Recent Content

Prayer and Meditation

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Massachusetts

 

Dear seekers, I wish to give a very short talk on prayer and meditation.

I pray. Why do I pray? I pray because I need God. I meditate. Why do I meditate? I meditate because God needs me.

When I pray, I think that God is high above me, above my head. When I meditate, I feel that God is deep inside me, inside my heart.

There are two types of prayer: right prayer and wrong prayer. Similarly, there are two types of meditation: right meditation and wrong meditation. The right prayer says, "I am helpless, I am innocent, I am weak. I need You, O Lord Supreme, to strengthen me, to purify me, to illumine me, to perfect me, to immortalise me. I need You, O Lord Supreme."

The wrong prayer says, "Although I need You, O Lord Supreme, I have some strength of my own, I have some capacity of my own. I need You because if I have Your Power and Capacity, then there shall come a time when I shall be able to lord it over the world and dominate the world. The whole world will be at my feet and I shall act according to my sweet will. But for that I need power in boundless measure. I have some power, but I need infinitely more. Therefore I invoke You, O Lord Supreme." This is wrong prayer. This prayer is for the fulfilment of the vital in us, the vital that wants to dominate the entire world.

The right meditation says, "Lord Supreme, out of Your infinite Bounty You have chosen me to be Your instrument. You could have chosen somebody else to play the role, but You have granted me the golden opportunity. To You I offer my constant gratitude, my gratitude-heart, for You have chosen me to become Your instrument to manifest You here on earth in Your own Way."

The wrong meditation says, "Lord Supreme, this world of ours is full of ignorance. We all are swimming in the sea of ignorance, wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance. You need me because in this world of ours, God-manifestation is extremely difficult. Your manifestation, Your full manifestation, is a far cry. Therefore You need considerable assistance from me here on earth. You need an ignorant human being like me to fight against ignorance in this strange world that You have entered into. You need my help for Your own manifestation; so I will be Your instrument."

Prayer is a flower. When we see the flower, we are inspired. Inspiration compels us to run the farthest, to climb the highest, to dive into the deepest depth. Meditation is a tree. The tree aspires. It aspires to reach the highest height, the highest plane of consciousness. When we see the flower, inspiration dawns in us. When we sit at the foot of the tree, our aspiration to reach the Highest, the absolute transcendental Consciousness, comes to the fore.

Prayer is purity. It purifies our mind. The mind is always subject to doubt, fear, worry and anxiety. It is always assailed by wrong thoughts, wrong movements. When we pray, purification takes place in our mind. Purity increases our God-receptivity. In fact, purity is nothing short of God-receptivity. Each time we pray, our inner receptacle becomes large, larger, largest. At that time, purity, beauty, light and delight can enter into our receptacle and they can sport together in the inmost recesses of our heart.

Meditation is luminosity. It illumines our heart. When illumination takes place in our heart, insecurity disappears, the sense of want disappears. At that time, we sing the song of inseparable oneness, our inseparable oneness with the universal Consciousness, the transcendental Consciousness. When our heart is illumined, the finite in us enters into the Infinite and becomes the Infinite itself. The bondage of millenia leaves us and the freedom of infinite Truth and Light welcomes us.

Prayer is followed by meditation; not the other way around. First we must pray, then we meditate.

Asato ma sad gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrityor ma amritam gamaya.

Lead me from the unreal to the Real.
Lead me from darkness to Light.
Lead me from death to Immortality.

This is the prayer that we have learned from the Vedic seers of the hoary past. This immortal prayer in the firmament of India knows no parallel.

Here in the West, the Saviour has taught us the supreme prayer: "Let Thy Will be done." Again, the same Saviour has taught us the supreme meditation: "I and my Father are one."

Tat twam asi: "That Thou art." You are That, the ever-transcending Beyond, the Lord Supreme. This is the highest height of prayer. Brahmasmi: "I am the Brahman, I am the all-pervading Brahman, the Absolute Supreme." This is the supreme height and depth of meditation.

