December 11
Man and His Goal
A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the State University of New York
Farmingdale, New York
My dear friends, you are fortunate, you are special.
A significant branch of the State University significantly helps you to specialise here in horticulture and agriculture. Soon you are going to be at home in the science of plant-life and the cultivation of the soil. In a broader and purer sense, you are making a solemn promise to the world at large that you wish to be the true children of Nature, Mother-Earth.
By the way, I am sure, you all know that it was an Indian scientist, Sir J. C. Bose, who was the discoverer of life in plants. He was born in Bengal. I am proud that I was born in the same province.
Your genuine love of Nature enables and entitles you to receive special love, concern, favour and blessings from the universe, the Universal Life and the Universal Mother.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
This sound and striking pronouncement of Stephen Crane does not apply to you in the least. Nevertheless, others may rightly deserve this fatal fate. I wish to tell you that the universe, the universal Life and the universal Mother will proudly bless your devoted heads and dedicated hearts, for you love Nature, you adore Nature. What is Nature? Nature is God the Mother. In His masculine aspect, God is Transcendental. In His feminine aspect, God is Universal. Let us invoke the presence of God the Universal Mother before we enter into "Man and His Goal."
[A three-minute meditation followed.]
Man's goal is the human love. Human love sadly fails, Man’s goal is the physical beauty. Physical beauty is but skin-deep: Man's goal is money, material wealth. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven."
Man's goal is Truth. Truth awakens him from his ignorance-sleep. Man's goal is Peace. Peace feeds him, his life inner and outer. Man's goal is Bliss. Bliss immortalises him, his life-breath.
Self-realisation. This is what man needs from God. Love. This is what God needs from man. Faith. This is what God always has in man. But alas, man has to develop faith in himself and faith in God.
Man unfalteringly says: "If I had time, I would love God If I had time, I would worship God. If I had time, I would even cry for God."
But poor God has time. He has time to forgive man's unending stupidity. He has time to bless man's shameless mind and grant him all his real necessities. He has time even to cry for man's yet unborn sincerity.
Man and God. Try to realise God. Both God and man will say to you: "Wonderful, go ahead." Try to explain God. Man will immediately tell you: "Stop, don't belittle God, don't torture God." God will voice forth: "Stop, for my sake at least, don't deceive men, don't deceive my children."
Let us not try to explain God. If we do that, our ignorance will be exposed. Let all of us realise God and for that what we need is meditation. Let us meditate, meditate on God.
Man has to walk far, very far. He has to reach the Shores of the Golden Beyond. Slowly, steadily and unerringly he has to walk. But he needs must walk forward and not backward. Lincoln welcomes man, his fellow traveller, to sing with him:
"I am a slow walker, but I never walk backward."
We believe in evolution. We certainly do. Man is not going back to the animal kingdom. Man is proceeding towards the Kingdom of Heaven which perpetually breathes, grows and glows in the inmost recesses of his heart.
Friends, you are cultivating knowledge. We all do it. Each human being must own a bumper crop of knowledge.
Somebody said: "A college degree is often the receipt a young man gets for bills his father paid."
I make bold to say that I reject this eyeless idea outright. Your parents desire that you learn how to swim in the sea of knowledge. Your Professors who are the.expert swimmers in the sea of knowledge teach you successfully and gloriously how to swim, I deeply admire your zealous sincerity, your Professors' enormous capacity. But, alas, knowledge, book-knowledge, is not enough. You all know it. I have not discovered something new or fantastic, far from it. I just wanted to remind you of the soulful fact that there is another sea. This Sea is the Sea of Divine Light, Peace, Bliss and Power. This Sea gives you realisation and liberation. You will have the realisation of your conscious and indivisible oneness with God. You will have liberation from your bondage of millennia. This Sea gives you Fulfilment Infinite. Something more, this Sea makes you feel in a perfectly convincing manner that you are truly and unmistakably tomorrow's God.
Who says that man is sleeping? No, he is not. He woke up with his teeming desires and was fully ready but soon he discovered that God was not ready and will never be ready to receive him.
Man woke up with his flaming aspiration, but was unpardonably late. Yet God was eager to receive him, embrace him and finally place him on His own Transcendental Throne.
Published in AUM — Vol. 4, No. 8, March 27, 1969
New Year’s Message for 1987
by Sri Chinmoy
For the Mountain-Truth-climbers
And the Fountain-God-lovers
The New Year will be the year
Of unprecedented inner aspiration-progress
And unlimited outer manifestation-success.
The Truth-climber
Is a God-chosen God-compeer.
The God-lover
Is a God-crowned future world-liberator.
Sri Chinmoy delivers his New Year’s message for 1987 at his 15th annual New Year’s Meditation, at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in New York City.
Sri Chinmoy delivers his New Year’s message
