Sri Chinmoy’s Interview in Rome
on the national television show Alla Ricerca Dell’arca (In Search of the Ark)
Excerpts from the conversation between Don Antonio Tarzia, General Director of the Italian publishing firm Edizioni Paoline; Venanzio Ciampa, writer and director for Italy’s RAI national television; his father Virgilio Ciampa; and Sri Chinmoy. Don Antonio Tarzia’s questions were translated by Venanzio Ciampa.
Don Antonio Tarzia: We are religious people. It is important for us to be religious and to work for God. On the other hand, I also have to manage a publishing company. I have to be a manager in everyday life and produce very actively.
Sri Chinmoy: God is both the Creator and the creation. He is in Heaven and He is also on earth. In Heaven He is the Creator and on earth He is the creation. But the God who is in Heaven and the God who is on earth are the same Person. When the Saviour Christ said, “I and my Father are one,” Christ was on earth — in the body. But He was inseparably one with His Father in Heaven.
The creation is the manifestation of the Creator. Your publishing company is part of the creation. In this case, God is manifesting His Light through publishing.
Heaven and earth are like the tree and its fruit. We cannot separate the two; they are one.
Don Antonio Tarzia: How do you feel that we can reach out to God?
Sri Chinmoy: There are two main roads. One road is the road of the mind and the other is the road of the heart. Which road do you want me to speak about? Which road do you want to follow?
Don Antonio Tarzia: The heart-road.
Sri Chinmoy: I also like the heart-road. The heart-road is the safest road. We call it the sunlit road. When we are in the heart, we cry. We cry to God to give us love, to give us peace, to give us joy. If our cry is sincere, immediately He gives us what we want. Here the heart is playing the role of a child. When a child cries for milk or a toy, even if his mother is in the other room, immediately she comes running to him. Similarly, if from the bottom of our hearts we soulfully cry to God for His Compassion and Love, immediately He will give them to us. But our cry has to be sincere, the way a child’s cry is sincere.
The heart-road is the road of love. You do not understand English, and I do not understand Italian. But as soon as I saw your eyes, immediately I felt something very pure and very loving in you. And also I feel that you see something in me. So we have been communicating with our hearts. My heart has entered into you and your heart has entered into me.
Virgilio Ciampa: Don Antonio said that some of the terms you use in your philosophy about life and God are very similar to those of St. Paul, but you are not Christian. How is that possible?
Sri Chinmoy: When we are thirsty, we all drink water. But different people call it different things. In Bengali I call it ‘jal’. In Italian it is ‘acqua’ and in Spanish it is ‘agua’. But it is the same thing. If I am thirsty, I will run for ‘jal’. If you are thirsty, you will run for ‘acqua’. If he is thirsty, he will run for ‘agua’. We are running for the same thing, but we are calling it by different names.
Virgilio Ciampa: I totally agree with you. At the end of those two different roads is the same God, the God of everyone, and everyone just speaks different dialects.
Sri Chinmoy: Yes, the destination is always the same. Here the destination is water. You are running because you are thirsty, and I am running because I am thirsty. But our destination is the same, and when we reach our destination, our thirst will be quenched.
Venanzio Ciampa: St. Paul talked about becoming Jesus, and you, coming from a completely different background and culture, are also talking about the same thing — only using different words. You both were able to reach the same goal — the bottle of water, or God. Please tell us more about the spiritual message that you are spreading.
Sri Chinmoy: My message is very simple. We are all God’s children. In God’s Heart-Garden there are roses, chrysanthemums and all different kinds of flowers. We are all flowers in God’s Heart-Garden. Every day all of us are blossoming. Because we are in His Heart-Garden, we have beauty and fragrance. He has given us beauty and fragrance so that we can be of service to Him on earth — to God the creation.
Venanzio Ciampa: Thinking of the problems in the world, one has to wonder if we are really making progress.
Sri Chinmoy: Sometimes when we are practising the long jump, we start running and then hesitate a little. So we go back again and take a longer running start. When we come to the board, we say, “Am I going to make the leap? Perhaps I will not be able to cover the distance.” So we go back and take an even longer run. This time we do the jump and cover our distance. But if we had jumped the first time, definitely we would not have been able to cover the distance.
Venanzio Ciampa: Nietzsche said that sometimes the more you dig in profundities, the more bad things you find.
Sri Chinmoy: In India, if you want to get a beautiful lotus, you have to step into the pond because the lotus grows under the water. If you step into the pond, your feet will sink into the mud. Now, what will you do? You will go into the pond, take the lotus and then clean off your feet.
If you want to take a rose from the garden, you cannot just take the flower. You also have to take the stem so that the rose will look beautiful. When you pick the stem, you find thorns. But you can remove the thorns and still keep the stem and the beautiful rose.
Venanzio Ciampa: But how does one have the knowledge to remove those thorns?
Sri Chinmoy: There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. If you have wisdom, you can do anything. Wisdom does not come from the mind; it comes from the heart and the soul. From the mind comes intellectual reasoning. The mind’s greatest achievement is the intellect. But much deeper than the intellect is wisdom. Real wisdom comes from the soul’s light. Similarly, there is something called will, adamantine will. That will does not come from the mind; it comes from the heart, from the soul.
To human beings, wisdom means having studied the great philosophers or Keats and Byron and Shelley. I come from a poor Indian village. Someone will say, “Oh, he needs wisdom. Let him go to Oxford or Cambridge, and somebody there will give him wisdom.” But that wisdom is no wisdom. It is only jugglery of the mind. Real wisdom is in the heart.
Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 17