Question: Usually I doubt that the thing I am doing in the outer world is the right thing. What should I do about this?

Sri Chinmoy: You are asking how you can know whether you are doing the right thing. First, let me say that if you are not affected by the result, then it becomes much easier to do the right thing. If you are not attached to either success or failure, automatically the power of your disinterested feeling will make it easier for you to do the right thing. The right thing automatically comes when you feel that you will not be affected by the result.

Then, since you have a Master, easily you can ask me. Once you ask me about something and I say, “Do it,” then you will know that it is the right thing. Even if you see that people are not listening to you at all but only telling you that it is a waste of time, I wish to tell you that if you dare to do it, then success will come. Your divine success will come from your obedience itself.

You know thousands of Indian stories in which, only by virtue of obedience, people have realised God. The Master says, “Stand here,” and then he goes away and comes back four or five hours later. While standing there fixed, the disciple should not think, “Oh, I am useless. Master is not using me for any purpose. He knows that I am useless. That’s why he is not asking me to run or go and mix with the other disciples.” If the disciple has that kind of idea, then he is lost. But if he feels, “The Master has asked me to stand here, so that means this is the very best thing I can do for my own progress,” then the disciple is doing the right thing. He should feel, “If I stand here for as long as he wants, then I will be able to realise the Truth infinitely faster. So this is the best thing for me.”

In your case, you are having difficulties while you are dealing with people. People are misunderstanding you. You are trying to help them, but they don’t take your help. They misunderstand you, criticise you and insult you. But if you feel, “This job has been allotted to me by my Guru. I will do it until he changes my job,” then the very fact that you have accepted me as your very own will save you, protect you and illumine you.

In the outer world it is difficult to deal with people because every day we somehow manage to forget our inner promise to the Master. Every day we have to renew our inner promise. There is only one promise, and it is the same for everyone. “I am going to fulfil the Supreme in my Master and in myself in this incarnation.” That’s all. Every morning we are eating new food; similarly, every morning we have to renew the promise. Renew, renew! So, if you every day renew your promise, then no matter how many people you deal with daily, you will have no difficulty. If you fulfil that promise which your soul has made, then automatically obedience will come, love will come, devotion will come and surrender will come.

Our philosophy starts with love and then it goes on to devotion and surrender. These are three rungs of the same ladder. But now I am seeing something very strange. People say that they love the Supreme in me. According to their capacity, let us say, they love me. It may be human love or divine love or anything. But the next step — devotion — they don’t want to make. Here I wish to say that if there is no devotion, then the feeling of oneness, the sweetest oneness, will never come. Devotion means dedicated oneness and that does not come.

Some people are stuck on the first level. They love our path and our mission in a human way or a divine way. But when it is a matter of devoted action, devoted oneness, this they do not have. So here their progress stops. If there is love, and if this love is absolutely divine, then the love will pass through devotion and touch the door of surrender. Then it will become one with the door of surrender. At that time, automatically the door is opened and the seeker becomes really perfect, absolutely perfect.

Again, for some people it is really difficult to start even with love. In their lives they have not got love from anybody and it is very difficult for them to love. In these cases, they have to start with obedience, just obedience. A child may not love his mother, but he knows that his mother will thrash him if he does not listen. So he obeys. Then, after a few years, when he is able to judge for himself, he feels, “My mother did the right thing. She told me the right thing. At that time I did not understand, but now I understand that my mother was asking me to do the right thing.” In the spiritual life there are quite a few disciples who have not developed any kind of divine love for their Master. So I tell these people inwardly to try and obey me blindly. Blindly it is, because there is no feeling of love on their part. But it should also be cheerfully. If I say not to study, then don’t study. If I ask you to study, then study. If I say not to go to a place, then don’t go. Like this, if you can accept what I ask you to do immediately, with a cheerful feeling, then you have passed that level and you can go on to the next class, which is love.

It is from love that you have to go to devotion and surrender. If you have divine love, then go one step farther to devoted oneness. Then, from devoted oneness, you come to surrender. Then, when it becomes unconditional surrender, your problems are solved.