Spirituality: What Does it Really Mean?
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at 9:00 a.m. at William Sloane House, Y.M.C.A, New York City
Spirituality is man's love for God and God's concern for man. Spirituality is man's flower of worship for God and God's flower of Grace for man. In spirituality man's consciousness grows and God's Compassion flows. Through spirituality, man is awakened and God is revealed.
Today I am supposed to speak on Indian Spirituality. Being an Indian, I am emotionally enchanted. Being a lover of humanity, I am psychically struck. Being a seeker of the Supreme, I am spiritually cautioned.
Needless to say that there is no such thing as Indian spirituality. Spirituality is for all the corners of the globe. But if you wish to know from an Indian how he looks upon spirituality, then let me avail myself of this momentous task.
An Indian thinks of God because he thinks that God thinks of him infinitely. An Indian loves God because he feels that God loves him infinitely more. He also knows and feels that God thinks of him and loves him even if he does not think of or love God.
Remember, the storms of fear do not compel him to think of God or love God. It is his inner urge that awakens him to think of God. It is his inner light that illumines him to love God. An Indian knows that human ignorance not only recedes but disappears. Human doubts cannot limit man's spiritual horizons. Misery cannot be the ordained lot of man: Despair cannot devour man's spiritual energies. An Indian is unceasingly bold in his dynamic experience to proclaim that man can not only see, feel and realise God, but eventually become God. An Indian knows the supreme secret that self-discovery or God-discovery, self-realisation or God-realisation can take place here on earth. He also tells the world that in human transformation shines God's perfect perfection.
Let us once again enter into the universal, omnipresent spirituality. Man needs peace. Man wants power. Man cries for joy. Man hungers for love, the love that energises and fulfils him. Man dreams of Paradise, within and without. Spirituality says: „O man, cultivate me. I am eternally and infinitely fertile. Delay not. The hour is come. Yours is the achievement that God is yours. Yours is the fulfilment that you are God's. Behold, you have two lives: the inner and the outer. The inner to realise, the outer to manifest. Let the inner push, let the outer pull. Yonder is the beckoning GOAL!“
Published in AUM – Vol. 3, No. 3, 4, Oct.– Nov. 27, 1967
Two talks at the United Nations
by Sri Chinmoy
at the United Nations in New York
The Face of Truth
A seeker wishes to see the face of truth in spirituality, in religion, in love, in brotherhood, in every field of reality, in every branch of the reality-tree. But unfortunately, the face of truth is not to be found there. The face of truth is found only in longing, in the longing for truth. Not only the face of truth, but the very heart of truth, is to be found only in the longing itself. What is truth? Truth is the longing, the birthless and deathless longing which we have and which we are. This is the only truth nothing more, nothing less.
Some seekers are of the opinion that truth is not to be found here on earth, that truth belongs to the hoary past, that it is a memory of the past which we are carrying and dragging. But this is not true. Truth was there before, truth is here now and truth will also be present in the future.
The truth of the past is the truth-beauty in God’s cosmic Vision. The truth of the present is the truth-duty in God’s cosmic Realisation. The truth of the future is the truth-infallibility in God’s cosmic Manifestation.
Here on earth, a seeker notices three kinds of truth: peripheral truth, median truth and core truth. Peripheral truth says that there is no love. “Love is the essence of life, but there is no love on earth.”
Median truth says love and be loved. “I have mankind. Therefore it is obligatory on the part of all human beings to love me.”
Core truth, the truth of the inmost reality, says, “I love God the Creator, for He is none other than Love. I love God the Creation because it is nothing other than love.”
Truth needs a possessor, a revealer and a fulfiller. The truth-possessor is he who is at least a few centuries in advance of his time. The truth-revealer is he who stands in front of humanity, facing humanity. He enters into humanity’s countless needs and transforms humanity’s needs into deeds. The truth-fulfiller is he who lives only for humanity, for humanity’s sake. Unless and until each human being becomes a perfect instrument of the Absolute Supreme, the task of the truth-fulfiller is not complete.
A seeker of the highest, ultimate Truth, a seeker who has established his constant oneness with the Absolute, can at once be a truth-possessor, truth-revealer and truth-fulfiller on the strength of his oneness with the perennial Source, his oneness with the Transcendental Light, the ever-transcending Transcendental Light.
Here we are all seekers, seekers of the United Nations, for the United Nations. The United Nations itself is both the seeker and the truth. When we look at the body-reality of the United Nations, we see that the United Nations plays the role of the seeker. But when we look at the soul-reality of the United Nations, then we see that the United Nations is nothing short of Truth and Light and Delight.
The seeker in the United Nations is becoming and growing into the truth-reality, and the truth-reality is constantly unveiling its hidden treasures — its immortalising, all-illumining and all-fulfilling treasures. These treasures are concern, sympathy, union, oneness, justice-light, perfection and, finally, satisfaction in all that the United Nations does and all that the United Nations is going to do. The United Nations is growing into the perfection-tree that will offer its branches of concern, sympathy and oneness to humanity.
When we seek, we long for a reality. When we long for a reality which is other than our true self, this reality will always remain a far cry. If we live in the body-reality and, from the body-reality, if we want to reach the soul-reality, then we shall never succeed. But if we can dare to say and feel there is only one reality — the soul-reality — which is founded upon our oneness-reality, our universal oneness-reality, our transcendental oneness-reality, then only can we safely say that inside our longing itself is the birthless and the deathless Truth. Then we can say that our longing itself is the everlasting Truth, the immortal Truth, the eternally transcending Truth, the infinitely fulfilling Truth.
They Say and We Say
They say that the United Nations is a mere dream. We say that it is a dream that can grow into reality. Dream is the seed-essence. Reality is the fruit-substance.
They say that the United Nations is not independent. We say that there is no necessity for the United Nations to be independent, for the United Nations lives in the illumining heart of humanity and lives for the aspiring life of humanity.
They say that the United Nations is not powerful. We say that unless the world has given the United Nations the opportunity to show all its strength, outer and inner strength — but especially inner — how can it say that the United Nations is not powerful? The world knows what the outer strength is. But what is the inner strength? The inner strength is revolution. The possessor of inner strength revolts against disappointment-bondage. He revolts against ignorance-night. He revolts against imperfection-mortality.
They say that the United Nations is not stable, that it is constantly changing its policies. We say that if a new policy embodies more light, more perfection and more satisfaction, then naturally it is the bounden duty of the United Nations to adopt the new policy instead of unwisely clinging to the old policy.
They say that the United Nations is losing its moral authority. We say that if it is true, then the world is losing its sanity very rapidly and heading towards an explosion of a devastating character.
Published in The Seeker’s Mind