Prayer tells me, "O seeker, claim the Supreme Beloved as your own and say, 'O Beloved Supreme, You are mine. I claim You as my own, very own. Do grant me Your divine qualities in boundless measure so that I can be Your perfect instrument here on earth. You have infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. Do grant me infinite Peace, Light and Bliss so that I can be a most perfect instrument of Yours.'"

Meditation tells me, "O seeker, tell God, 'I am Yours.' Tell the Absolute Supreme, 'I am at Your command. Use me in Your own Way. At every moment You can manifest Yourself in and through me. You can utilise me at Your sweet Will at every moment, throughout Eternity. To fulfil You in Your own Way is to achieve immortal life. Through me fulfil Yourself here on earth, there in Heaven.'"

With a soulful prayer each seeker begins his day's journey; and with a soulful meditation the seeker ends his day's journey.

---

Published in Sri Chinmoy Speaks, part 10

 

Questions following the Talk

Answered by Sri Chinmoy

 

Question: What is the most important thing in the spiritual life?

Sri Chinmoy: There is one most important thing in the spiritual life, and that most important thing is: God first and God last. God should come first in my life and God should come last in my life. I will start my journey with God, I will end my journey with God and, in between, God will be there, too. I don’t need anybody save and except God. Whoever claims God as his own, I claim that person as my own. He who does not dare to claim God as his own is claiming ignorance as his own. I can’t claim ignorance as my own. So whoever is in God, with God and for God is mine.

In the spiritual life there is no such thing as neutrality. In the ordinary life we say, “I don’t want to be involved.” But in the spiritual life that is impossible. Either you take God’s side or the hostile forces will pull you, and you will be compelled to accept, consciously or unconsciously, world ignorance as your own. It will grab you and devour you. So please feel that those who are not aspiring have already taken the side of ignorance. And what is ignorance? Something that deliberately takes us away from the Real in us. Some people say that they are not practising spirituality, but they also say that they are not inside the prison of ignorance. But I will say, “You are already there, but you don’t know it.”

There are two magnets. If you allow the spiritual magnet to pull you, it will definitely pull you towards realisation. But if you don’t allow it, then ignorance will pull you to itself. You can’t stand in between; you can’t remain neutral. You have to take one side.

Question: How do we know that we are nearing our goal of liberation?

Sri Chinmoy: When one is a student, one studies at the elementary school, high school, college and university. When one enters the university, one knows that he will soon be completing his course. In the spiritual life also, it is the same. When one starts the spiritual life, one knows how much peace he has. He grows into more peace, abundant peace, infinite peace. When one is a beginner in the spiritual life, one knows how much suffering he has, how difficult it is for him to meditate even for five minutes. Then gradually he gets the capacity to meditate for hours at a time. It happens in the same way that a student goes from first grade to a higher class and to the highest class. He knows when he goes to the highest class that his course is complete.

Question: When people are gossiping about a negative quality in another person, can this gossip increase the strength of that quality?

Sri Chinmoy: Certainly it does. Each time we open our mouth, we are bringing to the fore or we are using a power. It can be a good power or it can be a bad power. Even if we do not speak anything aloud, if we cherish an undivine thought about somebody else, then this undivine thought will enter into that person like an arrow. He will not be able to know who is the culprit, but the arrow will definitely enter into the person.

Gossip is very bad. It does not help anyone. Here we are all trying to be wise people. Anything that does not help us, we try to reject from our nature. We are all seekers. By becoming gossip-mongers, we will not be able to go to God. We need Peace, Light, Bliss and divine Love. If we care for these qualities, then we shall not speak ill of others. We are trying to love God. If we love God, then how can we hate God’s children? To speak ill of someone is indirectly to hate him. If we really love the root, which is God, then we cannot speak ill of the branch or the leaf. If we really love the root, then the leaves, fruits and branches we also have to love.

Question: What can we do about pride?

