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Warriors of the inner world

A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Ottawa, Canada

There are many warriors of the inner world, but the main warriors are simplicity, sincerity, purity, aspiration, dedication and surrender. These divine warriors help the seekers discover God. Together they fight against bondage-night and ignorance-day. Their supreme commander is faith.

Simplicity shortens the road that leads to God-discovery. Sincerity expedites the journey. Purity feeds the seeker and the journey together. Aspiration loves the journey. Dedication enjoys the journey. And surrender completes the journey.

Simplicity is a very simple word, but it embodies tremendous power. When we enter into the spiritual life, we value this most significant achievement. We have countless desires. But from our list, if we can take out one desire, then to that extent our life becomes simple. When it becomes simple, an iota of peace dawns in our mental firmament. Each time we become simple, simpler, simplest, our desire-life becomes short, shorter, shortest. Then we enjoy peace of mind; we enjoy Light and Delight.

Sincerity is our peerless achievement. If we can become sincere, then we can run the fastest in our spiritual life. When we make friends with insincerity, at every moment we have to justify our insincere life. Once we tell a lie, we have to tell twenty more lies in order to justify that particular lie. And each time we tell a lie, we add a heavy burden to our shoulders. How can we run the fastest when there is a heavy load on our shoulders? But when we are sincere, we accelerate our progress; we run the fastest like a deer.

Purity is of paramount importance in the spiritual life. Purity means the power of receptivity. When our heart is inundated with purity, we feel that our inner receptacle has become large, larger, largest. Peace, Light and Bliss enter into that vessel from above. And inside the vessel we see our divine qualities sporting, dancing and fulfilling their reality’s Light and Delight. Purity is receptivity’s capacity. Purity is the same thing as capacity’s receptivity. When we are pure, immediately our self-expansion, our divine reality, looms large.

Aspiration, dedication and surrender. Aspiration is our journey’s start. Aspiration is the flow of our journey, the continuous, endless journey itself. Aspiration is an inner cry. This cry liberates us from the meshes of ignorance. This cry eventually makes us one with the Eternal, the Infinite and the Immortal. When we aspire, we feel that deep within us there is a higher reality which we unfortunately right now cannot claim as our very own. But there comes a time when, on the strength of our own aspiration, we can claim this reality — our own reality, our highest, supernal reality — as our own, very own. Each time we aspire, we bring to the fore our own hidden, divine, immortal reality.

Dedication. When we dedicate ourselves to a cause, we expand our own reality-existence. This dedication is not done under any compulsion. Responsibility has not been thrust upon us. It is we who want to expand our reality, so we adopt the right approach and try to expand ourselves through dedication. One becomes many; again, many become one. As an individual, when we dedicate ourselves devotedly, soulfully and unconditionally, we grow into the many. And when we do this as a collective body, we become one. So it is through dedication that we become many and that we become one. When we become one, we fulfil God as Infinity’s Silence, birthless and deathless Silence. When we become many, we fulfil God as the eternal, infinite sound, birthless and deathless sound. Finally, we fulfil God the soundless Sound.

Surrender. Surrender completes the journey. This surrender is our conscious awareness of our highest reality. It is not the surrender of a slave; it is the surrender of the finite in us to the Infinite in us. The unlit, obscure, impure existence of ours is making surrender to the illumined, pure and perfect existence of our own reality-height. We are not surrendering to a second or third person. We are surrendering to the divine within us, to the Infinite within us, to the Immortal within us. Surrender here is our conscious and constant expansion, illumination, liberation and perfection. Each time we surrender our earth-bound existence to our Heaven-free life, we enjoy Nectar, divine Bliss.

When a seeker establishes his body’s reality-oneness with the Will of the Supreme, he becomes the simplicity-warrior. When a seeker establishes his mind’s reality-oneness with the Will of the Supreme, he becomes the sincerity-warrior. When the seeker establishes his vital’s reality-oneness with the Will of the Supreme, he becomes the purity-warrior. When the seeker establishes his heart’s reality-oneness with the Will of the Supreme, he becomes the aspiration-warrior. The same seeker, in the course of time, when he establishes his life’s reality-oneness with the Will of the Supreme, becomes the dedication-warrior. Finally, when the seeker consciously, devotedly, untiringly, unreservedly and unconditionally establishes his soul’s oneness-reality with the Will of the Absolute Supreme, he becomes the surrender-warrior.

As there are many divine warriors of the inner world, even so there are many undivine warriors of the inner world. The main undivine warriors are insecurity, fear, doubt, lethargy, disobedience and indulgence.

Insecurity starts in the mind, but the mind is not aware of insecurity at the beginning. From the mind it enters into the vital and finally it comes to the physical consciousness. At that time we are fully aware of the presence of insecurity. Insecurity is a poisonous disease. If we do not get rid of it, this poison spreads and destroys the whole system eventually.

