Conversation on Olga's birthday

//The following conversation took place on 4 December 1976 when Sri Chinmoy and a small group of disciples gathered in Chidananda's apartment to celebrate Olga's birthday. Olga, at the time a new disciple, was Chidananda's landlady.//

Celebrating Olga's Birthday

Sri Chinmoy: We are going to celebrate your birthday. First we shall meditate and play soulful music in honour of your birthday. I shall play and all of you will meditate. Our philosophy is the philosophy of a Boat and a Boatman. It is a Golden Boat and the Boatman is our Beloved Supreme. So we are now praying to the Supreme Boatman to carry us to the Golden Shore of the Beyond. [Sri Chinmoy plays/ Ore Mor Kheya.]

The real in us is the soul. Everything else is unreal. The soul inside us is the only absolutely real thing that we have. Now we are requesting the soul to come forward so that it can manifest in our physical consciousness the divinity that the Supreme has granted to it. We are invoking the soul to fly upward, move forward and dive inward. The soul is known as the bird of our heart. [Sri Chinmoy plays/ Hiya Pakhi Egiye Chalo.]

Now we shall play our Invocation. This song is most important on our path. This is not a mere song; this is everything to us. Here we are invoking the Presence of our Beloved Supreme. This song is actually the Source, the Goal and the Reality-Existence of our path, which we call love, devotion and surrender. [Sri Chinmoy and the disciples sing the_ Invocation. _Sri Chinmoy then asks Chidananda to choose a song, and he chooses/ Phire Chalo.] The soul is returning to its celestial abode, which is flooded with Light and Delight.

It is the fourth of December. The number four is of importance in the spiritual life. There are four directions: East, West, North and South. These four corners of the globe are for the divine manifestation of the Supreme. God placed Himself in four directions in order to reveal Himself and manifest Himself: God the East, God the West, God the North and God the South. There is an Indian legend which has much truth in it. Our cosmic God Brahma originally had five faces. When he had five faces he could not perform his duty because there were only four directions. So he cut off one of his faces and kept only four in order to manifest his divinity. This is a story from above which has been handed down from the past.

Whether we believe this story or not, we have to believe in the four directions. When we think of the East, we think of the height of Light; and when we think of the West, we think of the manifestation of that Light. When we think of the North, it is the height of Delight; and the South is for the manifestation of Delight. These four are the selfsame reality in different forms, in different aspects. In different places we call them different things. But where there is Light, there is bound to be Delight; and where there is Delight, there is bound to be Light. So, God the Light and God the Delight have created these four corners. They are God's four manifestations in four different ways.

Now it is my wish to answer four questions of yours. These people have asked me many questions over the years. These are your spiritual brothers and sisters. Please ask me four spiritual questions and I shall answer them with all my heart's concern and blessing. English is not my mother tongue. They tolerate my English, so you also have to bear with me.