Sri Chinmoy: Suppose I think that I am a good singer. Pride has entered into me. Then immediately I will compare myself with some great, well-known singers and my pride will be smashed. Or suppose I think that I am a good lecturer. Then immediately I will try to compare myself with some great orator. Then my pride will pale into insignificance. Each time pride enters, this is what we can do. This is the human way of dealing with pride. But the difficulty with this way is that it helps us conquer our pride only for the time being. Today pride has entered into me because I feel that I am a great singer. The moment I think of a really great singer, my pride goes away. But tomorrow it may come again. Tomorrow I will be proud of something else. But if I can bring down Peace and Light into my system, then what happens? I don’t have the occasion to be proud of anything because I feel that every person who has really achieved something or accomplished something is my brother or sister. The right hand does not become jealous of the left hand. Both belong to the same body. So when there is oneness, pride goes away.

Question: How can I fight comfort in the lower consciousness?

Sri Chinmoy: What you call comfort, I wish to call pleasure. Comfort and pleasure go together. Pleasure is a form of passion, a form of destruction. Until the vital is completely purified, the human consciousness feels that pleasure is something very sweet.

Unconsciously a child takes poison. Just because unconsciously he is drinking poison, do you think that he will not be killed? Unconsciously a child places his finger in fire and he is burned. Just because he is not conscious of doing something, does it mean that he will not suffer the consequences? Since you have accepted the spiritual life, you do not consciously enter into the lower vital world. But unconsciously, in your mind, you do enter. On the physical plane you can remain thousands of miles away from the vital world. But mentally, if you cherish lower vital, emotional thoughts, destructive thoughts, naturally the mind will be destroyed.

If your aspiration is constant, then the burning flame inside you is climbing up, up, up. But if the flame is not burning, the pull of the vital becomes very strong, very strong. Again, if the flame is burning upward all the time, how can it go downward? When the flame is burning very brightly, the vital feels, “I have no place here.” The lower vital has no chance to remain in that particular person. Then the lower vital gives the death blow, a most fatal blow. At that time the aspirant has to be very careful; he has to brave that blow. If he does brave that blow, then the lower vital feels, “Oh, he does not need me.”

You want to have perfection in your nature and you want to have illumination. If you constantly feel that you want to become perfection and nothing else, then you are bound to remain at your own height. Gradually, from this height you will climb up to the highest height, which is your goal. Your own height right now is your upward aspiration and nothing else. Your ultimate goal is bound to come if you constantly strive to stay where you are right now, in your climbing aspiration.

Whoever wants to give up the spiritual life just because he is not making considerable progress or because he is falling down from time to time, is making a terrible mistake. And then something more I wish to say. After accepting the spiritual life, if you consciously leave it, then hostile forces torture you most ruthlessly and the divine forces show considerable indifference. If you don’t accept the spiritual life, wonderful. Sleep, sleep; the time has not yet come for you to wake up. But if you already have started to run, and then you go again to sleep, at that time ignorance comes and covers you totally.

So, please run towards the sun. Then darkness has to leave you. Do not be afraid of your faults. Only be conscious of your height, conscious of your goal. If you are conscious of your height and you are conscious of your goal, then there can be no fall. But if there is no conscious awareness, then every moment is dismal darkness.

---

Published in Sri Chinmoy Speaks, part 10

 

I Have Only One Need

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California

 

I have only one need: oneness, oneness, oneness. Oneness with the animal consciousness do I need? No, never. Oneness with the human consciousness do I need? No, never. Oneness with the divine Consciousness do I need? Yes, forever.

Why do I not want to have oneness with the animal consciousness? I do not want it because the animal consciousness is all destruction. Why do I not want to have oneness with the human consciousness? I do not want it because the human consciousness is all division. Why do I want to have oneness with the divine Consciousness? I want it because the divine Consciousness is all satisfaction.

Oneness, oneness, oneness. Oneness with the temptation-life I do not want, precisely because temptation is frustration. Oneness with the earth-bound life I do not want, for earth-bound life is nothing short of limitation. Oneness with the heaven-free life I want, for the heaven-free life is Eternity’s Peace, Infinity’s Bliss and Immortality’s Life.

Oneness, oneness, oneness. O my Beloved Supreme, I have only one need: oneness. I shall be happy if my oneness-need is fulfilled. I shall be equally happy if my oneness-need is not fulfilled. I shall be happy even if it is not fulfilled, for the very quest, the very longing for oneness with You, with my Source, gives me abundant joy, boundless joy, infinite joy. Let me have this quenchless thirst, a thirst for conscious and constant oneness with you. O my Beloved Supreme, even if You do not fulfil my oneness-quest, no harm. Just allow the flame of longing for oneness with You to burn in me forever and forever.

