On Patriotism
Answers by Sri Chinmoy
to questions asked by disciples on a bus trip from New York to Boston
Question: Is patriotism in a dictatorship as meaningful as patriotism in a freedom-loving country?
Sri Chinmoy: There is a great difference between patriotism in a dictatorship and in a freedom-loving country. Even though a dictator may have patriotic feelings for his country, there is always a sense of conscious ego inside him. He wants his country to follow him. He feels that he deserves the love of his countrymen more than anybody else does. He feels that he is the supreme authority on the country and the country’s welfare. The dictator does not love his country as such. He loves his own capacity to rule the country. In a country under a dictator, patriotism will be a forced love of country, commanded by a higher authority. One person’s love of his country in an authoritative manner will be executed in the minds and lives of many. The many have no choice of their own. They cannot express their love of country individually.
In order to give to the country one’s own inner and outer feelings unreservedly, one must always try to live in a country not controlled by a dictator. A freedom-loving country wants to liberate itself from human sovereignty. The country loves freedom because it feels that in a life of freedom it can achieve more light, more joy, more satisfaction. A sincerely freedom-loving country will not try to get freedom by hook or by crook, but by soul’s strength and inner cry so that it can offer its capacity, its achievement, to the comity of the world. The patriotism of a freedom-loving country is for the country’s sake, for the country’s benefit, not for the aggrandisement of someone’s ego in a clever or unconscious way. In a freedom-loving country patriotism is a conscious prayer, a conscious concentrative force to spread freedom so that the country can achieve and distribute love-light to each countryman and to the world at large.
Question: What can patriotism achieve for a country?
Sri Chinmoy: Patriotism can achieve for a country the message of oneness, the message of satisfaction, the message of human perfection and God-manifestation. The country is the mother. In order for the mother to be pleased and fulfilled, she has to be given the full opportunity to feed her children unreservedly. The mother gets this opportunity when the children want from her what she has: her love, her concern, her blessing, her compassion, her sympathy, her feeling of oneness. A patriot can offer his need to the mother country. When he tells his country what he needs, the country gets the opportunity to offer it to the individual.
Again, when a patriot becomes a real lover of his country, then his love enters into the country. First he cries for love from his country and then he gives it his own love. When he feels he has no love, he cries for the mother to give him love. When the mother gives love to him, he feels that he has abundant love and he offers it back to his country. When love of country and love from country are simultaneous, the message of oneness, the message of satisfaction, the message of human perfection and God-manifestation can dawn in a country.
Question: What is the best way to develop or cultivate a patriotic feeling towards one's country?
Sri Chinmoy: The country has to be taken as a mother. When we think of our mother, what do we think of? Her affection, her love, her sympathy, her sacrifice. The moment we think of her sacrifice, the moment we think of any good quality of hers, our heart becomes flooded with gratitude. When we have even an iota of gratitude for the one who has loved us and will love us always, we increase our capacity to please that person, to fulfil that person. By being aware of what our country has done for us or has given us or will give us, we develop and cultivate the capacity to love our country.
Question: How can the feeling of patriotism help one's spiritual life?
Sri Chinmoy: The real spiritual life is the life of acceptance. In order to be patriotic one has to accept one’s own country as one’s very own. I love my body, I love my vital, I love my mind, I love my heart, I love my soul, and I love my God. I have to feel that what I love is ultimately my love for my own existence, my own transcendence, my own perfection. I love God for my self-transcendence. I love a human being for my own expansion. I love a country for my own expansion, and my own perfection.
Love is oneness. Love is the completion of perfection. If I love my country, I have to know that the country also has a soul, the country has a body, the country has a reality. If I love the reality in anything, that means I am loving the source. The source is spirituality; the source is divinity. If I become one, inseparably one with something, that means I have established a higher, a deeper, a more meaningful reality within me. It is like this: if I really love the creation, then I have to love the Creator; if I really love the Creator, then I will definitely love the creation. God is the Creator and the country is the creation. We cannot separate the two. Even if the creation has millions of defects, just because we love the Creator, we love the creation.
The Creator is also bound to love his creation, and vice versa. If we identify ourselves with the Creator, we will definitely feel love for the creation. If we identify ourselves with the creation, then it is our bounden duty to love the Creator. A child may be born blind and deaf, but the mother feels he is the most beautiful child on earth. Why? Because the child is the mother’s own creation. The world will say that he is blind, he is deaf or he is ugly, but according to the mother he is most beautiful, he is most perfect. The mother’s sense of perfection or beauty does not depend on others’ judgement or others’ way of seeing the reality. The mother will see according to her own understanding, according to her own awakening, according to her own standard. She will love her child no matter what. In the case of a country, if we take God as the Creator and become identified with the Creator, then naturally what the Creator has created — our country — we will love. And if we love the country — the little child who is deaf and blind — then we will be able to go to the Source, God.
Either we appreciate the source and then learn to appreciate the creation of the source, or we appreciate the creation and then learn to appreciate the source. Our country is the creation and God is the Source. Either from the seed we go to the fruit or from the fruit we go to the seed. In this way if we develop love for our country, then spontaneously we shall develop love for our Source, the Supreme Creator.
Published in AUM – Vol. 2, No. 7, 27 July 1975
