Sri Chinmoy Answers
by Sri Chinmoy
at Annam Brahma Restaurant in Queens, New York
Question: How can we as disciples trust you more so that we can surrender our ignorance to you?
Sri Chinmoy: Right now you feel that if you increase your trust, you will be able to give me more of your ignorance. But I wish to say that trust is not in the mind. Trust is in the heart. When a mother trusts her child, even if the child is breaking everything, doing everything wrong, she will have faith in the child. She will say, “He is not doing this. Some other force is doing it. He will be all right in a few years.”
The important thing is not to use the mind. You are saying that if you have more trust, then you will have more love, devotion and surrender. I am saying, go the other way. If you have more love, devotion and surrender, you will have more trust. If you are standing on the edge of a swimming pool and you see that the water is warm, then you will be inclined to jump into the water. Otherwise, you will remain standing outside. But if you love water as such, regardless of whether it is cold or hot, then you will simply jump into the water. You will say, “Who cares if it is cold or hot?”
Similarly, in the spiritual life, if one wants to make progress, if one wants to have more faith, then it is not by watching or judging the Master — if he does this, if he says that, then I will have faith in him. No. Only because of the swimmer’s love for water he jumped into the pool. In exactly the same way, if you love the Master, you will not worry about what he says or what he does. You will only establish your oneness with him. When we enter into the water with oneness, we immediately start swimming there. If you love the Master, his path and his spirituality, you will not say, “If he does this, I will have more trust. If he does that, I will have less trust. I will increase and decrease according to what he says and what he does.” Faith is not a matter of increasing or decreasing. That is only the judgement of our stupid mind. You must use the heart.
When we enter into a garden, we do not look to see whether or not each petal is equally formed or if one petal is crooked. We enter into the garden and immediately we embrace the beauty and fragrance of the garden. Then our mind, vital and body become pure, cheerful and joyful. But if we enter into the garden and start looking to see which flower is most beautiful, then we do not get the same joy. If one flower is more beautiful, we will spend five minutes looking at it. Then we will go to another flower and say, “O God, I was mistaken, this flower is more beautiful. Let me stand here for ten minutes.” In the meantime, your time is up! You have to go home. You have more important things to do.
Once you enter into the garden, you have to immediately try to see the beauty and feel the fragrance of the garden. In the same way, once you choose a Master and a path, do not say, “If the path gives me this, then I shall trust it. If the Master says this, then I shall have more faith in him.” No, immediately jump into the sea of the Master’s compassion. You have to say, “If I do not feel the Master’s compassion or affection or love, I will not mind. I came to give him what I have and what I am. I know he will give me everything at his choice hour.”
Always you have to develop the attitude of unconditional oneness. As long as we place conditions on our love and on our faith, we will be disappointed. Our conditions are going to make our lives miserable. We start by saying, “If he gives me 50 per cent, I will give him 50 per cent.” Then we say, “If he gives me 90 per cent, I will do something for him.” Finally, our expectation demands, “He has to give me 99 per cent to make me happy.” First it starts with 50-50. Then greed comes and we make it 60-40, or 70-30. Finally we say, “If he fulfils my desire 99 times out of 100, then he is my Master.”
But why start with conditions? The other way is just to go to the root. We can say, “Even if he does not give me anything, I want to give 100 per cent to him. If he does not give me anything in return, God is there above him to break his head. But that is not my business. My business is to surrender to him. Then he has to account for his behaviour to Somebody else, to his superior.” You may take it in that light, that the Supreme will be displeased with the Master if he does not do the right thing. Again, if you are a real disciple, you will say, “Who cares whether the Supreme will be displeased with him or not? Since I want to follow his path, I must follow his philosophy implicitly.” In my case, my philosophy is love, devotion and surrender. If you follow the path of love, devotion and surrender, will your mind’s lack of trust be able to fight against your heart’s love for me and for my path?
Question: I am not sure about the purpose of prayer. If our aim is to surrender — as the Christ said, “Let Thy Will be done” — why should we be asking God to do something?
