My mind

O my mind, no earthly chain can fetter you. You are always on the wing. No human thought can control you. You are forever on the move.

O my mind, hard is it for you to believe in my soul's constant fulfilment. And hard is it for me to believe that you are doomed to be the eternal victim of venomous doubts. Alas! You have forgotten. You have forgotten the golden secret: "To remain in the silence-room is to open the fulfilment-door."

O my mind, vast are your responsibilities. You have to please your superiors: the heart and the soul. Only with your warmest admiration will you be able to conquer the heart. Only with your deepest faith will you be able to conquer the soul. You have also to satisfy your subordinates: the body and the vital. Only with your pure concern will you be able to make the body smile. Only with your genuine encouragement will you be able to help the vital run unmistakably towards good and not pleasure.

O my mind, I need you desperately, either to abide in you or to go beyond you. You see and thus protect the physical in me. You serve and thus reveal the spiritual beyond me.

O my mind, cast aside your long-treasured arid reason. Welcome the ever-virgin faith. Possess the naked sword of conscience. Far above the storms of fear you are destined to climb. Stay no more in self-created sombre shadows of death. Don the golden robes of simplicity, sincerity and purity. Permit not the gales of disbelief to extinguish your inner mounting flame. Yours is the arrow of concentration. Yours is the soil of lightning intuition. Yours is the unhorizoned peace.

Behold the Supreme! He crowns you, O mind of mine, with the laurel of His infinite Bounty.

Sri Chinmoy, Songs of the Soul, Herder and Herder, 1971