Question: What do you think is the greatest obstacle in achieving God-surrender and God-realisation?

Sri Chinmoy: The greatest obstacle need not be the same for each individual. Somebody’s greatest obstacle will be doubt; somebody else may have fear as his greatest obstacle, and a third person may have insecurity. All these difficulties can be overcome by using only one weapon and that is love.

Let us take obstacles as imperfections. A child plays in the playground and gets covered with mud and dirt. His whole body is dirty, but the child does not feel that he is dirty. He just runs to his mother, and she cleans him. It is the bounden duty of the mother to get soap and water and clean the child. If the child feels that because he is dirty his mother will scold him, insult him and strike him then he will not go to her. But he does not feel that. First of all, he does not consider himself dirty. Then, when he runs to his mother, he is aware only of her love. He feels that his mother is his all. At every moment he has a free access to her.

If we have doubt, if we have fear, if we have other undivine qualities or imperfections, like a child let us run toward our eternal Father. He is there to purify us, to illumine us, to liberate us, to give us what He has. We have a free access to the eternal Father. But if we use our physical mind, we will feel, “Oh, God will be displeased with us. God will not accept us because we are so dirty, so imperfect, so impure.” The physical mind immediately separates us. It makes us feel that we are all imperfection while God is perfect Perfection; so how can we go to Him? But if we feel that God is our very own, that God is all Love for us and we are all love for Him, then we just go and sit before Him and place ourselves at His Feet. At that time, there is no obstacle.

We have to feel that what God is, we also are. That very thing we are right now, but we are not aware of it. We have to feel that God has created us and He wants us to grow into His very image. We have a mind which separates us; but we also have a heart. When the heart comes to the fore, immediately we feel tremendous joy, relief and satisfaction. We feel that God is ours. When we use our heart, we claim God as our very own on the strength of our oneness. When we use the heart, there is no obstacle which cannot be surmounted. As a child has established his oneness with the mother, even so we can also establish our oneness with God on the strength of our spontaneous love for Him.