Section 3

The Following Four Questions Were Asked At...

The following four questions were asked at Aspiration Ground by some of Sri Chinmoy's younger disciples who were visiting New York from abroad in early September 1994.

Question: When I Am In New York...

Question: When I am in New York and near you physically, I feel that your grace and protection is stronger than when I am home in England. Is this just my imagination, or is it really true?

Sri Chinmoy: It depends on your love and oneness with me. The Supreme's Protection inside me is omnipresent. But when you are here and you can see me with your physical eyes, you feel it more; that is the advantage of being in my physical proximity. Actually, this Protection is everywhere. So if you see me as a God-realised person, then you will feel that no matter which part of the world you are in, the Supreme in me will protect you with utmost compassion and affection because of your prayerful, soulful life.

If you have the right attitude towards your Master's physical presence, then you can get the utmost benefit. Otherwise, the mind can be tricky. You will see me limping and immediately your doubting mind will say, "Oh, he cannot even walk, so how is he going to protect me!" But if your aspiring heart comes forward, it will say, "Even if my Guru cannot walk for some inner or outer reason, I know that he is one with the Supreme and I have utmost faith in him."

The advantage of coming to see me in New York is that it helps you to renew your inspiration and aspiration. Undoubtedly, the two weeks that you come here for our April and August celebrations are like a refueling. Many people come with practically no inspiration, but they go back with new inspiration and new aspiration.

Question: A Week Before I Come To...

Question: A week before I come to New York I feel that my consciousness always falls.

Sri Chinmoy: That is your way of thinking. I am not flattering you, but when you come here, I see that your aspiration is quite high—right from the very first day. I do not want others to be jealous of you, but when I see you in New York I am very pleased, very pleased!

Before you come to New York, if you have problems with your consciousness, just try to imagine as often as possible, during the day and at night, that you actually are here with us in New York. Only think of Aspiration-Ground and of your Guru; dream of everything in New York that inspires you. Physically you are still in your country, but inwardly and spiritually you will already be in New York. If you do this, it will solve your problem.

Question: How Can I Overcome My Impurity?...

Question: How can I overcome my impurity?

Sri Chinmoy: Purity is already inside your heart—inside everybody's heart. The mind is the thing that lacks purity. So you have to exercise your imagination. Imagination has a reality of its own. imagine that your mind is a most beautiful flower. All right, you may not know what the mind is. But you know your head; it is a solid object. So imagine that your head is a most beautiful flower—whatever flower you like most, which gives you utmost joy. Imagine that you do not have a nose, or ears, or eyes; only feel that your entire head is a most beautiful flower that is full of fragrance.

Then look at your flower-face in the mirror. While looking lovingly at the flower for a few seconds, you cannot have undivine thoughts. When the beauty and fragrance of the flower are entering into your mind, you cannot think of undivine things. So always think of a flower. There are other ways also to get purity, but this is the easiest way.

Impurity does not originate inside you; it is coming from outside—from the undivine consciousness of the outer world. It starts with the breath, when you inhale. Our impurity does not start below the navel; it starts in the nose, when we breathe in, and then it goes downward. So when you breathe in, you have to feel that it is the flower that is breathing in; you have to feel that the beauty and fragrance of the flower are receiving everything that is coming inside you.

Question: Sometimes I Am Afraid Of Meditation....

Question: Sometimes I am afraid of meditation. Why is this?

Sri Chinmoy: Fear comes from a sense of separativity; you are afraid of someone or something only because you have not established your oneness. To the little child, his father is a giant; but he is not afraid because he is all love and all affection for his father. He is not afraid to grab his father, for he knows that his father is not going to slap him.

You have to take meditation as your dearest friend, who is taking you to God. Prayer is your friend and meditation is your friend. These friends will do only the right thing for you. They will take you to your Highest. Meditation is not something to be afraid of. It is something to love, cherish and treasure. So if you think about meditation in a positive way, if you take it as somebody who is full of affection, love and concern for you, then you cannot be afraid of it.

Question: Is It All Right For Disciples...

Question: Is it all right for disciples to write soulful songs, or are your songs all we need?

Sri Chinmoy: You do not have to worry about writing devotional songs or poems to express your feelings or to increase your devotion; I have written more than enough on your behalf. So many times in my songs and poems I have identified with the disciples—with your thoughts and feelings. In a particular poem when I am saying how helpless and useless I am, at that time I am not in a low consciousness. No, no, no! Then again, when I am imploring God for forgiveness, I am being absolutely sincere because at that time I have identified myself completely with this person or that person.

