Sri Chinmoy holds his 15th annual New Year's meditation on 11 December 1986 at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, in New York City.
This year [1987] you will be able to make unprecedented progress in the aspiration-world. Even if you have been with us for ten, twelve, fifteen or God knows how many years, in this one year you can make unprecedented progress compared to the progress you have already made. And in terms of manifestation in your life, collectively and individually also you can have unlimited success.
Before the year starts I see with my third eye inwardly what is going to happen. Do not think that what I am saying only applies to me. No, no, nothing applies to me! I don't need unprecedented inner aspiration-progress and unlimited outer manifestation-success. I don't need these things; I don't need anything. If you really participate, if you become part and parcel of my mission and my vision, then what I say definitely applies to you.
I may tell you to get 13,000 people for a concert and to do this or that. But for whose progress? Christ did not give concerts or anything, but his light has spread throughout the length and breadth of the world. It is the same with Krishna, Buddha and other spiritual Masters. But when you set up concerts and do other things to spread your Guru's light, you have the golden opportunity to bring forward your own divinity. You do have divine qualities, and I want them to increase in boundless measure. So by becoming part and parcel of my manifestation, you bring to the fore your own qualities and multiply them astronomically.
I don't have to write one more poem or song or give one more talk. I don't have to do a thing, and still my light will spread. But if I do not encourage you to manifest, you will be worse than you are. So my encouragement is taking this form: I have the wealth; you spread it, spread it, spread it. But if you do not spread it, then others will spread it after I leave this world. If you do not do or cannot do it while I am on earth, then others will do it. But I feel that you can do it. Therefore, I am all the time encouraging you and inspiring you.
If you love your progress and if you get joy from it, then the things that are necessary for progress you have to do. One thing I am telling you to have is enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm. As long as you are in the boat, every day you have to increase your enthusiasm, eagerness and determination.
Whenever an idea comes, if you do not act upon that idea, then you are lost. You will say that tomorrow you will get higher and deeper inspiration and more enthusiasm, but you are just fooling yourself. So if you are inspired to do something, do it immediately. And if you are not inspired, you have to create inspiration and enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is receptivity. God's Compassion has acted in and through human beings in the form of enthusiasm. Some disciples used to drive for hours to come to the Centre. At that time there was no wife, no husband, no children, no friends. Their whole life was only to be with their Guru. Now that our meeting place is only a few blocks from their house, all the time they are thinking of their children, their parents, their friends, their relatives. And they are not only just keeping in touch but actually creating more friends and more obligations. So now they have no time for the spiritual life. This is what happens when enthusiasm goes. When there is enthusiasm, there is nothing we cannot do. We are willing to cover the length and breadth of the world for God. Again, when enthusiasm goes, even the smallest effort is too much.
The New Year has started with such tremendous hope, inspiration and aspiration. This is the time for you to regain the enthusiasm that you once had when you just joined the path. And with new enthusiasm and new determination, conquer your weaknesses. Some people surrender after making mistakes because they feel that it will be impossible for them ever to succeed. For them, their spiritual life has ended. But even if you have failed for years and years in one particular thing, don't feel that you are doomed to disappointment. Just because you have failed for so many years in conquering your insecurity or jealousy, or in achieving oneness with God's Will, or anything, you cannot say you will never succeed. Just feel that it is a challenge to conquer your weakness. And once you overcome it, you are bound to succeed again and again and again.
This room, let us say, was unlit for so many years just because it was not lucky enough to have electricity. But when the room finally got electricity, the light came on in a second. In your case, you have a real spiritual Master who is like an electrician. If only you allow me to enter into your unlit room and work there, then one day in a twinkling I will be able to illumine it. But you don't allow me to enter into your heart-room. You don't allow me into your depths; you resist like anything!
Again and again I am telling you to meditate, meditate, meditate and pray for Forgiveness-Light. If your aspiration and receptivity are strong enough, definitely God's Compassion will remove the wrong forces that are causing you so many problems and will increase your soul's light so that it will prevent these forces from attacking you and ruining your aspiration and dedication. Aspiration is your part and Compassion and Forgiveness are God's part. No matter how many mistakes you make, God is eager, eager to forgive you if you give Him the chance and have the enthusiasm and determination to do the right thing and not make the same mistakes over and over again year after year. Once you are forgiven, you will have the sweetest feeling inside your heart and inside this sweetness you will feel real purity. If you have this tremendous sweetness inside your heart, then you will know that God has forgiven you. With this sweet feeling you will have tremendous eagerness and determination to please the Supreme in His own Way, and you will feel that you are only for Him. So once you feel this sweetness and eagerness to please God, you will know that God has forgiven you. Then, once He has forgiven you, you will see how much of the suffering that you have on the physical, vital and mental plane will disappear.
When you make the right decision and care only to please God, your Beloved Supreme, you can feel how much Joy the Supreme gets from you. To please God is what you really want. Just because this is what you really want, God is not fulfilling your earthly desires. God is omnipotent. In the twinkling of an eye He can easily fulfil all your human desires put together. But if He does, it is you who will feel most miserable. Each time He fulfils your desire-life, you move one step further away from Him. So if He listens to you and fulfils your desire-life, you will blame God. It was you who wanted it, but you will say, "O God, if You are so kind and compassionate, why did You grant my desires? Now my aspiration-life is destroyed!" That is why God wants to give you only what your aspiring heart sincerely wants and what your aspiring life inwardly needs.
