Talk to Karate Students
by Sri Chinmoy
to the students of Karate Teacher, Mr Kimo Wall of Honolulu, Hawaii, at the Sagrado Corazon College in San Juan, at 2:00 p.m. after Kimo and his students had given a skilful performance of karate
Discourse
Your teacher, our sweet Kimo, has performed something entirely unique. Today we have learned quite a few things from him. The most important thing we have learned is that his combined concentration in the physical, in the vital, in the mental, in the psychic and in the spiritual were all directed in a superb way for his purpose. You all know that karate is primarily for self-defence, but again I wish to tell you, and I am sure that your teacher has already taught you, that it is not for self-defence alone, as such. It is for something deeper. Self-protection is necessary, but along with self-protection, what is necessary is self-Realisation. What are you going to protect if you do not know what you are? In order to know the highest and the deepest and the inmost, we have to concentrate and meditate.
While he was performing this unique and extraordinary set of movements that we saw a few minutes ago, we observed, along with his superb skill, a power of concentration that ran from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Every part of his being was surcharged with a dynamic will. Now this will comes from the soul, not from the body. His physical body became the conscious instrument of his soul’s dynamic will. Now where did he, how did he, learn this so-called technique, which is actually the concentration of a spiritual Master? He learned it from his soul’s inner will.
So what you are getting here is a great opportunity; and this is not the end. You will be taught by him for a few months or a few years and that is just the beginning. The very essence of everything you do is meditation. Kimo’s performance was the result of inner concentration and meditation. So, this is my sincere request to each of you, that every day in the morning, you will please try to concentrate for a few minutes or meditate for a few minutes. Meditation is a vast subject. If I speak about it, it would take hours and hours and there would be no end. I have spoken considerably on meditation at various places: spiritual Centres, churches, synagogues, American universities, Puerto Rican universities, European universities. I just came back from a tour on the Continent. There I spoke on meditation.
What I feel would be best for you here is to ask me a few questions on meditation. Otherwise if I give a talk on meditation, it may not serve your immediate purpose, because each one here has a different problem. Your problem need not and cannot be the same as someone else’s problem. In your inner life, you have a problem of your own, or you want Light in a different way from your neighbour. You want to grow into the Light, the Light divine. For real growth, your way of approaching the Truth has to be different from the one who is sitting right beside you.
Now, in the spiritual life, we always say that we must grow and become. Now some people will say that unless you have become something yourself, you cannot give anything to others. Yes, it is true. If you don’t know something and you try to teach others, it is a matter of the blind leading the blind. But I also wish to say that if you know something better than I do, then you are perfectly entitled to teach me that particular thing. And if I know something which you do not know, you should learn it from me. Now here is the golden opportunity to co-ordinate your knowledge of the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic with the spiritual. The spiritual life teaches us the unification of all the members of the family: the physical, the vital and the mental must run abreast and inside the physical, the physic and the soul must predominate. Otherwise if you just become an expert in karate, if you learn it mechanically, you are serving no purpose. But if you exercise your inner will through karate, while you are performing, you are not only learning the technique of self-defence, but you are discovering your inner reality which is God-realisation. Everything you do when you study or when you speak to a person should have the soul’s will coming to the fore from deep within; then your life will have a purpose. Otherwise you will achieve success, the so-called success, but if the spiritual part of your life is lagging behind, if meditation is missing, your joy will be limited, fleeting, and your achievement will be very insignificant. But if you meditate, you will see an abiding Peace, abiding Light, abiding Joy deep within you.
Now I wish to invite a few questions from those who are interested in the inner life, the spiritual life.
Published in Earth’s Cry Meets Heaven’s Smile, part 3
Questions by the karate students
Question: Please explain your system, so we can know how to go about meditation.
