April 18
The Inner Experience of Bliss
A lecture by Sri Chinmoy
St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University; New York
Anandaddhyeva khalvimani bhutani jayante
anandena jatani jivanti
anandam prayantyabhisamvisanti
From Bliss we came into existence,
In Bliss we grow.
At the end of our journey’s close,
Into Bliss we retire.
The inner experience of Bliss. The inner experience of Bliss is the achievement of liberation and perfection.
Liberation is the death of the world-sound and the birth of the soundless sound, the Cosmic Sound.
Perfection is God’s Promise to man. Perfection is God’s Achievement in man. A liberated soul is earth’s highest Height. A perfected soul is Heaven’s deepest depth.
A liberated soul carries the banner of realisation. A perfected soul carries the banner of realisation, revelation and manifestation.
Realisation is self-discovery. Revelation is self-glowing. Manifestation is self-fulfilling. In realisation one knows that he is none other than the great God. In revelation one knows that he is none other than the benevolent God. In manifestation one knows that he is at once the great God and the benevolent God.
The inner experience of Bliss is the marriage of God’s Grace and God’s Race. God’s Grace creates humanity’s capacity. God’s Race creates humanity’s receptivity.
In capacity God is the Creator. In receptivity God is the Enjoyer. The Creator is the One in the many. The Enjoyer is the many in the One.
A seeker envisions Infinity’s Bliss. A Yogi becomes Infinity’s Bliss. An Avatar is Infinity’s Bliss. The Supreme, the Absolute Supreme, is the Source of Infinity’s Bliss. A seeker is God the tireless walker. A Yogi is God the fearless marcher. An Avatar is God the deathless runner.
The Supreme is the walker’s experience. The Supreme is the marcher’s confidence. The Supreme is the runner’s assurance.
The inner experience of Bliss far surpasses all the treasures of Divinity’s Reality and Reality’s multiplicity. We can have the inner experience of Bliss if we can acquire the inner silence and if we can have inner guidance.
The inner silence is the silence of goalless movement and thought-waves. The outer silence is the silence of the physical senses.
The inner guidance is like a mother’s constant and conscious guidance of a child. The outer guidance is like the guidance of a blind man leading another blind man.
The inner silence is the fulfilment of life and the fulfilment of reality in us. The inner guidance fulfils the individual life in the Life universal.
The inner experience of Bliss is never and can never be a gift of the miracle machine. The inner experience of Bliss is a gift of the natural self of a normal man. The inner experience of Bliss begins in self-offering and ends in God-becoming.
Without Bliss, man is an external superficiality. With Bliss, man is a fulfilling inner and outer reality. Without Bliss, man is a song of frustration and destruction. With Bliss, man is constant fulfilment and constant perfection.
In the spiritual life a surrendered disciple is his Master’s growing Bliss, and a totally surrendered, unconditionally surrendered disciple is his Master’s ceaseless Bliss.
In the spiritual life we need experience, we need confidence, we need assurance. Experience is the discovery of infinite Life within us. Confidence is the supreme mastery of our soul over darkness and night. Assurance is our inseparable oneness with the Light of the Supreme.
Night we were. Light we are. Delight we shall be.
Published in Promised Light from the Beyond.
The Seeker
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
in the Brooklyn Center at Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York
Here we are all seekers. A seeker is he who most of the time lives in the inner world. In the inner world the seeker has quite a few friends and quite a few enemies. Doubt and fear are his worst enemies. Faith and courage are his best friends.
Fear usually lives in the vital. Doubt usually lives in the mind. Faith lives in the heart and courage lives in the soul.
We fear precisely because we live in the division-world. We doubt because we fail to live in the oneness-world.
Faith and courage. A seeker needs faith both in God and himself. If he does not have faith in God, he cannot manifest the divinity that he has within. And if he has no faith in himself, then he will not be able to discover the divinity that he embodies. So it is of paramount importance for him to have faith both in himself and in God.
An ordinary man has faith in himself, but this faith is not the faith of a seeker. The faith of an ordinary man we call a disproportionate ego. A seeker has faith. His faith is founded upon his humility, his purity, his divinity and his oneness with the Will of his Beloved Supreme.
The seeker has to travel a long and arduous road, but when his inner being is inundated with indomitable courage, his journey’s goal does not remain a far cry. His very courage expedites his journey.
The body-consciousness or physical consciousness at times lives in the vital — the insecure, impure and aggressive vital. At other times it lives in the doubting, suspicious, sophisticated and ultra-modern mind. Again, the physical consciousness at times lives in the heart, which is flooded with poise, peace and light. On very rare occasions the physical consciousness or body-consciousness lives in the soul. There it discovers, to its wide surprise, the soul’s capacity: the indomitable courage and adamantine Will of the Supreme that the soul embodies. The Absolute Supreme acts through the soul’s adamantine will.
A seeker is he who constantly tries to keep the body-consciousness inside the soul’s divine reality; for the soul is inundated all the time with inspiration, aspiration and realisation, and the seeker knows that this is what he needs. When the seeker’s human reality enters into the soul’s divinity and lives there for some time, it achieves divine qualities and divine capacities in abundant measure. The world of frustration and failure it leaves far behind. Only in the world of success and progress, the world of ever-transcending beauty and perfection, does it live. And eventually it grows into Infinity’s Love, Eternity’s Bliss and Immortality’s Life.
Publsihed in Wisdom-Waves in New York, part 2