In the inner world all I have is You. In the outer world all I need is You. May my inner world and my outer world become one, for in their oneness I shall achieve satisfaction, which is perfection itself. Oneness, oneness, oneness.

---

Published in AUM – Vol. 5, No. 9,10, September-October 1978

 

On the Olympics

Comments by Sri Chinmoy

 

The very word Olympics is, for me, a magnificent thrill, absolutely a universal thrill, and it raises the consciousness of humanity in the inner world. True, in the outer world we may notice some wrong forces, but in the inner world the Olympics is a great opportunity for the upliftment of human consciousness.

This world is full of sadness, sorrows, frustrations and depression, and so many unfriendly, hostile things happen. But in the Olympics at least we get the opportunity to meet together for a few weeks and create a oneness-world-family. Alas, afterwards we go back to our animal life

---

Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 28

 

Diary Entry

by Sri Chinmoy
while in residence at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India

30 September

In the evening Nolini-da met me at the Ashram gate. "Oh Chinmoy, I have been looking for you. Will you go to Amal's place and give him this?" he said, handing me something. "I had to write the introduction for Sri Aurobindo's The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity. Show it to Amal and ask him if he has any suggestions to make."

I went to Amal's house immediately and knocked at his gate. His wife opened the door. "I am so sorry to come to you at this hour," I said.

"Chinmoy, it is perfectly all right," she said. Then she called out: "Amal, Amal! Look, Chinmoy says he is sorry because he has come at this hour."

Amal said: "Chinmoy, you must know that you are always welcome. You can come at any time. Even if you have no specific reason, you can come and chat with me. You should have realised by now our mutual affection." Then he read Nolini-da's introduction.

I told him that Nolini-da wanted to see if he had any suggestions to make. He read it twice and said: "It is excellent. I have no suggestions to make." Then, with a smile, he said to me: "Sometimes when we offer suggestions to Nolini we just create unnecessary confusion for him."

"In that case, I am a real culprit. How often I offer suggestions! What is worse, sometimes they are unsolicited."

Amal said: "I have always admired your simplicity and modesty, but not your unnecessary and disproportionate humility."

---

A Service-Flame and a Service-Sun

 

Ignorance

A lecture by Sri Chinmoy delivered at
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

 

Dear friends, I understand that you have a volley of questions to ask me after my talk is over. I am eager to know your deep, spiritual questions. Here at this august university you have been devotedly studying to cultivate knowledge. Today you will learn something about a subject diametrically opposite, ignorance.

Each man has a nature of his own. Each man has ignorance of his own. Complex is his nature. Manifold is his ignorance. But what is more, each man has a divine soul of his own, carrying in it his ultimate Perfection.

True, man is likely to stumble through the thorny forests of ignorance. It is equally true that God will someday lead him into the sunlit path of knowledge.

Ignorance says that God is to be found outside oneself. Knowledge says that God is to be found within oneself. Wisdom says, "God is within. He is also without."

What with unconscious ignorance, what with conscious ignorance, man's desire to see God face to face is to hope against hope. What with conscious self-sacrifice, what with unconscious self-sacrifice, man's dream to see God is not only possible and practicable but also inevitable.

Ignorance has a free access everywhere, yet it stays not, rather it cannot stay anywhere for good.

My name was obscurity. Ignorance was my teacher. What did I learn from my teacher? Only two things: how to be imperfect and how to be self-limited. Ignorance was my mother. She fed me with her despair. Ignorance was my father. He blessed me with his stupidity.

I have known. I have known that few are those who want to be free from the snare of ignorance. Fewer are those who are willing to pay the price, although they want to be free. I have realised. I have realised that man's knowledge is only a higher degree of effective ignorance.

Slowly ignorance travels in the world of night. Annihilation speedily and ruthlessly overtakes ignorance. When ignorance reaches the abysmal breath of self-limitation, man is compelled to turn into his grave with a living body.

