Question: You Talk About God, But We...

Question: You talk about God, but we do not have any concept at all of who God is. Who is God?

Sri Chinmoy: God is all Love. God is all Light. God is all Beauty. God is everything: Truth, Peace, Light, Bliss in infinite measure. He is with form; He is without form. If you experience God as Peace, then you will say God is Peace. If you experience God as Light, then you will say God is Light. If you experience God as Love, then you will say God is Love.

Since we are human beings, according to our limited understanding we say God is this or God is that. But God is really everything. If we want to experience Him as an infinite expanse without any form, we can do so. But again, if we want to experience Him intimately as a most illumined being right in front of us, then He becomes that. So He is this, He is that. Again, He transcends everything. To our human mind, he can be either this or that. But when we have our Highest Realisation, we see that God is constantly transcending all our inner and outer conceptions.

But the Upanishads in no way want to discourage us. On the contrary, this sacred message will always inspire us to run towards the Goal. But we have to know that only he who is awakened can run toward the ultimate Goal. The Goal, God-realisation, cannot forever remain unattained or unattainable. Today's impossibility will not always remain an impossibility. No! If the seeker's cry is strong and powerful, the Smile from above is bound to dawn.

In our day-to-day life we constantly exercise power, either in accepting or in rejecting reality. When we use power to accept reality with a view to transforming it, if necessity demands, then this power is called the soul's power, the power of the Source. But if we exercise power to reject the world-situation, to reject the possibilities of the world, to reject this world because we feel that its sufferings and turmoil are past correction, then our own transformation and illumination will always remain for us a far cry.

Each human being gets the opportunity to invoke power in various ways. Every day he gets the golden opportunity to invoke power with his hope. Hope is nothing but concealed power. When we cherish hope, we must know that we are consciously or unconsciously invoking an inner or higher power. Today's hope turns into tomorrow's actuality. Today's dream is bound to be fulfilled in tomorrow's reality. As hope is a power, so also is expectation a power. We expect many things from ourselves and from the world. We feel that today's expectation is going to bring down tomorrow's realisation. But in the spiritual life, we play the role without any expectation whatsoever. We feel that our role is to perform divine service, but not to expect the fruits thereof. If we can love, serve, pray and meditate with utmost sincerity, purity and self-offering. then our God-appointed realisation is bound to dawn. It will far transcend our highest expectation and far surpass the flights of our loftiest imagination.

In the spiritual life we deal with silence and we deal with sound and finally, we deal with a Consciousness which is beyond both silence and sound. Silence is power. This silence creates the world within us and without. Sound, the cosmic sound, is also power. As the transcendental Silence creates the world, so does the cosmic Sound sustain and maintain the world. Finally, the Consciousness which transcends both sound and silence immortalises the seeker's aspiring being.

We cannot separate the Power of God from His other divine aspects. Power is one aspect of God; Love is another. In the ordinary life, power is power and love is love. But in the spiritual life, in God's Life Power and Love are inseparable; they are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. Now, if we do not properly understand the power of love and the love of power, we run into the most deplorable difficulties. Before we realise the highest transcendental Truth, what we have is the love of power. But after we realise the Truth, we come to feel that there is only one thing in our life, and that is the power of love. As long as we remain in the world of desire, we cherish the love of power. But the moment we enter into the world of aspiration, dedication and illumination, we come to realise the power of love. The love of power destroys the Palace of Truth within us. The power of love builds the Palace of Truth within us and creates the Kingdom of Heaven within and without us, bringing down Infinity to play in the heart of the finite. When the power of love replaces the love of power, man will have a new name: God.

University of Maine

Portland, Maine

January 25, 1974