Sri Chinmoy: Is it a crime to ask for good things, not bad things? You can pray to God, “Make me my Guru’s best disciple.” I do not think you will ask God to give you ten cars! Always we have to make a good choice. To pray for good things is not bad at all: “God, give me peace, give me joy, give me love.” Then we will say, “God, it is up to You whether to give me these things today or tomorrow, in ten days’ time or in twenty years’ time.” God will be happy that we are asking Him for peace. Then a day will come when we have peace, love and light in a very large measure. At that time, we can start telling God, “Give me whatever You want to give me. Do whatever You want to do with my life.”
You have to be active and dynamic inwardly as well as outwardly. Once you have received some light from God, you can say, “Thy Will be done.” Once you have made your surrender complete, you do not have to say, “Give me this, give me that.” But to make your surrender complete, first you have to pray to God and meditate on God. It is only on the strength of your prayer and meditation that you will be able to become one with God’s Will. If you do not pray or meditate, you will simply be lethargic. You will wallow in the pleasures of idleness and say, “Oh, God will do everything for me.” Why should God do anything for lazy seekers? So, you have to make a choice whether you want light or darkness. We are already in darkness, but if we do not strive for light, then we will remain in darkness.
The Christ said, “Let Thy Will be done.” But before he made his immortal utterance, he prayed, he meditated, he did everything. Then he said, “Now it is up to You.” Otherwise, what is the difference between a God-seeker and people in the street? If surrender means doing nothing and saying, “Let Thy Will be done,” then the street vagabonds who are drinking and smoking have surrendered! Does God need that kind of surrender? No! Always we must pray for good things: “Please, God, give me peace, give me light, give me joy, give me divine love.” Then we wait for God’s Hour when He will fulfil our snow-white prayer.
Always pray and meditate. Prayer is much easier than meditation. Again, while you are praying to God to give you something good, your mind may not be there, or your heart may not be there. Like a parrot, you may be praying. But if you meditate, you have to be serious. At that time you will not allow any thought to come. Everything has to be calm and quiet. Otherwise what kind of meditation is it? Meditation is much more difficult than prayer, but prayer is needed.
The difficulty with prayer is that if you do not get the results, you may become disappointed or disgusted and start sulking. But when you meditate and make your mind calm and quiet, then you get tremendous peace. At that time you do not have to worry about what you are expecting from your meditation. When you make your mind calm and quiet, although you may not have achieved the thing that you want, the very fact that you have made your mind calm and quiet gives you tremendous joy and peace. There is an immediate inner benefit.
We may pray for two days or two months or two years for something, but then if our prayer is not fulfilled, we may become disappointed and disgusted. We may feel that God does not listen to our prayers. We have to know that sometimes God examines us when we pray for something. If we pray to God, “God, please take away my knee pain,” God examines us to see whether we really love Him or not. Then God may actually increase the pain to see the depth of our love for Him. If we really love God, we will not say, “God, how is it that You are so cruel to me?” Instead we will say, “O God, I prayed to You to decrease my pain and You have increased it. It is up to You. I prayed for the right thing, to decrease my pain, but if You want me to prove that I really love You, then increase it, increase it as much as You want to.”
Question: If we are praying for something we know we should be praying for, what is the most effective way of praying?
Sri Chinmoy: If you want to get results, your prayer has to be very, very intense and very, very powerful. Now I am touching my hand lightly, but if I grab it, I can feel how much strength I have there. So when you pray, you have to be very, very intense in your prayer. At that time you have to feel that what you are praying for is being done or is already done. Outwardly it is not done, true. You have to imagine that the thing that you are praying for is not only going to happen, but is bound to happen. Many times when you pray for something — “God, give me this” or “God, do this thing for me” — it is all in the mind. You have to feel the prayer has gone inside you, and if you do not get what you are praying for, the life-train will go away. The train is passing by and if you are not sincere, you will be unable to enter into the train. Intensity is needed, plus eagerness.
