Questions And Answers

Question: How Can One Bring The Soul’s...

Question: How can one bring the soul’s consciousness into the professional world?

Sri Chinmoy: In this world everybody has a profession, a vocation of his own. But one can become a seeker no matter which profession he follows. When someone becomes a seeker, he will be able to feel the presence of the soul and see his soul. When one becomes a seeker, no matter which profession he follows, he will be able to feel the presence of his soul and execute the will of the soul in his profession.

Someone has become a professional because he has studied a particular subject. If this person prays and meditates regularly, then he will also get the result of his inner study. He will get Peace, Light and Bliss in abundant measure. It is a matter of time, a few months or a few years, but he will definitely get it. Through this inner Light, he will be able to come into contact with the soul. Then, with the light of the soul he can fulfil all his dreams in the field of his profession.

Question: How Do We Know Whether We...

Question: How do we know whether we are shunning our duties to society or doing the right thing?

Sri Chinmoy: There is only one thing that is right in life; there is only one thing that is correct, necessary and indispensable and that is to love God. If you love God, then you are doing the right thing. Right now you are a tiny seed or a tiny plant in the spiritual life, and until you become strong, the forces in society have the ability to destroy you. Today you are a tiny plant but tomorrow you will grow into a huge banyan tree. At that time, people can do anything to the tree and the tree will survive. They can tie twenty cows to it with a rope, but the tree is not going to fall down.

Question: I Feel An Element Of Fear...

Question: I feel an element of fear rising in myself when I meditate and reach for light. My ego seems to fear its dissolution.

Sri Chinmoy: Where there is love, real love, there can be no fear. Right now, we don’t have inner light but we have outer light, electrical light. When we have to choose between a room that has light and one that has no light, we will choose the room with light. In this electrically lit room, we try to do everything. Here we are meditating, here we are answering questions and here we are trying to illumine ourselves. Just because we love this electric light, we are doing everything right in front of the light, around the light.

Spiritual light is within us and we can claim it as our very own. Unfortunately, we have been with darkness for a long time and we feel that darkness is our only friend, the only member of our family. No, the true members of our family are Peace, Light and Bliss. If we feel these qualities as our very own, then there can be no fear.

Why should a drop be afraid of the ocean itself? The tiniest drop should know that it has come from the ocean and without the ocean it can have no existence of its own. If the drop is taken out of the ocean and placed on the shore, in a few minutes’ time it will dry up and disappear. Just because it is in the ocean, it still exists. The tiniest drop can claim the infinite ocean as its very own on the strength of its love, on the strength of its oneness.

It is like a child and his parents. As the parents can claim the little child as their very own, the child also has the right to claim the parents as his very own. Now, how can we and why should we be afraid of the one we really love? A child is three years old and his father is very strong, very powerful. Everybody is afraid of the father’s physical strength, but the child goes right in front of the father and plays with him. He knows that his father loves him and that he loves his father. Because of his inner feeling of oneness with his father, the child is not at all afraid of him. So where there is true love there can be no fear.

Question: I Recently Tried To Practise Non-Attachment....

Question: I recently tried to practise non-attachment. I left things that I considered mine and that I loved, and in doing so I felt anger. I couldn’t think of God. All could think of was what I had left behind. Could you tell me if I have misunderstood something?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, you have misunderstood something. One thing is renunciation, another thing is illumination. You have left certain things reluctantly, abruptly, even though you still have a desire for them. This is renunciation. Only through proper meditation can you achieve sincere non-attachment.

In this world everybody has some responsibility. Your first responsibility is to take care of your own body, vital, mind, heart and soul. If you decide to renounce the body, if you neglect the body, then what will happen to the temple which houses your soul? How will you be able to pray or meditate with a weak or unhealthy body? If you dislike or hate your body-consciousness, that means that you have forgotten that inside your body is God.

And if you renounce your vital, thinking that it is very undivine, very impure, you are forgetting that inside the vital is God’s Dynamism. If there is no dynamism, then how are you going to make fast progress?

If you renounce the mind because the mind is constantly bothering you with unruly, undivine thoughts, then again you are making a mistake. Inside the mind you have to develop the poise and peace of a higher reality.

If you want to renounce the heart because you feel that your heart is very weak or emotional, this is the wrong attitude. Your heart is the messenger of divine love and fulfilment. Its weakness must be transformed into strength.

So if you simply renounce and discard the physical existence, the vital existence, the mental existence or the psychic existence, how are you going to achieve anything in your own life? What you have to do is illumine and transform all the parts of your being.

What you will renounce immediately is the imperfection and the wrong thinking in yourself. That is the thing that you have to renounce, not the things you love or the things you right now need. Anything that is undivine in you, you try to renounce. Anything that is divine in you, you will not renounce. The divine in you is love and concern for the universe. The divine in you is your inner cry. The divine in you is your feeling of oneness with the Absolute, the highest Truth. These are the things you will not renounce. Undivine things only you have to renounce.

Again, in the spiritual life there comes a time when you realise that you do not renounce anything; only you transform. If there is night inside you, you transform night into day. But this is not something you can do overnight. Right now you do not have enough power. If you deliberately enter into night, you will not be able to transform night into day. So it is always advisable to go slowly. I tell my disciples that they have two rooms: a room that has light and a room that needs light. The best thing is to stay as much as possible in the light-room, which is the heart. Then, when your inner being and outer being, your whole existence, is inundated with light, you can enter into the mind-room, which is right now all darkness and confusion. When you enter into the mind-room with your inner light, you can transform it.