the soul is satisfied. The soul now is fully prepared for its journey upward — high, higher, highest. At this moment the soul sees the Self, an exact prototype of the Supreme Being here on earth, and the evolution of the soul starts properly. The soul, from the mineral life enters into the plant life, from the plant to the animal life, from the animal life to the human, and from the human into the divine life. While in the human, the soul brings down Peace, Light, and Bliss from above. First it offers these divine qualities to the heart, then to the mind, then to the vital, then to the gross physical. When illumination takes place, we see it in the heart, we see it in the physical mind, in the vital, and in the gross physical body.
The Upanishads are also called Vedanta. Vedanta means the end of the Vedas, the cream of the Vedas, the essence of the Vedas. It is said that Vedanta is the end of all difference — the point where there can be no difference between the lowest and the highest, between the finite and the Infinite.
Our journey starts with aspiration. What is aspiration? It is the inner cry, inner hunger for the infinite vast. Aspiration has a most sincere friend — concentration. How do we concentrate; where do we concentrate? We concentrate on an object, on a being, on a form, or on the formless. When we concentrate with the help of the mind, we feel that eventually we shall see the vastness of the Truth. When we concentrate with the help of the heart, we feel that one day we shall feel the intimacy with the universal consciousness and God the eternal Beloved. When we concentrate with the help of our soul’s Light, we feel that man is God in His preparation, and God is man in his culmination.
The unaspiring mind is our real problem. The human mind is necessary to some extent. Without it we would remain in the animal domain. But we have to know that the human mind is very limited. The human mind is insufficient. In the human mind there cannot be any abiding Light, Life, or Delight. The human mind tells us that the finite is the finite, the Infinite is the Infinite. There is a yawning gulf between the two. They are like the North Pole and the South Pole. Whatever is Infinite can never be finite, and vice-versa. Infinity, the human mind feels, is unattainable. When something is finite, it is simply impossible for the human mind to feel that that, too, is God. Also, this mind quite often feels that because of His greatness God is aloof and indifferent.
When we meditate in the heart we come to realise that God is infinite and God is omnipotent. If He is infinite, on the strength of His omnipotence He can also be finite. He exists in our multifarious activities; He is everywhere. He includes everything; He excludes nothing. This is what our inner meditation can offer us. Our heart’s meditation also tells us that God is dearer than the dearest and that He is our only Beloved.
Inspiration, aspiration, and realisation — these are the three rungs of the spiritual ladder. When we want to climb from the finite to the Infinite with God’s boundless Bounty, the first rung is inspiration, the second rung is aspiration, and the third rung is realisation, our destined Goal.
To achieve the Highest, we become inspiration, aspiration, and realisation; and to manifest the Highest here on earth, we become Compassion, Concern, and Love. This is how we start our journey; this is how we end our journey. Again, when we become one with the Inner Pilot, inseparably one with the Inner Pilot, there is no beginning, there is no end. His cosmic lila, divine Game, is birthless and endless.
In human realisation, God within us is aspiration and realisation bound by earth-consciousness, bound by earthly time. But in divine Realisation, God is the Beyond, the ever-transcending Beyond. He plays the Game of the ever-transcending Beyond. He Himself is the aspiration of the ever-transcending Beyond, and He Himself is the manifestation of the ever-transcending Beyond. When we consciously know Him, realise Him, become inseparably one with Him, we too play His divine Game, the Game of Infinity, Eternity, and Immortality.
AUM. AUM. AUM.
Published in The Upanishads: the Crown of India's Soul