Sri Chinmoy: There are various systems, but when one is approaching the spiritual life or the life of meditation, one has to adopt only one system. If one says that one will be able to reach God through selfless service, loving humanity and offering oneself, then that is the perfect path for that person. But if one feels that he will follow the spiritual life through mental discipline, that he will meditate on the mind and offer mental wisdom to others after having discovered Peace, Light and Bliss, then that is another system. Then if a third person feels that he can offer love and joy to mankind, then he has to follow the path of Love and Devotion. So when we meditate, we have to know what we are going to be or what we are going to offer to mankind. Now if you wish to give any of these divine qualities – Peace, Joy, Bliss, Love and so forth, to others – then I wish you to meditate on the heart, here. The heart is the most important place in our spiritual discipline, because the heart represents identification. If you want to help someone or to grow into something, then you have to identify yourself with that person or thing. You look at a flower; you appreciate its beauty and fragrance. Then you try to grow into the very same consciousness that the flower embodies, its purity and beauty. First, for a few minutes you observe the beauty and then you try to grow into that beauty. In the spiritual life also, when we enter into the heart, our heart identifies immediately with spiritual Light, Peace, Bliss and Power and so forth. On the strength of our identification, we grow into divine Reality.
Now each individual has to learn how to meditate from a teacher, from a spiritual Master. Here you have a teacher, a karate teacher who is teaching you that art. So also in the spiritual life, you need a teacher. It is the teacher who will be able to direct you personally. Otherwise you will feel miserable that your way of understanding the truth will differ widely from the person sitting beside you. If you want to learn how to meditate, you have to follow a specific path. For that, you have to know if there is a spiritual Master like me. I am not the only Master; there are many Masters on earth. As soon as you see a spiritual Master, you have to feel the necessity of entering into him to see if his path suits you or not. If it does, then you should try to be in his boat. Then he is bound to teach you how to meditate. Why to meditate? Because you want to be divine, you want to be perfect. But how to meditate, unfortunately, a seeker does not know. He has to learn it from an adept, from a spiritual Master. So, for that, one goes to visit spiritual Masters, goes to spiritual places, and then, if one is interested, and inspired to follow the spiritual life, then one asks a Master to accept him. The Master gives a short interview and meditates with that particular disciple.
He tells the new seeker that he has to meditate regularly, daily, devotedly and faithfully. We cannot say in public that there is a certain way to meditate. Yes, there are general rules. You have to keep your mind calm and quiet. You should not allow any thought to enter into your mind because thoughts create disturbances in your mind. These are general rules. Everybody will tell you that when you want to meditate, the first thing is to make your mind calm and quiet. That we all know. But how to do it? That answer has to be given individually. Everyone has a different type of mind and each person has to be dealt with in a different way, because everyone has a different nature. The goal is the same. From here I have to go to New York. New York is my destination. But I can take a plane or I can take a boat. The destination remains the same, but the vehicles are different. Similarly in the spiritual life you have to know that God-realisation is one, but your vehicle to reach it need not be the same as someone else’s vehicle.
So in answering your question, I must say that if you are deeply interested in meditation, please read a few spiritual books written by genuine spiritual Masters and then start to meditate on them, then you will have the real need for a guide, a spiritual Master. Then the spiritual Master will give individual attention to your personal spiritual needs and teach you how to meditate.
Question: How are our actions in life connected with the spiritual life?
Sri Chinmoy: If you are speaking about the material life that is being led, then I wish you to know that it is a half-animal life; not a full-animal life, but a half-animal life. The complete or full animal life we can see all around us — the monkeys, donkeys, dogs and cats and the destructive animals like the foxes and wolves. But we ourselves are half-animals. How? Every day, consciously or unconsciously, we are cherishing jealousy, doubt and destructive forces in our minds. This makes us half-animal from the spiritual point of view. An ordinary man, in comparison to a spiritual man, is a half-animal. When an animal stands in front of a human being, the man feels that he is far superior to the animal because he has a developed mind and a developed soul. That is why he feels superior. Similarly when a spiritual man stands in front of an ordinary man, he feels himself to be superior because he is crying for Light, Peace and Bliss, he is crying for inseparable Oneness, conscious Oneness with God.
When ordinary persons are constantly fighting in their minds and when jealousy, doubt, obscurity (which is darkness), impurity and imperfection loom large in their everyday life, day in and day out, then they are half-animal, from the spiritual point of view.
