The Inner Voice
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
I would be true, for there are those who trust me;
I would be pure, for there are those who care;
I would be strong, for there is much to suffer;
I would be brave, for there is much to dare.— Howard Arnold Walter
To be true, pure, strong and brave, what we need is the Inner Voice. Our Inner Voice is the Truth-Power within us. Our outer voice is the money-power without. Man is not pure enough to see the Truth-Power operating in his outer world of desires and demands. Man is not fortunate enough to see the money-power operating in his inner world of aspirations and needs. The Truth-Power used for humanity and the money-power used for divinity can and will change the face of the world. Truth-Power will awaken and illumine slumbering and unlit humanity. Money-power will serve and fulfil the yet unfulfilled divinity on earth.
The Inner Voice is the heart's wealth. When an aspirant uses this wealth, it soulfully smiles. When an unbeliever and disbeliever in God attempts to use this wealth, it is mercilessly suffocated.
The Inner Voice tells us to help the world only in accordance with God's express Will. If help is rendered otherwise, it is bound to turn into dire calamity later on. He is not only divinely liberal but supremely blessed whose help to another is God-inspired and God-ordained.
To give on second thought a thing requested is to give once. To give a thing for the asking is to give twice. To give a thing unsought is to give thrice. To give a thing when God wants it to be given is to give the thing for good, along with one's own body and soul.
We shall never hear the Song of the Inner Voice if we consciously or unconsciously make friends with anxiety. What is anxiety? Anxiety is the destructive breath of life's poverty.
There can be no greater choice or higher prize than to listen to the Inner Voice. If we wilfully refuse to listen to the Inner Voice, our false gains will lead us to an inevitable loss. And if we listen soulfully to the Inner Voice, our true gains will not only protect us from imminent destruction but will surprisingly hasten our realisation of the transcendental Truth.
An aspirant must realise that the Inner Voice is not a gift, but an achievement. The more soulfully he strives for it, the sooner he unmistakably owns it.
Sincerity tells man he should be truly proud that he has the all-discerning Inner Voice. Humility tells man he should be supremely proud that the wrong-shunning, the right-performing and the good-fulfilling Inner Voice has him.
The Inner Voice is at once man's untiring guide and his true friend. If a man goes deep within, the Inner Voice will tell him what to do. If he goes deeper, the Inner Voice will give him the capacity. If he goes still deeper, the Inner Voice will convince him that he is doing the right thing in the right way.
There is a word that is very sweet, pure and familiar to us. This word is conscience. Conscience is another name for the Inner Voice. Divinely inspired is the utterance of Shakespeare: "I feel within me a peace above all earthly anxieties, a still and quiet conscience."
Conscience can live in two places: in the heart of truth and in the mouth of falsehood. When conscience strikes us once, we must think that it is showing us its unconditional love. When it strikes us twice, we must feel that it is showing us its unreserved concern. When it strikes us thrice, we must realise that it is offering us its boundless compassion to prevent us from diving deep into the sea of Ignorance.
Rousseau says something quite striking: "Conscience is the voice of the soul, as passion is the voice of the body. No wonder they often contradict each other."
Conscience and passion need not contradict each other if man aspires to offer his heart's light to his passion and his heart's surrender to his conscience. In this way, he can easily transcend this apparently irreconcilable contradiction. Once man has transcended all contradiction, he can powerfully sing with Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
If you want to be a good man, then contradict yourself when sincerity demands. If you want to be a great man, then don't contradict yourself even when necessity demands.
Fear asks, "Is it safe?" Doubt asks, "Is it true?" Conscience asks, "If not God, who else? What else?"
The Inner Voice is the Temple within us. The Inner Voice is the Deity within us. The Inner Voice is the divine Duty within us. The Inner Voice is the supreme Necessity within us.
God has commanded the Inner Voice to be the friend of aspiring souls and the judge of unaspiring souls.
The Inner Voice is not only constant constancy, but also perfect perfection.
Published in Eastern Light for the Western Mind
Desire-life and Aspiration-life
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at 2:00 p.m., San Bernardino State University, San Bernardino, California
Desire-life and aspiration-life. The negation of the desire-life is not and cannot be the aspiration-life. The starvation of the desire-life is not and cannot be the aspiration-life. The extinction of the desire-life is not and cannot be the aspiration-life.
The salvation of the desire-life is indeed the aspiration-life. The illumination of the desire-life is indeed the aspiration-life. The liberation of the desire-life is indeed the aspiration-life. Our bondage needs salvation. Our darkness needs illumination. Our ignorance needs liberation.
A man of desire loves life when his teeming desires are fulfilled. But the moment his desires are not fulfilled, he dislikes life; he even goes to the length of hating life. When life fulfils him, at that time life is beautiful, fruitful and meaningful, according to him. When life does not fulfil him, life becomes his true adversary. Poor life! Life is only a field. Here in the battlefield it is the soldier that has to fight against teeming darkness, falsehood and ignorance. We cannot blame life as such for our deplorable mistakes or defeats.
A man of aspiration loves life, for he sees in life the very Presence of God and inside God he sees the presence of life. Life and love, and also life and God, are inseparable in his life of aspiration, in his life of dedication and in his life of realisation. He sees and feels life as God’s manifestation in each individual being. God the life is all responsibility. Life the God is all beauty. This realisation he treasures in the inmost recesses of his heart.
