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The Eternal Seeker

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at University House
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

The seeker is a divine lover, a supreme lover. He loves himself divinely, he loves humanity devotedly, he loves God unconditionally.

He loves himself divinely. This love is not self-flattery: this love is not self-centred love. This is not the love that he has for the individual ego-consciousness. This is not the love that he has for the body or the vital. This love is not in the mind, where it would be full of suspicion, doubt and separativity. No, this love is in the heart, of the heart. The seeker loves himself because he wants to become a good, divine and perfect instrument of God, so he can play the role that God wants him to play, so God can act in and through him.

He loves humanity devotedly. This love is not an imperfect, selfish love of humanity, but his own self-offering to humanity. In this kind of love, the entire being is a manifestation of divine self-giving. He loves humanity because he feels that each human being is a member of a large family, the universal family, to which we all belong.

He loves God unconditionally. Why does he love God unconditionally? He could easily love God conditionally. He could tell God, "I shall pray to You for five minutes in the morning if You give me abundant Peace, abundant Light, abundant Bliss." But the Real in him, the soul in him will not be satisfied by loving God conditionally. It will not be satisfied to say, "If I do this God, will You give me this?" or, "God, if You do this, then I will do that." The Real in us, the seeker in us, will always try to please God in His own way. Only then can we actually achieve satisfaction, abiding satisfaction in life. If we walk along the desire-road, no matter how much God gives us, we desire more. Each time one desire is fulfilled, another desire comes. Our constant begging and begging never stops, for the beggar in us will never get satisfaction.

But the seeker in us is a divine prince. He knows his father is the King. Whatever his father has, he also shall have; whatever his father is, he also shall be — at the Choice Hour when he reaches his maturity. When the Golden Hour strikes, the child comes to his father and the father endows him with all his wealth. In the spiritual life, when we have attained spiritual maturity, God gives us everything that He has and everything that He is. What is spiritual maturity? Spiritual maturity is our unconditional love for God, our unconditional devotion to God, our unconditional surrender to God's Will.

Each individual seeker has an intimate friend, a constant companion, a friend who is always with him. Who is his best friend? The Real in him. The Real in him is the eternal seeker, who has an eternal longing for Truth, Peace, Light and Bliss in abundant measure.

A seeker discovers inside himself his best friend. His best friend is the Inner Pilot, his own soul. He discovers the Inner Pilot with his aspiration, the inner mounting cry that is constantly reaching towards the highest Reality. As it is climbing, it is illumining the seeker's unlit ignorance with the Reality-existence. While the seeker's own ignorance is being illumined, he realises that time is of the utmost importance. Each second is a portion of life; life and time go together. When the seeker thinks of time, he sees it as a most precious portion of his own life, and vice versa. His existence is in time and his existence is in life.

There is an earth-bound time and a Heaven-free time. When we live in earthbound time, in each second we have to aspire to see the Reality. In earth-bound time, each second misused is a curse; each second properly used is a veritable blessing. When we enter into Heaven-free time we see that Heaven-free time is nothing other than eternal Love. In Heaven-free time we see Eternity in our hearts: eternal Consciousness, eternal aspiration. In Heaven-free time, everything is here and now. When a seeker makes considerable progress in his spiritual life, he comes to realise this eternal Now. He establishes a free access to this sole Reality, the eternal Now. Then, no matter whether he is on earth or in Heaven, he sees every second as part and parcel of his own illumining Vision. Every moment of God's Divinity, God's Perfection, God's Cosmic Plan and God's ever-transcending Reality is being manifested in and through humanity's success and humanity's progress within each seeker's life.

At this time, the seeker clearly sees the difference between success and progress. In his inner life, he cries only for progress. He sees that success in the mental plane and the vital plane can create unnecessary problems for him. If he is successful, he may be touched by pride. When he is successful, unconsciously or consciously he may try to lord it over others and claim his successes as his very own.

Progress, which is founded in self-giving, is something continuous. This progress does not offer pride to the seeker in us. It only makes us feel that we are moving on our spiritual journey, walking along Eternity's road. Each time progress touches the goal, it sees a new goal farther beyond. It is constantly transcending its own Reality-existence. Eventually, when this ever-transcending process reaches God, it finds that God also is progressing, ever transcending His own Reality-existence.

