Questions and answers

Question: Guru, could you tell us about some of the inner experiences you get while meditating during your regular meetings at the United Nations?

Sri Chinmoy: I could write a very large book with thousands of pages, not just hundreds, about my inner experiences at the United Nations. In these hour sessions, the experiences that I get with the Avatars, Yogis, spiritual figures and the Absolute Supreme would make a very juicy book. But these experiences are sacred and when you tell sacred things, they become polluted. If these experiences are offered to people who won't get any benefit from them, they will only cast them aside.

Sri Aurobindo said something very nice about his life. He said the real biography of a spiritual Master is his inner life, not his outer life. No matter how great are his outer accomplishments, what he achieves in his outer life is practically nothing in comparison to what he accomplishes inwardly.

In the outer life, if I had to say how much I have accomplished, I may give myself the score of two out of one hundred. I won't give more than two. I tell you two, and this is being indulgent. If I am strict, perhaps I can't give myself even that much. My outer capacities and my outer achievements are so disappointing. But in the inner world, my achievements, realisations and capacities I know. There I don't have to show my false modesty.

And again, I have to say my capacity depends on my disciples. If a particular disciple's depression goes away, then my capacity increases like anything. When you don't doubt, when you have no jealousy or insecurity, my capacity increases and I become a divine elephant in the inner world. When you give me a smiling face, I can operate like a spiritual lion with you. When you give me a sad, gloomy face, I become a feeble insect. So I am at the mercy of my disciples.

If the children always give their human father a gloomy face, the human father may be able to ignore them. But I am your Eternal Father. I can't escape seeing your suffering and at the same time, I have to take responsibility for it. The human father may sometimes get disgusted and give up with his children. But the spiritual Father never accepts any defeat, so he is ready to see his child's suffering face not only with the hope, but also with the conviction, that he will be able to change it into a smiling face.