What Are Your Plans

Beth Day Romulo: What are your plans while in the Philippines?

Sri Chinmoy: We will be traveling from Manila to Cebu City, Davao and Dumaguete. We have come to get blessings from the heart and soul of the Philippines. This is my second visit to this country. I came in 1967 to Manila, Dumaguete and Cebu City to give a few talks.

Beth Day Romulo: Was General Romulo here then?

Adhiratha Keefe: He was probably in office! We met him at the 15th anniversary of the Peace Meditation at the United Nations, when he was in charge of the delegation. We had a celebration and he came and spoke.

Beth Day Romulo: Yes, I know. I was with the General then at the U.N. This country could very much use what you have to offer. I don't know if you are familiar with this, but there is a great tendency for people here not to work together or cooperate. They say if you have a basket of crabs and one reaches the top, the others pull him back down again. Here, too, when someone is doing a good job or becoming prominent in some endeavour, there is a tendency for people to attack him. I don't know how you overcome that.

Adhiratha Keefe: It seems that General Romulo overcame that.

Beth Day Romulo: He had none of that. He used to lecture his countrymen about things like that! For the first time in a long time, we have had a peaceful transition of government, and the present administration is trying very hard to get people to pull together. But it's an uphill fight.

Sri Chinmoy: They have to ask themselves whether they actually become happy by pulling others down.

Beth Day Romulo: I don't think they do.

Sri Chinmoy: No, we cannot become happy by pulling someone down. Again, we cannot become happy by getting ahead of someone. Even if we are just one step ahead of someone else, we create problems for ourselves. We have to walk side by side with others. The feeling of superiority must go. There is no such thing as a superpower. There is only one power to believe in and that is the heart's oneness-power. All other power eventually fails. We can lord it over others for a few days, a few months or a few years. But eventually we will have to surrender to something else or someone else.

It is the mind-power, the power of division, that is creating this problem not only here in the Philippines but everywhere. The mind-power is always singing the song of superiority and making us feel that we can be happy only if we are one step ahead of others. But when we are ahead of others, they try to pull us back. Only if we are walking side by side with others does that problem not arise. When we pray and meditate, we feel the supreme necessity of heart-power, which is the power of unification and oneness. When we can establish our oneness with others, the question of superiority and inferiority does not arise.