Soulful, hopeful and fruitful the seeker becomes because his goal is not success; his goal is only progress. While he is making progress, he sees that he is not competing with the world around him, but only with his own unaspiring existence.

Each of us will reach our goal. But each discovery that comes, each goal that we reach, is not and cannot be the ultimate Goal. The ultimate Goal is the realisation of the inner Reality. After that Goal is reached comes the revelation and manifestation of the Goal. So these are three Goals and none of these three Goals can ever be the finished product. Inside realisation is the ever-mounting inner cry, the ever-transcending expansion of consciousness and the constant expansion of the limited self into the divine Self. Similarly, inside revelation is the constant inner urge to reveal Eternity's Goal. And inside manifestation are realisation and revelation; so in manifestation there also is the same process. It is an endless process of the universal Self-transcendence.

Who is our best friend? The seeker in us, our constant inner cry, inner urge. Inside this inner urge, we discover and become aware of the expanding self within us. In this part of ourselves, we eternally remain in God, with God, for God. We remain as Eternity's seekers, the eternal treasures of mankind's aspiration. There comes a time when the seeker in us sees that his entire existence is composed of the inner cry of aspiration. In aspiration is our very existence. At that time, we experience total aspiration. Then the outer reality becomes one with the inner reality. The outer reality is the plant, the tree, the fruit. The inner reality is the seed, the inner seed. Inside the seed are the plant and the tree and the fruit; and inside the plant and tree and fruit is the seed.

In the outer life, aspiration plays the role of the tree. In the inner life, in the inner existence, aspiration is the Reality-Source. The inner world is of realisation. The outer world is of manifestation. The inner world is for realisation. The outer world is for manifestation. By striking a synthesis between the inner world and the outer world, we achieve complete satisfaction and perfect Perfection.

Published in My Heart’s Salutation to Australia, part 2

Three Stories

recounted by Sri Chinmoy
at his home in New York

God is your only own

One day, while a spiritual Master was meditating, one of his female disciples came up to him and said, "Master, Master, please do me a favour."

He asked, "What kind of favour?"

She explained, "My husband is unmanageable. I want him to be under my control. I am infinitely wiser than he is, so I want him to listen to me."

The Master said, "I cannot make him do that. It is an impossible task."

The woman became annoyed with the Master. She said to him, "Master, why do you say that you can bring God to us? If you cannot do something as simple as make my husband listen to me, then how can you bring God to us? That is infinitely more difficult! If you cannot do even this small favour for me, if you cannot help me in this small way, then how will you ever be able to show us God? I want my husband to be under my full control. You cannot do that, yet you say you can bring God down to us from Heaven. How can this be? I am sure that if you can bring God down from Heaven, then easily you can make my husband come under my control."

Finally, the woman's tirade came to an end. In a calm and quiet voice, the spiritual Master replied, "I can bring God to you because God is your own, whereas your husband is not your own."

Now the woman became really upset. "What do you mean?" she cried. "We are married legally. And we have been together for so many years! Now you are saying that my husband is not my own. If my husband is not my own, then who else can be mine?"

The woman stood before the Master, moving her arms as she spoke. Her attitude was almost threatening. Nevertheless, the Master continued in the same patient and calm voice, "Look, you want to bring your husband under your control. Your husband also wants to do the same with you. He wants you to be under his control. What am I going to do? I am lost in between two bosses. Here is the proof that you and he are not one. You and he are not thinking the same. You want to be his boss; he wants to be your boss. Neither of you is coming forward to surrender to the other. You are not saying, 'All right, let me surrender to him. If he wants to be my boss, then let me surrender.' And he also is not agreeing to surrender to you. So already you two have differences of opinion. Your desire is to bring your husband under your control. You want to lord it over him. He wants to do the same with you. Your wish he is not fulfilling, and his wish you are not fulfilling. So how can you be one?"