But again, when a spiritual person sees someone quarrelling and fighting all the time, he does not look down upon that person. An ordinary person when he sees a real animal, like an elephant or a tiger will immediately think, “Oh, here is a real animal! Thank goodness that I am a human being. You remain in your own life. I am so proud that I am not acting like you!” But a spiritual person, when he sees someone below his standard of consciousness, does not lord it over that person. On the contrary, he tries to help that person to kindle the flame of aspiration inside him.
Now in answering your question, if you are following the inner or spiritual life, then your activities can be motivated from this inner life. Each thought gives rise to action. If you are leading a spiritual life, then at every moment, God comes first in your life. To an ordinary person, God does not come first. Prosperity, power, importance, fame and other things come first. But a spiritual person immediately says, “God has to come first; the inner life has to come first.” From within we come without. An ordinary person usually feels that we should go from outside to inside. But this is impossible. “As we sow, so we reap.” We sow a seed and it germinates. Then it grows into a huge Banyan tree. So our inner life must come first because everything in our outer life, whether or not it is spiritual, is a result and an embodiment of whatever is in the inner life. A spiritual person feels that the inner life is of paramount importance and that it has to come first. An ordinary person feels, “No, the spiritual life is vague and meaningless. Let us enjoy life. Let us possess and be possessed. Let us enjoy the world and let the world enjoy us. There is no bridge between the spiritual life and the ordinary life.” But a spiritual person sincerely cries and says, “Let me realise the Truth in its own way and then bring down the Truth into my outer life.” The Truth is within, and then it has to be felt and expressed outwardly also. Truth is universal, it is true, but only if we go deep within do we first get a glimpse of it.
So in our day-to-day life, if we can meditate for ten or fifteen minutes a day, we can enter into the Source of life, Eternal life. From there, we have to enter into the fleeting life of fifty, sixty or seventy years, which is our life-span. Every day, consciously, let us offer our spiritual breath, our divine breath, to the Inner Pilot. Then let us try to grow into the perfect image of God in our inner life. Then from this inner life, we have to come forward to the outer life.
Let us not attempt to govern our inner life only with outer capacity. Outer capacity means possession. By possessing something or someone, if we feel that we will be able to govern our inner existence, it is impossible. Inner existence is always flooded with Light, Delight and inseparable Oneness with the Cosmos, with the Universe, and with the transcendental Supreme.
Coming back to your question, I wish to say that the more we follow the inner life, the more meaningful will be the outer life. Otherwise the outer achievement without the core, that is to say, without the inner life, will have no meaning. Nothing will satisfy you or me or anybody on earth except the inner life. The inner life is the life of the soul, where reality and divinity are constantly growing. So please follow the inner life and the inner life will guide you, inspire you, instruct you on how you can be divinely and supremely successful in your outer life.
Question: Is meditation a way of having absolute freedom from all attachments which cause us to be separated from delight which is our inheritance on earth, spiritual delight?
Sri Chinmoy: Delight is a spiritual term that I know you understand. The term we use for outer enjoyment is “pleasure”. Pleasure and Delight are two different things. Delight is infinitely stronger and more powerful than pleasure. Certainly meditation will take you far beyond the boundaries of pleasure, which is immediately followed by frustration. In the ordinary human life, we know what pleasure is. We get pleasure from satisfying the senses. As I said, this fulfilment is immediately followed by frustration and inside frustration, destruction looms large. First pleasure, which comes from temptation; then frustration immediately standing in wait for it; then destruction.
But in meditation we get Joy, inner Peace, inner Light and inner Delight. And about the freedom that you are speaking of, you are absolutely right, meditation will give you eternal freedom.
Now let us speak about freedom in the outer life. We see children who leave their parents and they feel that they are free. Right; they are free from their parents because they are living elsewhere. They are not staying with their parents. But there are hundreds and thousands of problems that they still have. Only since they are not staying with their parents, this is the freedom they feel they are getting. Yet there are other obligations all around them that loom large in their day-to-day existence. So where is freedom? First their mind is a constant victim to ugly and venomous thoughts. They cannot get rid of their thoughts. Now, from the spiritual point of view, if one cannot get rid of ugly, undivine, hostile thoughts, then one is still subject to ignorance. Inner freedom comes from within. It does not come from freeing oneself from outer restrictions and obligations No. You may be free from your parents for a day or a month or a year, but this is no freedom. Real freedom is the feeling of universal oneness. This you can get from a life of meditation.