The soul says that it has no enemy. But ignorance fails to see eye to eye with the soul, it says, "Oh soul, I am your eternal enemy. I don't want you, I don't want your light." The soul says, "I am your Eternal Friend, O ignorance. I want you because God wants me to awaken you from your endless sleep. My Light wants you because God wants you to come out of your self-chosen perpetual limitation and death."

When we are freed from the fetters of ignorance, our hearts grow into the divine beauty. This divine beauty, which is the pride of the soul, is the blessedness of life.

Human ignorance wants to control the world. Human love wants to bind the world. Human truth wants to lead the world. Divine Knowledge wants to inspire the heart of the world. Divine Truth wants the world to be fulfilled in God and for God.

“Better be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune.”  — Plato

What Plato says is absolutely true in its own way. But if an individual cries for God-realisation and the perfect manifestation of his inner divinity on earth, then he has to come into the world, no matter how abysmal his ignorance is. Ignorance is and may be the malady of today's life, but tomorrow's life can and must be otherwise. Tomorrow's life can be flooded with the soul's glowing Light. The life's journey has to start from where it is. The healthful hunger for the divine Light, more Light, infinite Light is not only today's necessity, but also tomorrow's inevitability. The Goal Supreme is neither behind us nor with us. It is ahead of us. It is in the Heart of the Beyond. The Goal is beckoning us. Let us walk, march, and run towards the Goal, We need not hesitate to go to our Goal. The Goal is ready and eager to embrace us with our ignorance. Once we are embraced by the Goal, what remains is to bathe in the Sea of our Goal's eternally infinite Light.

Our teeming ignorance and the Devil's binding desire are hand in glove with each other. Our growing knowledge and God's glowing hope are hand in glove with each other. Our flowing wisdom and God's illumining choice are hand in glove with each other.

Doubt says to ignorance, "At long last I have come to know that you are my sister." Ignorance says, "Sorry, even now you are mistaken. I am not your sister, but your mother. And you are my bravest son."

Ignorance has a weapon. Its name is human reason. To question human reason is not unreasonable, but to question the Wisdom of the Infinite is foolish audacity. How can we judge His Wisdom without a corresponding Wisdom?

Humanity has a host of enemies. Of these, by far the most terrible is lack of knowledge. This ignorance is the last thing in man to become impotent.

What is ignorance, after all? Ignorance is the hyphen between imperfection and limitation. Ignorance signifies weakness. The greatest of human weaknesses is to be consciously unconscious of any.

The atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. Our conscious fondness for the night of ignorance can destroy our divine Ideal on earth. Even successive failures are not certain or adequate signs of the impossibility of God-realisation. But spontaneous and stubborn fondness for ignorance is a true sign of this impossibility. Ignorance is power. When man uses this power he actually exercises his love of power. But when man is totally freed from the snares of ignorance, he will be able to offer his power of love to mankind. At that time man will have a new Name — God, and a new Home — Immortality.

---

Published in My Ivy League Leaves

Wisdom-Light

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the University of Miami, Miami, Florida

 

Dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers of the infinite Truth and Light, I wish to give a short talk on wisdom-light.

Wisdom-light is life-loving. Wisdom-light is self-giving. Wisdom-light is God-becoming.

He who loves life is beautiful. He who gives himself to others is fruitful. He who becomes God — like the Christ, Lord Buddha and Sri Krishna — is complete, perfect and supreme.

Why does one love? One loves because he knows that loving is self-expansion. Why does one give himself to others? He gives himself to others because he knows that in self-giving is the real satisfaction. Why does one want to become God? He wants to become God because he knows that God-becoming is perfect Perfection.

Our heart embodies the message of self-expansion. Our life embodies the message of satisfaction. Our soul embodies the message of perfection. In Heaven the message is the light of Divinity. On earth the message is the night of Eternity. In God the message is the delight of Immortality.

When we pray, Divinity blesses us. When we meditate, Eternity blesses us. When we surrender our earth-bound life to the adamantine Will of the Absolute Supreme, we become the delight of Immortality.

Divinity, Eternity and Immortality. Divinity we already had. Eternity we already have. Immortality we are in the process of becoming.