The Master gestured for the woman to sit down. Then he went on, "On the other hand, if you pray to God, 'God, do give me Peace, Love and Bliss,' God immediately listens to your request. So is He not truly your own? As soon as you pray to God to give you inner wealth, God immediately listens. So God is absolutely your own."

The woman jumped up and said, "Master, you stay with your philosophy. Your philosophy is too complicated." Then she left the Master's house quite abruptly.

A few hours later, the husband came to the Master with the same request: he wanted his wife to listen to him. The Master told the husband the same thing that he had told the wife. He said, "God is the only one who is your own because only God listens to your prayers, whereas your wife does not listen to your prayers."

In a voice laden with despair, the husband said, "I have had enough of her. Since we got married, she has destroyed all my peace, all my joy."

"Then go forward on your own," advised the spiritual Master.

The husband cast aside all his complaints against his wife and started praying and meditating with the Master most soulfully. Several hours passed. Meanwhile, the wife did not know where her husband had gone. She arrived at the Master's house to inform him that her husband was missing. She came rushing into the room and said to the Master, "It is late into the night, but my husband has not come home."

All of a sudden she noticed that her husband was sitting on the ground in front of the Master. He was in deep meditation and she saw that her husband's face was full of light. His entire being shone with light.

An inner transformation was taking place inside the wife. She said to herself, "If he can be happy like this, then what is wrong with me? Let me also pray and meditate with the Master and not think about controlling my husband."

So each of them began to follow the spiritual life most sincerely and, in the course of time, each one stopped trying to control the other. They only prayed and prayed. Whenever they had to arrive at an important decision, the husband would say to the wife, "Your way is the only way," and the wife would say to the husband, "Your way is the only way."

This is how they became really happy, peaceful and blissful.

God the slave

One day God appeared before a certain seeker with folded hands and began bowing to the seeker again and again.

The seeker was simply shocked. He cried out, "God, what are You doing? What are You doing?"

God made no reply. He only bowed down and touched the feet of the seeker.

"God, You have gone crazy, crazy!" shouted the seeker in disbelief.

This time God spoke. He said, "No, I am not crazy."

"Then please explain Your behaviour to me, God," begged the seeker. "How can You touch my feet? How can You stand in front of me with folded hands? What does it mean?"

Finally, God answered him: "Every day you demand something from me. You tell me, 'God, give me this, give me that; give me this, give me that!' Your demands and commands have no beginning and no end. Every day you command Me to do so many things. Who can issue commands? Only he who is superior. One can only command someone who is subordinate, like a slave. So I have become your slave.

"Since you have made Me your slave, I have to stand in front of you with folded hands and touch your feet. At every moment you are commanding Me to give you this and give you that. Therefore, you must be superior to Me. That is why I have come with folded hands and why I am touching your feet again and again. It is you who have made Me your slave."

The oath of silence

There were three monks who were very close friends. One was a Russian, one was a German and one was an Italian. They all wanted to realise God, so they entered into an Himalayan cave and took an oath of silence. They decided to pray and meditate most intensely, and not to utter a single word until they had realised God.

For one year, everything went well. They remained silent and they enjoyed very deep meditations. Alas, the day came when the weather became unbearably cold. The three monks were shivering. Each one was finding it extremely difficult to meditate.

Finally, the Italian monk opened his eyes and said, "It is very cold here."

The German monk opened his eyes and said, "You are right, my friend."

Hearing their conversation, the Russian monk flew into a rage. "You two are so bad!" he thundered. "You cannot keep your promise. You have to discuss the weather! What is more, you have interrupted my meditation. I was drinking in peace and delight, but now it is all ruined. What happened to your sacred oath? It is simply worthless!"

Like this, he went on insulting the German monk and the Italian monk mercilessly.

Still his anger did not abate. At last, the Russian monk said, "You two are worse than useless! I am leaving you." Saying this, he left the cave.

The German monk and the Italian monk were so furious and upset at the behaviour of the Russian monk. "What right does he have to scold us?" they shouted. They became so disgusted that they, too, decided to leave the cave.

This is how the three monks ended their silence and abandoned the Himalayan cave. Needless to say, God-realisation was nowhere to be found!

Published in Transfiguration and Other Stories