Meditation will free you from the sea of ignorance. Meditation will give you everlasting freedom. And this freedom is the freedom of oneness. Right now you cannot unite yourself even with another person right beside you. You feel with your ego that you are yourself and she is somebody else. So where is the freedom? Your freedom is so limited that even with your very limited capacity and limited knowledge you are trying to exercise your will and utilise your human power to lord it over others. That is what you call freedom. This is not freedom. Real freedom is the inseparable oneness with the universe. There you are growing together. You are achieving something and you are seeing that the entire world is achieving it at the same time. When you are sorrowful, immediately you feel that the whole world is suffering with you, sympathising with your cause, growing with you.
God is One and He multiplies Himself into many. Now God says, “I am a tree. Since I am a tree, I want to become also the branches, the leaves, the flowers and the fruits.” Freedom lies in becoming the many while maintaining the oneness. The leaves, flowers and fruit see the same consciousness flowing through them as flows through the trunk. A spiritual person, when he stands in front of a tree and meditates on it, sees the one consciousness which is flowing through the root, the trunk, the branches, flowers and fruit. This kind of oneness is the real freedom.
So if you want inner freedom, spiritual freedom, then I wish to say that it is in becoming one with the rest of humanity. Otherwise the freedom that you cherish in the West by separating yourself from others, what are you gaining? Yes, we should separate ourselves from ignorance, imperfection, limitation, bondage and so forth, but we should not, and we must not, separate ourselves from our soul, from the reality which is Light and Delight. So when we are following the spiritual life, we have to know that our real freedom is in identifying ourselves with the rest of the world, with humanity at large. By becoming one, we stand united, we march united towards the Highest, united we shall fulfil our Goal.
Question: During meditation, can one enter into the level of unconscious thought?
Sri Chinmoy: One can enter into the level of unconsciousness, but it should be done with a view of transforming the unconsciousness into consciousness. While meditating, the very aim of the person is to climb to the Highest. When I have gone up to the Highest, if I see that my toe is bothering me, that there is some pain there, naturally I have to come down and cure it. I have to be perfect from my toe up to my head. I need total perfection. So if you enter into the unconscious level of your mind – let us call it inconscience – what for? To transform the inconscience that is in you; otherwise you will be limited. The body will be transformed, the heart will be transformed, but the mind will remain imperfect. Now if a member of my family is not progressing, is not perfect, I cannot be happy. So in your meditation, you have to take your whole existence as a unit, as a complete totality. If you enter into your unconscious level, you have to know that you are entering there to spread the inner Light, to infuse the unconscious level and transform it into Light, the Light that is inside the heart and the soul. This is the soul’s own Light. With that purpose only you can go; not to show off that you have the capacity to go into your unconscious part or that you are far better off there, but only to transform the very face of the unconscious level. You want to be integral. You want to be perfect. You have to be perfect. If your unconscious mind is imperfect, I cannot call you perfect. You have to be perfect everywhere, both in the conscious and the subconscious. Subconsciousness is inside you. As you have the overmind, the higher mind, the illumined mind and all these higher dimensions, you also have lower qualities. Your higher qualities are that you pray to God, you want to be good, divine and spiritual. These are your higher qualities. Again you have undivine qualities which quarrel with the divine ones. These are doubt, jealousy, hypocrisy and so forth. These are undivine qualities within us. So with our divine qualities, our love for God, our feeling of universal oneness, our real concern for mankind, we have to enter into our undivine qualities that we cherish: fear, doubt, worry and so on. We have to transform fear into strength, doubt into certainty, jealousy into sympathy, separation into universal brotherhood and oneness. That is why we enter into the lower parts: to transform them.
Question: Is this done through a mental process?
Sri Chinmoy: No, it is done through an inner, psychic process. It is not through the mind, it is through feeling. When we aspire, we stop the functioning of the mind. It is from here, from the heart. When we think, for one minute we will think a good thought, cherish it, and then the next moment, we will think an ordinary uncomely, or undivine thought. But when we do it from here, from the heart, we don’t think at all; we just go into the reality through inspiration. We discover that there is a burning flame within us. The burning flame helps us to become divine and spiritual. So when we kindle the flame of aspiration, we transform ignorance into light. The higher the flame of aspiration goes, the farther the light spreads. You go up, up, up and you see it spreading its light all around. It is a conscious awareness of one’s inner Divinity within us. It is here; in the heart.