Prayer will be more effective if you do it on a regular basis. Punctuality is of supreme importance in the prayer-life or the meditation-life. If you pray and meditate, you are infinitely better than those who do not, but if you want to be an excellent seeker or disciple, do not neglect punctuality. One day you may meditate at six o’clock, one day at seven o’clock, one day at eight o’clock. That is not the right way. You have to be wise. You have to feel there is Somebody who is watching. Nobody is going to stay indefinitely and wait for us to do something good. If you want to do something good, then do it on time. There are many things in which you do not have to be punctual, because you cannot be punctual for everything. But you have to be punctual when it is a matter of prayer and meditation. It is God’s business whether He is watching us or not. But since God is omnipresent and omniscient, He is definitely watching.
Through prayer you can definitely realise God. But if you know how to meditate well, then you have tremendous confidence in your ultimate God-realisation — not over-confidence, but real confidence that you will be able to please God in God’s own Way. When you are only in the world of prayer, it is so risky. You are all the time begging for something to be done. Mentally you will fix a date — it can be tomorrow or ten days from now. Then when a year has passed, you feel that something is wrong with your prayer. But if you meditate well, you are always sure. If you meditate well, you feel, “God does not have to come. I have to go to Him, since I am hungry.” So the prayer aspect is to bring God to feed you and the meditation aspect is to go to God.
These inner things, especially prayer, we can do at any time. While walking, you can pray. While you are in the office, if you do not work for two or three minutes, who is going to catch you? Who is going to know what you are doing? When it is a matter of outer things — you have to write something, do something, say something — then people may say you are not doing your job. But meditation and prayer are inner activities. You can fool the whole world. They see you walking or sitting at your desk, but you are in your deep meditation. So here we have the advantage. When something is inner, nobody can see what we are doing.
To come back to your question, to get results from your prayer, you have to be very strict with yourself. Develop eagerness, eagerness, eagerness. Readiness is there, but readiness has to be transformed into eagerness and punctuality. It has to become like eating. Every day we take our outer food on a regular basis. When it comes to inner food we have to be not only regular but punctual. Most of my disciples, if not all, do not believe in punctuality. So the results remain upstairs. The most delicious mango remains up in the tree. God’s Grace, which is the wind, does not help the mango to descend.
Question: If you have a God-ordained duty and your mind resists it, how can you overcome the resistance of your mind?
Sri Chinmoy: Your God-ordained duty your heart is always ready to fulfil, but the mind is resisting. So you can ask your vital, you can ask your body, whether they are going to help you. Beg your heart to speak to them on your behalf. If they say they are going to help you, then you have three on your side. Then tell the mind, “I do not care whether you are with me or not. We are four members. We do not have to wait for you.”
If your heart can get help from the vital and body, then you are bound to succeed. The heart can also go to the superior, the soul. If the soul, heart, vital and body are on one side, what can the mind do? If four are on one side, then either you can throw the mind somewhere or easily you will be able to drag the mind. If the mind does not want to come, just tell the mind, “Stay where you are.” There are many, many times when the heart is not successful with the mind. If the mind does not want to surrender, at that time we do not need the mind to fulfil our purpose. The soul, heart, vital and body are more than enough.
Question: What does it take to become a perfect disciple?
Sri Chinmoy: To become a perfect disciple only one thing is needed and that is unconditional surrender. Right now, you do not know what God’s Will is. You will pray for yourself, your daughter, your son, your husband. That is absolutely the right thing. You have to pray and pray and pray. Then a day will come when, from within, you will get a message that you have prayed enough for the members of your family. God will say, “Enough, enough. You have prayed enough. Now I will take care of them in My own Way.” At that time, you have to have faith that He will take care of them, even if your mind is saying, “Oh, God is taking care of them in His own Way? Everything is going from bad to worse!” But until you get that message, you have to pray and meditate most sincerely.