Over the years I have written so many poems and songs about the heart's love, devotion and surrender, about forgiveness and gratitude, in order to offer the world inspiration and aspiration. If you can identify yourself with my songs, my writings, my aspiration and my realisation, then they will all become yours. Again, if you want to write songs, it is fine with me. If you feel it will increase your aspiration, then definitely do it. But if you do not have the capacity to compose, do not feel miserable. It is not at all necessary for your spiritual progress, since you can get the same inspiration and aspiration by identifying yourself with the writer and composer in me.

Although God is infinite, immortal and eternal, because of my love for Him I can claim Him as my own, very own. Similarly, when you sing one of my songs most soulfully, if you can feel that this particular song has become part and parcel of your life, if you can feel that each breath of yours is inside that song, then how can you not claim that song as your own? I will never say, "You are stealing the life-breath from my song." On the contrary, I will be so happy if you can claim my songs as your own. During yesterday's Peace Concert, I brought down solid light, solid peace, solid bliss. While I was meditating, I was absolutely trembling with these divine realities. If somebody receives an iota of this wealth, then I am the happiest person. The Creator is not Sri Chinmoy but the Supreme in me. So if He shares His inspiration, Aspiration and Realisation with me, then why should I not share these with you? It is like sharing a mango. If I can share my mango with you, then I get added joy. The Supreme gave me some most delicious mangoes and asked me to share them with the rest of the world. Again, although it was the Supreme who gave me these things, I claim them as my own. Because of my feeling of oneness with Him, I do not feel that I got these divine realities from a third person.

Some spiritual Masters advise their students to express their creativity. They say, "If you create something, then you will learn something about the creative process and be more satisfied." The theory is that if you achieve something through the sweat of your brow, then you will appreciate it more. If you have to earn your own money, you will realise how difficult it is and you will be wiser in the way you spend it. But there is also another theory: If your father gives you inner wealth, then from your spiritual life—from your meditation and aspiration—you can also get the wisdom to use it properly.

Question: Since So Many People Are Crying...

Question: Since so many people are crying for light, what spiritual qualities do the disciples lack that prevent us from manifesting the Supreme's Light and attracting more people to the spiritual life?

Sri Chinmoy: It is a question of the readiness and eagerness of the disciples who are working to spread or manifest the Supreme's Light. Some of those who come to work on manifestation are ready and eager. Others are ready but not eager to work, and some are not even inwardly ready. It is like a class. Some students are no good at all; others are very good and a few are super-excellent. Yet they are all studying together in the same class and the teacher is giving them the same lesson. But until all of them become excellent, the teacher cannot be confident that his teaching has been successful.

Some people come just to have fun; they enjoy putting up posters and doing similar kinds of jobs. But when I look at them, I see that from the spiritual point of view they are only wasting their precious time. They are serving the Supreme in their Guru, and for that I am grateful to them. But if I am sincere, I have to say that their consciousness is not being elevated. They are not gaining anything spiritually because they have no intense sincerity and no devotion in their heart. Each time you put up a poster, you have to see twenty or fifty faces there. For each poster you put up, you have to feel that there are fifty hearts crying for light who are going to see this poster. But many of you are just working mechanically In India, if someone works for four hours he gets a few rupees. In my case, I do not give you people money; I give you my love, my affection, my blessings. But in his heart of hearts, this Indian Master is not pleased with you because you did not have intense sincerity in your heart; you did not work with a pure heart, soulfully, devotedly and lovingly.

There are many other things that I also notice. I see how much purity you are carrying inside your mind, inside your vital and inside your heart. If there is no purity in your mind, for example, if your mind is thinking that someone else has a better job than you or is getting closer to the Master than you, then you are finished! Also, your inspiration has to be more pure. Many times when you are inspired to do something your inspiration is heavy—filled with carelessness, callousness and indifference. At least inspiration is there, but inside inspiration there also has to be one-pointed eagerness. Again, I see how much insecurity you are carrying. While you are working, many of you are thinking, "Perhaps Guru is appreciating so-and-so more than me." So whom do you think you are fooling? You are not fooling me; only you are breaking my heart.

It is like the Indian story about the King who asks his subjects to fill the pond with milk. Each one says, "If I put in water instead of milk, no harm! The others will put in milk and the King will not notice." So in the end no one puts in milk. It is never you, but always somebody else who you feel should do the right thing. But that somebody else does not exist! Each worker is like a petal of a flower. Each petal is responsible only for its own beauty; it is not responsible for all the other petals. But if the flower is to have beauty and fragrance, then all the petals have to be beautiful and fragrant. So if each petal seriously tries to have the necessary purity, beauty and fragrance, then the flower will become perfect. These things are needed to bring down peace in the way that we want to bring down peace. Others can bring thousands of people in their own way, but it is not for peace. A jazz musician or somebody else can get thousands and thousands of people, but their standard is totally different from ours. They can succeed because they are working on one level of consciousness, whereas we want to establish peace and divinity on another level.