Question: How does a person become a Guru?
Sri Chinmoy: The word “Guru” means spiritual teacher. Kimo has become a teacher by practising Karate for fifteen years or so. He has acquired wisdom, knowledge and capacity from that particular field. In the spiritual life also, there is a kind of knowledge, an inner knowledge. One has to practise concentration, meditation, contemplation and a few other things in order to become a Guru.
When you go to school, you start your lessons from the kindergarten and then you complete your journey when you get your university degree. From kindergarten you go to elementary school, then to high school, then to college and then to university. In the spiritual life also, one has to start at the beginning. In my case, right from my childhood I took up the spiritual life. When I was two months old, my parents took me to a spiritual shrine, a very well-known spiritual place in India. Then when I was three years old, four, seven and eight years old, I was taken to another place. Unconsciously, I was going with my parents to a spiritual Master. When I was twelve years old, I became conscious of the inner life, the spiritual life. Then from twelve right up to thirty-two, I spent five hours, eight hours, ten hours, twelve hours a day in rigorous meditation. Now you know that when you study something, you spend an hour or two, or three or four hours, according to the necessity of your study. So spending all those hours in meditation is nothing unusual if one wants to achieve a high standard in the spiritual life.
When I was twelve years old, I said, “Now is my time to be conscious.” And I started meditating one hour, two hours, three hours. But not for the sake of counting the hours. If you just count the hours, you are not doing real meditation. But if you can develop the inner capacity to meditate, your capacity becomes greater. When you take exercise every day, you gradually develop muscles. Then instead of five minutes, you can exercise for an hour. Then you develop your capacity to two, three hours. In the spiritual life also, we start with five minutes, then we increase it to ten minutes, fifteen minutes; then slowly it goes up to six hours, eight hours, nine hours a day. At that time, one has become an expert. One gets inner illumination; one becomes consciously one with the universal soul, with the Highest Absolute. At this point the person becomes a spiritual Master because he has achieved and received the Inner Illumination.
The spiritual Master at this point will not grow two horns or a tail. No, he is still a man. My spirituality is inside me, inside my heart, inside my consciousness. My disciples feel it, those who are my disciples.
Then when a spiritual Master meditates on his disciples, he offers them his Light, inner Peace, inner Bliss. He meditates on each individual and he spreads the inner Light. When he gets his own illumination, then and then only, can he offer his Light to others, to the seekers of the world.
Now you are apt to say, “How does he know he is illumined?” He knows on the strength of his absolute oneness with the Transcendental Truth. Those who are following the same path as he will see, inside him, the real Light. If you are a doctor, you will have a very good idea of whether another person is a genuine doctor or not. Immediately you will ask him some questions and if he is not a doctor, he will be totally lost. In the spiritual life also, when a seeker comes to a spiritual Master, he asks a few questions, inner questions. If the Master is really spiritual, he will be able to answer them. If not, he will not be able to answer.
In the spiritual life, the Guru’s answer is an immediate psychic response; it comes directly from the soul. It does not come from the mind. Many seekers come to me. Some of them don’t ask questions, but others ask hundreds of questions during the hours they spend at the Centre. Sometimes these are questions that nobody has been able to answer for them, but when I answer their questions, they are convinced that this person has inner illumination.
It is not by answering questions alone, that you convince others that you are a spiritual Master. Thousands and millions of books, containing answers to questions, have been written on the spiritual life. From books you cannot get illumination. Books can give you inspiration. There are books about realisation, but you cannot get realisation from reading them. Inspiration you can get. Realisation is inside you, inside everyone. But it has to be brought to the fore. And for that, a spiritual Master is needed. And when he has grown in inner illumination, it is the seeker who sees in his Master and feels in Him, the Illumination of the Supreme.
Published in Earth’s Cry Meets Heaven’s Smile, part 3