God’s Vision and God’s Reality we embody together. Our earthly existence is the transformed Vision of God manifested in living reality. Each vision is a seed of the reality-tree. Each form of reality is the tree which is embodied in the vision-seed. Silence-cry is the soul of the vision-seed. Sound-smile is the body of the reality-tree.

Each human being has a seeker and a lover in the inmost recesses of his heart. The seeker in him wants to reach the Highest, the transcendental Height, and then wants to come down to transform the teeming ignorance of earthly life and make of earth a Kingdom of Heaven. The lover in him wants to spread his universal wings and satisfy the inner hunger of millennia the hunger that can be fulfilled only by God’s infinite Love, Compassion and Light.

The seeker in each human being is the collector and the receiver of God’s Light. The lover in him is the distributor of God’s Light to the world at large.

Wisdom-light is the awareness of God’s Presence all-where, the awareness that God is omnipresent. This reality we can be aware of only when we see God within and without. There is an Indian parable about a spiritual teacher who offered a fruit to each of his disciples. He said to them, “Children, go and eat your fruit unseen by anybody at all. You must eat your fruit in complete privacy.” Each went and ate his respective fruit except one. That one came back to the Master with his fruit. The Master asked him, “How is it that you have not eaten your fruit?” The disciple answered, “Master, how can I eat? You have asked me to eat the fruit only when there is nobody observing me. But God is all around me, so I have not eaten. If I eat, I will be caught red-handed.” The Master was exceedingly pleased with this disciple.

From this parable we learn that a sincere seeker of the transcendental Truth sees and feels God both within and without. There also dawns in him a higher and deeper vision. He comes to realise that he is expected to say and do to the world at large only those things that can be said and done before God. Today’s world of imperfection can easily be transformed into a world of perfect Perfection when the seeker in us sees God everywhere.

The motto of the State of Florida is, “In God we trust.” For an ordinary seeker this loftiest message may seem redundant, for since we are all lovers of the highest Truth and Light, it goes without saying that we trust in God. But from the spiritual point of view I wish to say that there is a significant hidden truth inside this motto. This freedom-loving country has something significant to offer to the world at large. When we live an ordinary life, we place our trust in ourselves. When we have faith in ourselves, we sing the song of separativity and individuality, the song of “I”. At that time the question of “we” never arises. But when we say, “In God we trust,” our individuality merges into the sea of universality. On the strength of our inner cry we are trying to grow into God’s Universality. When a seeker says, “In God we trust,” he feels that his individuality has left him. He has now embraced God’s entire creation as his own, very own.

A seeker trusts God and God trusts him. A seeker trusts God in order to reach the highest pinnacle of Light, Truth and Bliss, and God trusts him in order to reveal Himself and manifest Himself on earth. They enjoy a reciprocal need. The seeker needs God for his self-discovery and life-mastery and God needs the seeker for His perfect manifestation and complete satisfaction on earth.

---

Published in Fifty Freedom-Boats to one Golden Shore, part 5

 

Indifference

A talk by Sri Chinmoy after a morning sports practice and meditation at Jamaica High School track in Jamaica, New York

 

Indifference reigns supreme in my life.

My body is indifferent to the dynamic urge of my vital. My vital is indifferent to the well-earned rest of my body.

My mind is indifferent to the soulful cry of my heart. My heart is indifferent to the inquisitive quest of my mind.

My soul is indifferent to the slow efforts, slower success and even slower progress of my life.

Even my Beloved Supreme, it seems, is indifferent to my supreme realisation. Had He flooded my entire being with His Concern supreme, I am sure I would not have been waiting for millennia for my realisation.

Alas, alas, O my Beloved Supreme, do tell me why You are indifferent to me, and why the rest of the members of my family are indifferent to one another.

"My sweet child, I am not indifferent to you. Dive deep within and you will see that constant Concern is My only name.

“And about your body, vital, mind, heart and soul, I wish to tell you that they can be freed from the fatal disease of indifference only by using the medicine oneness-concern. When oneness-concern plays its role within and without, satisfaction at every moment shall loom large in your life. At that time the indifference-blow will be found nowhere. Only the oneness-flow will be found all-where.”

---

Published in Aurora-Flora