Spirituality: what does it really mean?4

Spirituality is man's love for God and God's concern for man. Spirituality is man's flower of worship for God and God's flower of Grace for man. In spirituality man's consciousness grows and God's Compassion flows. Through spirituality man is awakened and God is revealed.

Today I am supposed to speak on Indian Spirituality. Being an Indian, I am emotionally enchanted. Being a lover of humanity, I am psychically struck. Being a seeker of the Supreme, I am spiritually cautioned.

Needless to say that there is no such thing as Indian spirituality. Spirituality is for all the corners of the globe. But if you wish to know from an Indian how he looks upon spirituality, then let me avail myself of this momentous task.

An Indian thinks of God because he thinks that God thinks of him infinitely. An Indian loves God because he feels that God loves him infinitely more. He also knows and feels that God thinks of him and loves him even if he does not think of or love God.

Remember, the storms of fear do not compel him to think of God or love God. It is his inner urge that awakens him to think of God. It is his inner light that illumines him to love God. An Indian knows that human ignorance not only recedes but disappears. Human doubts cannot limit man's spiritual horizons. Misery cannot be the ordained lot of man. Despair cannot devour man's spiritual energies. An Indian is unceasingly bold in his dynamic experience to proclaim that man can not only see, feel and realise God, but eventually become God. An Indian knows the supreme secret that self-discovery or God-discovery, self-realisation or God-realisation can take place here on earth. He also tells the world that in human transformation shines God's perfect perfection.

Let us once again enter into the universal, omnipresent spirituality. Man needs peace. Man wants power. Man cries for joy. Man hungers for love, the love that energises and fulfils him. Man dreams of Paradise, within and without. Spirituality says: “O man, cultivate me. I am eternally and infinitely fertile. Delay not. The hour is come. Yours is the achievement that God is yours. Yours is the fulfilment that you are God's. Behold, you have two lives: the inner and the outer. The inner to realise, the outer to manifest. Let the inner push, let the outer pull. Yonder is the beckoning GOAL!”


AUM 258. This talk was given by Sri Chinmoy on Sunday, 24 September 1967 at 9:00 a.m. at the William Sloane House, Y.M.C.A., 356 West 34th Street, New York City. There were approximately two hundred guests present from all parts of the world. There was a very stimulating Question and Answer period after the talk, but unfortunately this was not recorded.

Sri Chinmoy, AUM — Vol. 3, No. 3,4, Oct. — 27 Nov. 1967, Boro Park Printers -- Brooklyn, N. Y., 1967