Fear is worse. Fear of the unknown, not to speak of fear of the unknowable, is a fatal disease within the seeker’s life. The seeker is afraid of everything that is not in his domain, of anything of which he is not aware. He fears others, he fears the unknown, he fears the Vast; finally he becomes afraid of himself. He has a knife. When he looks at his knife, fear enters into his mind. He feels that at any moment this knife can cause an accident in his life. He enters into the kitchen. There is a stove, and he uses it at his sweet will. But even when the stove is not on, he is afraid it may catch fire. At every moment he is afraid of his own possessions, not to speak of others’ achievements or realities. When he is afraid of himself, he loses badly, miserably, in the battlefield of life. Fear is a fatal disease.

Then comes doubt. When the seeker treasures doubt with a view to judging others, he digs his own grave. Each time he doubts someone, he digs his grave. If we judge others with our unlit human mind, with the intellectual mind, with the sophisticated mind, the persons whom we judge do not lose an iota of their achievement, of their reality. But we lose. How do we lose? When we start doubting others, we offer something of our own existence to the outer world; something of our own reality goes and eventually we become very weak.

Doubt is the almost incurable disease in us. When we doubt others, we feel that we are now sitting on a high pedestal and, at the same time, we are on a safe footing. But this is a deplorable mistake. We cannot judge others. We do not know their heights; we do not know their depths. We do not know what is actually happening in others. It is the cosmic Will that is operating in and through each and every individual. So we are in no position to judge others. Each one is guided, moulded, shaped and prepared by the Will of the unseen Hand.

First we doubt someone and immediately afterwards we try to see whether we are correct in doubting that person. Then we begin to judge and doubt ourselves. When we doubt ourselves, we lose everything. So we should follow the path of faith. Faith is the commander in us. Faith tells us of the existence of Reality and Truth in us, for us. Then faith tells us that we not only embody the Truth, eternal Truth, infinite Truth, but we as a matter of fact are this transcendental Truth, this universal Truth ourselves. But right now we are not aware of it precisely because we have made friends with ignorance.

Then comes lethargy. When the Hour of God strikes, if we do not respond, then we cannot start our journey. The road is long, very long. When the Hour strikes, owing to lethargy, if we do not respond to the call of the Hour, we unconsciously lengthen our road. The mind becomes totally immersed in ignorance and feels the road is longer than the longest. When the Hour strikes, if we do not respond, then the road is bound to become longer than it was before. So those who wallow in the pleasure of lethargy will have to walk along the road that never ends.

Disobedience is the worst weakness in the seeker’s life. A seeker may listen to the inner dictates quite often. But if one day he disobeys the inner command, then he is bound to notice a hole in the life-boat which is destined to take him to the Golden Shore of the Beyond. His life-boat has sprung a leak. Gradually the hole will become large, larger, largest, and his spiritual boat will capsize and sink. But if he is obedient, then his life-boat will sail fast, faster, fastest towards the destined Goal, the Goal of the highest ever-transcending Beyond.

The last undivine force or warrior is indulgence. When we enter into the world of indulgence, we run backward. We enter into the animal kingdom. We believe in evolution. From the stone world we came to the plant world. From the plant world we came to the animal world. From the animal world we came to the human world. Now we have to go to the divine world. But if we enter into the world of indulgence, then instead of running forward we run backward. And each time we run backward, we again make friends with our old friend doubt.

A spiritual seeker has to be aware of these undivine forces: insecurity, fear, doubt, lethargy, disobedience and indulgence. The divine warriors have only one thing to tell us: accept light and reject night. Acceptance of light is the only thing that is needed. Night is the ignorance within us. Ignorance-night binds our body, blinds our eyes, stabs our heart. Ignorance-night represents the undivine warriors of insecurity, fear, doubt, lethargy, disobedience and indulgence. When we are attacked by these undivine warriors, the divine warriors come to our rescue and offer us perfection-light. As the representative of the Supreme, this perfection-light first liberates us, then illumines us and grants us vision. It grants vision to our eyes and then immortalises our heart. This is what perfection-light does for us.

There are divine warriors of the outer world as well as of the inner world. The outer warriors are our divine personality and divine individuality, which say, “I am of God and I am for God.” The inner warriors do not fight outwardly. They become one with God’s Will and in this way feel that they are establishing God the eternal Truth and Light in the inner world. The outer warriors feel that they have to fight. The hero-warriors fight for God’s victory on earth at every moment in the outer world.

The outer hero-warriors want to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. They want to see the Infinite in the finite. But the inner hero-warriors see that Infinity is already there in the finite. They see that the finite does not have the eye to see the Infinite, whereas the Infinite can envision its own presence in the finite itself. The inner warriors are aware of what they eternally are, whereas the outer warriors are not aware of what they eternally are. Therefore, they do something in order to become. By doing something, the outer warriors want to become. The inner warriors feel that they don’t have to become; they already are.

But there comes a time when the inner and outer warriors become one, inseparably one. The inner warriors bring to the outer warriors the message of realisation: realisation of the infinite Truth, eternal Light and immortal Delight. And the outer warriors try to manifest the divine realities, the divine treasures that are offered to them by the inner warriors. The inner warriors bring these realities to the earth-arena. The outer warriors manifest these realities in the earth-arena. This way both the inner warriors and the outer warriors complete the cosmic Lila, the divine Game.

Published in Warriors of the inner world.