You may ask how you can distinguish the desire-life or clever human life from the aspiration-life. It is very, very easy. The desire-life is "my" way; the aspiration-life is God's Way. "My" way says: "O God, you please me now, and then one day I will please You in Your own Way. First satisfy me and then, when I am satisfied, I shall start pleasing You." But this is such a stupid way of trying to please God! For when God pleases you in your own way, on that day the little aspiration that you had will be totally destroyed. And those golden days when you are going to please God in His own Way will never come. I tell you, they will not arrive, they will not arrive!
The aspiration-life, which is God's Way, says, "O God, please give me the capacity to please You always in Your own Way. And once I have started pleasing You in Your own Way, never, never allow me to try to please You in my way." So if you have real aspiration, you will say to the Supreme, "You have given me the capacity today to please You in Your own Way. Do give me the capacity to please You every hour of every day in Your own Way."
Unfortunately, the disciples please the Supreme for five seconds or for one hour, and then for the rest of the day or for the next ten days they ask and expect God to please them in their own way. If after you have pleased God for twenty days, you ask Him to please you in your own way for five seconds, He may do it. But while He is pleasing you for five seconds, you will lose all the divine things that you got by pleasing God in His own Way. For twenty days you worked so hard to get something, and in five seconds you can lose it all! Then again you will have to start your journey from the beginning. You gained some money and then you lost it, so again you became a beggar. Every day you can become rich, and by evening you can become poor again.
God is for those who are absolutely sincere and absolutely determined to become His choice instruments. If you are absolutely determined to become His choice instrument, then He will inspire you, help you and guide you to the Highest. So you have to decide what you actually want. The Highest, the Deepest, the Ultimate and the Absolute are not mere words. They are realities, absolute realities, that can be achieved only by pleasing God in God's own Way. True, because you are still on the path, your soul is pleasing God twenty-four hours a day. But it is not enough if just your soul pleases God. No! Your heart, your mind, your vital and your body must also please God.
Most of the time the heart does listen to God, but there are many, many cases in which the heart does not listen to God's Will. Because the vital is near the heart, the vital enters into the heart and takes away the heart's oneness. And it is even more difficult for the mind to receive God's Light than for the vital, since the roguish mind is infinitely worse than the vital. Quite often the vital at first is restless. Then it becomes tired and surrenders to the heart. But the mind always feels that it knows everything and has everything that it needs and wants. The mind feels that it is beneath its dignity to take anything from the heart. So disobedience starts from the mind. The heart obeys the inner divinity and surrenders to God's Will infinitely more than the mind, the vital and the physical consciousness. But even the heart does not always listen to God the way the soul listens.
Again, you have to know that not all souls have the same capacity; some souls are limited. Your soul may not be as developed or advanced as somebody else's soul. But if, according to its capacity, your soul pleases God in His own Way, then because of your unconditional surrender, gradually, gradually your soul will become more developed and be able to please God in a more advanced way.
It is like this. The souls that are not as mature or developed as others are like young children. The father will ask the child to bring him a glass of water, whereas he will ask his grown-up son to bring him something heavy. But if both obey him cheerfully and devotedly, he will be equally pleased with them. The child has only the capacity to bring him a glass of water, but he does it cheerfully, devotedly and unconditionally, so the father is very pleased with the child. But one day this child will become an adult. At that time if the father asks him to bring him something heavy, like a typewriter, he will bring the typewriter. But if the child does not use his capacity to bring the glass of water cheerfully, devotedly and unconditionally, will he ever be able to do something infinitely more difficult?
I am telling you, the soul is not a mental hallucination. When spiritual Masters and others who have realised God talk about the soul, it is more real to them than the body, vital, mind and heart. The awakened part of reality is the soul, and that is the part that is always listening to God. So take your soul very, very seriously at every moment in your life. You cannot see the soul with your eyes because you are not yet trained, but I can see it because I am trained. An expert in any field can do quite a few things that someone else cannot do. A scientist can see quite a few things that I cannot see, but I do not say that these things do not exist. They do exist. So you do have a soul, and you can have free access to your soul the way I have. It is only a matter of development, development, development.
This is the year of unprecedented inner aspiration-progress and unlimited outer manifestation-success. Try to repeat these phrases every day: "Unprecedented inner aspiration-progress, unprecedented inner aspiration-progress, unlimited outer manifestation-success, unlimited outer manifestation-success," and feel their reality, depth and power. In so many ways, known and unknown, you will be helped from the inner world. No matter how many times you have failed in the past, in this year you will get tremendous inner strength. Again, no matter how many years you have succeeded in any field, in this year you will be able to increase your progress strikingly. Even if you have succeeded for years and years in something, there is no end to the progress you can make. Because this year is such an important year, you have the capacity to increase your aspiration and your dedication far beyond your imagination.
I am telling you the positive side, but also there is a negative side. I always say that a knife has the power to kill someone and also it has the power to cut fruits to be shared with someone. Here also the divine Light that is inside us in very small measure has the capacity to give us the fastest progress. Again, if God sees that some children of His are not taking full advantage of this opportunity, He will be disappointed and disgusted and He will withdraw this Light. Then we become a total failure in the spiritual life.
This year you have been given a golden opportunity, so I hope that you will make the fastest progress. You are definitely, definitely chosen by God, so you cannot sleep the way countless other people are sleeping. Ignorance-sleep you cannot have! The divinity, the power, the love and the divine light that you had, you still have. This is what is keeping you on the path. But you have to increase these things, and this year you can easily do it. I have said these things many, many times. But each time I talk, an extra power, an extra force, enters into you. So, dear ones, take me seriously and this year do it, do it, do it!