Again, it may happen that while you are praying and meditating most sincerely, most devotedly, God will fulfil your prayers. But do not think, “Just because I am praying sincerely, God has to do it.” God has to do it eventually, but God has His own time. Our time is not God’s time.
Many times it happens that if we do not get results from our prayers, we blame ourselves, which means indirectly we are blaming God. Either we say that God has not given us the capacity to be more sincere or more self-giving, or we say, “How sincere I was, how soulful I was! How is it that my prayer was not sanctioned?” But why should our time and God’s Hour be the same? He can have His own time. He is the Supreme Boss.
Let us say that perhaps at eight o’clock your boss has asked you to come so that he can give you some job. Then when you go there, he is reading the newspaper and not paying any attention to you. You came at the time he told you to come, but he is not ready for you. When this boss is God, He will be so pleased that you came on time, but it is His business whether to give you the job at eight o’clock or much later. He has in mind a fixed hour, which means whenever He wants to. You will be waiting at the door until He tells you to do something. That is His choice Hour.
So you continue to pray and meditate. Either your prayers will be fulfilled in the course of time or you will get an inner message. Kindly pray for yourself, your daughter, your husband and your son. They also have accepted the spiritual life, so they are reducing your burden.
Unless we become unconditionally surrendered at every moment, we cannot please God. We have to do it happily, cheerfully, soulfully and self-givingly. Otherwise, that surrender is no surrender. It is the surrender of a street beggar. If you want to become a perfect disciple at every moment, you must become unconditional. You can even do japa by repeating to yourself, “I want to become an unconditionally surrendered disciple.” Then automatically you will become a perfect disciple.
Question: How is it that when you feel you are making spiritual progress, the hostile forces can come?
Sri Chinmoy: When the hostile forces see that you are becoming stronger and stronger, then they give you the last bite. They see that you are going outside their boundary. When they see that you are going to a much higher height, then they give you the last powerful attack. They have been governing a particular area for a long time and you have been in their domain. So when they see you going beyond that boundary, naturally they are going to attack you. You are pleasing God by trying to go beyond. They say, “Where are you going? You have been our subject for such a long time. How do you dare to go?”
Again, God watches to see whether you sincerely want to get out of the mind-prison. If God sees that you sincerely want to break open the jail of the mind, then God opens up a secret door for you. You pass through the door and then you are in the open, free from those hostile attacks.
Question: Several times after running a race or completing a hard running practice, I have had certain special feelings about the planets and stars. I said to myself that it was just my imagination, but then in 1980, you wrote the song ‘I Am Running around the Clock’ for the 24-hour race. In that song, you mentioned the sun, moon, stars and planets. So I was wondering, when we do something good physically, when we give our best, do our souls get blessings from the planets, or is that just my imagination?
Sri Chinmoy: It is not your imagination; it is absolutely true. The sun, moon, stars and planets are always watching. When they see that somebody is very prayerful and soulful, in a good consciousness, in addition to watching, they bless that person. Otherwise, they do not bless anyone. So in your case, when you are running, if you are in a very good consciousness, no matter what your timing is, you will get blessings. Again, if you have run well and the result is also most satisfactory, naturally you will get blessings. But it entirely depends on your attitude. If you are in a very soulful consciousness throughout and finish also in a good consciousness, then you are bound to get blessings. This is not your imagination, but an absolute reality.
Stars and planets belong to the entire world, but some countries are favoured by certain stars. Your country, Japan, will definitely have some planets and stars that are of special help to it. They have more affection and concern for Japan than for other countries. And there will be other stars that prefer another country. So in your case, you have the advantage that the stars and planets which favour your country are of real help to you because your consciousness, although you live in America, is one hundred per cent Japanese consciousness. When these stars and planets put their special concentration or favour on Japan, your island, then you will get the result directly. Again, if some Americans are in a very good consciousness, then because of the blessings of the stars that favour America, they will get better results. In your case, quite a few times you have received blessings, love and joy from those planets that have a special feeling or preference for Japan.
Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 14