A man of aspiration also feels that there shall come a day when he will be able to establish a free access to God’s Transcendental Height and Universal Reality. He feels that he will achieve this through his prayer and meditation, and by virtue of his dedication to both his inner and outer life. And for this, what he needs is divine love, divine devotion and divine surrender.
The aspiring seeker’s love constantly expands. Thus it creates large, larger, largest receptivity inside the depths of his heart. The larger his receptivity-vessel, the greater, the higher, the more illumining and the more fulfilling the Peace, Light and Bliss it will be able to hold.
Devotion is the intensification of the seeker’s dedication to the supreme Cause. His whole life becomes an altar of intensification. Everything that he does, he does with an intensification of his dedicated, devoted, unreserved and surrendered heart.
Finally, a seeker surrenders to the dictates of his Inner Pilot. He feels that this surrender is nothing short of perfection. What he needs is perfection, both in his inner life and in his outer life. Perfection is of paramount importance, for perfection is satisfaction. So in order to achieve perfection, he surrenders his entire being to the Inner Pilot. He offers to the Inner Pilot what he has and what he is. What he has is an aspiration-cry and what he is is a dedication-life. On the strength of his aspiration-cry and his dedication-life, he feels that one day he will become inseparably one with his Inner Pilot and grow into the very image of his Pilot Supreme.
Published in The Vision-Sky of California
The Heart, the Mind, the Vital and the Body
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at 8:00 p.m., San Diego State University, San Diego, California
The heart flies, the mind sighs, the vital cries and the body dies. Why, why, why, why? The heart flies precisely because it loves. What does it love? It loves oneness — oneness within, oneness without, oneness with the Inner Pilot — its Beloved Supreme. Just because it loves oneness, and just because it loves its Beloved Supreme constantly, unreservedly and unconditionally, it is able to fly at every moment in the firmament of all-illumining Conscious-ness.
The mind sighs precisely because the mind suspects the rest of the world. It suspects the world within and the world without. Finally, to its wide surprise, it suspects its own reality-existence. Suspicion is poison. It is a poison that spreads all over the domain of the mind. Finally, this poison corrupts us, our mind. The mind sighs. It recognises its folly, the height of its folly, and then it heaves a heavy sigh. The mind is failure itself. The vital cries. It cries for name and fame. It cherishes a quenchless thirst for name and fame. It wants to remain all the time in the desiring world. Always it wants something more than it has achieved. Either by hook or by crook, it always tries to have something more. It proves to be a veritable beggar — always crying for something and always dissatisfied with what it has and what it is. A beggar right from the beginning to the end, it cries. Shamelessly it cries. Constantly it cries for something more, for a little more name and fame. And when it achieves something, it is still not satisfied. It wants something else. Nothing pleases the vital. Therefore, the vital cries.
The body dies. Why? The body does not aspire. It always wallows in the pleasures of ignorance. It does not want to budge an inch. Lethargy is another name for the body, the body-consciousness. The body does not move. It does not want anything from either the inner world or the outer world. It feels no necessity to achieve anything. Always it is satisfied with its limitations, with its weaknesses, with its shortcomings, with its failures and deplorable defeats. The body is always lethargy-prone, and it does not want anything. Just because it is lethargic, just because it is always wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance, the body dies. There is no longing for heavenly realities — for truth, light, peace or beauty. So the body dies. The body that we are referring to here is the physical body.
There are many human beings on earth who physically live for a long time but do not aspire. They take physical exercises or they make friends with the Mother Earth and the cosmic energy. Unconsciously they draw energy from the Universal Consciousness, but they do not aspire. If an individual does not aspire, if his soul finds difficulty in illumining the body, or in aspiring in and through the physical body, then we call him a dead soul. But the spiritual body will always aspire. Inside the Atman-life it discovers a Heaven-free life, the life that is birthless and deathless at the same time.
There is another member of our earthly and heavenly family, and the name of that member is the soul. The soul is an exact prototype of our Inner Pilot. It embodies in quintessence all the qualities and capacities that our Beloved Supreme has and is. The soul sails its reality-boat in the Eternity-river. It sails the boat between Immortality’s life and Infinity’s beauty and delight.
Each individual seeker has the capacity to listen to the dictates of the soul. When the seeker listens soulfully to the dictates of his soul, he eventually grows into the very image of his Beloved Supreme.
Where is God? Who is God? How to realise God? All these questions can easily be answered when we listen to the dictates of the soul. With ritual prayer and meditation we can dive deep within and hear the constant message of and from the soul — the perennial message of Light, Truth and Bliss. Through our prayer and meditation we can embody Peace, Light and Bliss in infinite measure and then, like the soul, we can also enjoy Immortality here on earth as we enjoy it already in Heaven.
Published in The Vision-Sky of California
Bali: a Sacred Feeling
Recollection by Sri Chinmoy
at Aspiration-Ground in Jamaica, New York
It is said that the world’s most attractive place is Bali. Many years ago the astronauts or the cosmonauts found that Bali was the most beautiful place on earth.
As soon as I hear the word “Bali,” I get such a sacred, sacred feeling in the depths of my heart.
Published in My Golden Children