Question: Guru, In The Morning Prayer...

Question: Guru, in the morning prayer that we are supposed to say every day, the second half says, "When I see my Master's God-smiling eyes, my God-realisation-hope blooms..." Because I have no conception of God-realisation, I can't really relate to the second half of that mantra.

Sri Chinmoy: In the spiritual life we do not need to have a conception of things. We have not seen God, but we are taught from the very beginning by our soul and by our parents that God exists. We know that God is all Kindness and Affection, that God embodies all the divine qualities. God and God-realisation are part and parcel of one another. They are like the flower and its fragrance. If God is the fragrance, then God-realisation is the flower, and vice versa. If you say that you have no idea of God-realisation, then I will say, "You have no idea of God either, so how can you think of God and love God; how can you pray and meditate?" But you can and do love God; you can and do pray and meditate, even though right now God remains for you only a vague idea.

Before we learn a subject, we have no idea what the subject is all about. In fact, that is the reason we study it. In the case of God-realisation, we study the subject through our prayer, meditation and other disciplines. It is the most difficult subject, but whoever is praying and meditating sincerely, or even insincerely, is studying the God-realisation subject. To get the fruits of our outer study, let us say a Master's degree, it takes many years. Step by step we proceed from kindergarten to university. In the spiritual life also, we start with prayer and meditation. Then we dive within and advance to contemplation and, finally, one day we complete our journey. Again, when we complete our inner journey, to our wide surprise we see that we are just at the beginning of a new journey! In the spiritual life, everything is a totally new beginning. It is like discovering a most beautiful garden. We feel that there cannot be any garden more beautiful. But God says, "No, there is a garden infinitely more beautiful."

Before God-realisation, we can have only the vaguest conception of who and what God is. It is only after we become God-realised that God becomes an absolutely living reality for us. At that time, the Universal Consciousness becomes ours; consciously we become part and parcel of it. What is happening anywhere in the universe we can know if we want to. Also, there are thousands of things a God-realised person does every day that an ordinary human being cannot do. Before God-realisation, I used to do perhaps five or six things per day. Now there is not a single day in which I do not do thousands of things in the inner world. It is the same for all the spiritual Masters who have realised God. God-realised Masters can do all these things because they do not use their mind. With our mind we can do only one thing at a time. The mind can work very fast; it can accomplish one, two, three things very quickly. But the mind cannot do two things at the same time, whereas the God-realised soul can do many, many things simultaneously.

God-realisation is oneness with God's Will. Before we enter into the spiritual life, God's Will is not our concern; we are doing whatever we want to do. But once we enter into the spiritual life, at every moment we try to know what God's Will is. When we start practising spirituality, God does not come and stand in front of us and tell us what He wants. But always there is somebody inside us who is telling us the right thing and prompting us to do the right thing, and that is God. During our prayers and meditations, our soul or the Supreme tells us inwardly what should be done. If we do it, then we walk towards light; but if we do not listen, then we walk in darkness.

If the seeker is fortunate, God also sends His representative to tell His Will, and this representative happens to be the spiritual Master. The disciple may say, "If God Himself were standing in front of me, perhaps He would give some other Message." Or the disciple may think, "This Master is not pleasing me; he is not fulfilling my desire. Perhaps God Himself is not hearing my prayer or does not even know what my desire is." In so many ways the disciple can fool himself by separating God from his Master and convincing himself that God is somewhere else. But if the disciple is spiritually mature, he will feel that God and the Master know what his desires are and, if they do not fulfil his desires, it is because God does not want them to be fulfilled.

If the disciple's aspiration descends and inwardly or outwardly he starts doing wrong things, the disciple may think, "Oh, the Master does not know what I am doing." The Master does know; only he does not speak. If the Master sees that the disciple is always doing the wrong thing, that he is always walking in darkness, then eventually he becomes the silent witness; in silence he witnesses everything. It is just like our human parents. Our parents tell us to do the right thing. But when time and again we do not listen to them, finally they keep quiet and just observe.

Question: If It Is Difficult For Somebody...

Question: If it is difficult for somebody to strive for the Supreme, for the Highest, is it better to insincerely strive for the Highest or to sincerely strive for an intermediate goal?

Sri Chinmoy: An intermediate goal is for those who have not accepted the spiritual life, for those who are caught by ordinary life. Because they have to think of their children, their husbands and wives, their earthly life, they are already at a lower level. When aspiration is not involved, when someone does not have the inner urge to climb up the mountain, then naturally he will be satisfied to climb up a hill. But once someone begins aspiring and accepts the spiritual life, his goal must be the Highest. There can be no intermediate goal for sincere seekers.

Insincere seekers can have an intermediate goal. But for those who want to be true instruments of God, for those who have the inner courage to dare to say, "I have come into the world to please God in His own Way," there can be no intermediate goal. They have to go to the topmost branch of the aspiration-life-tree. After climbing up a few metres they may slip and fall down; they may fall down again and again. But their goal has to be the Highest.

Once we start compromising with the outer life, our spiritual life is finished. If we think we can be totally involved in the outer life or social life, then we are only fooling ourselves. Before we know it, the outer life will start lording it over us and our inner life will end. As soon as we lose our seriousness in the spiritual life, we are gone. At first we may say to God, "I will please You fifty percent and You please me fifty percent." But eventually we will say, "God, You please me ninety percent because I am so weak." Finally, our message will be: "God, I am so useless! You have to please me ninety-nine percent." Then the game is over. If we can be satisfied with keeping only a one-percent connection with our inner life, with our Source, then our spiritual life is a complete failure.

The day we accepted the spiritual life, we had the hope and eagerness to reach the Highest. Nobody came to our spiritual path with the idea, "If I get a little joy or conquer a little of my jealousy and doubt, that will be enough." No, everyone came with the eagerness, the readiness and the inner urge to become an absolutely divine person. In rare cases, people may have joined the path only to see what it looked like, to see what kind of flowers it had and whether those flowers were really beautiful and fragrant. But in most cases, the disciples joined the path to reach the Highest, which is to please God in God's own Way through love, devotion and surrender. When this is our goal, then inwardly we have to climb up the highest mountain. The problem is that we cleverly and deliberately forget our goal.

True, everybody's height may not be the same, but everybody's willingness can be the same. One disciple may have the capacity to walk with the Master only for one mile, while another has the capacity to run a marathon with the Master. But along with capacity, readiness and eagerness also are of paramount importance. If someone does not have the same capacity as somebody else, that person's willingness God will also take into account. If God sees sincere willingness, immediately He will increase the person's capacity. So many people have run only two miles a day and then completed a marathon. It is all due to their eagerness. Before I completed a marathon, I had covered at most only three or four miles. But my eagerness carried me to my goal.

Question: How Can We Have More Discipline?...

Question: How can we have more discipline?

Sri Chinmoy: There was a time twenty or twenty-five years ago when, for several months at a stretch, some of my disciples did everything right, everything good, everything positive from morning to evening. Why? Because they were disciplined! They used to get up at six o'clock every morning to pray and meditate and they used to spend their evenings involved in spiritual activities. At that time they cared only for their inner life. They said, "I will not allow myself to mix with undivine people! I will not let myself wallow in the pleasures of ignorance!" Because they led a disciplined life, their love, devotion and surrender to God became most powerful. But over the years they have become negligent and careless; they have stopped valuing the disciplined life and what it could offer them. As time passed, the outer world has become infinitely more important than their inner life. Gradually their love, devotion and surrender diminished and left them. Now they are convinced that love, devotion and surrender are gone, that they are all in the past. In most cases they have given up; they feel it is not possible to regain these qualities or they feel they are not worth having. Either they say there is nothing in the spiritual life or they say it is too difficult now.

How can you regain our lost inner wealth? By remembering how much joy and satisfaction it gave you! When you led a life of discipline and your love, devotion and surrender were strong, at that time you had infinitely more joy and satisfaction than you have now. At that time, something was roaring within you. You had a childlike feeling. Your whole existence was like a flower. It is not that you were standing in front of a flower, but you yourself had become a most beautiful flower. At every moment you were aiming at something high, higher, highest. Constantly good thoughts were entering into your mind, into your heart, into your life.

If you can once again value most sincerely the joy that you derived from being disciplined, then you will get back that kind of life. If you value the taste of the mango that you ate, then you will do everything to regain that satisfaction. You will go to this shop and that shop enquiring, "Do you have a mango, do you have a mango, do you have a mango?" And if your cry is sincere, God is bound to give you back the thing that you are crying for. When you valued the disciplined life, God gave you the opportunity and the necessity to achieve it. If once more you value it sincerely, then once again God will give you the opportunity to regain your disciplined life, along with the joy, the conviction and the assurance that it offered you.

Question: What Is Your Inner Feeling About...

Question: What is your inner feeling about the city of Philadelphia?

Sri Chinmoy: For me, Philadelphia is the capital of America. From the spiritual point of view, America's capital is not Washington, but Philadelphia. That very name is a ringing bell, which is very, very haunting and, at the same time, illumining and fulfilling. As soon as I hear the word 'Philadelphia', no matter who utters it, I hear a bell ringing—like the Indian heart-temple-gong or the American church bell. Philadelphia, for me, always carries Divinity's Reality.