Question: You have started offering songs to the United Nations Meditation Group to sing and I was wondering if you would like to expound upon the purpose of this?

Sri Chinmoy: Not only each song but each tune embodies aspiration. When we embody aspiration, we feel that we are serving the Divine in us. When we do not aspire, we feel that we are serving the undivine in us. Song is a universal language; it is the heart’s easiest and most effective way to unite the inner world with the outer world, which is separate or has been fragmented into many pieces.

So this year I am executing an inner command to compose a good many songs. Like my paintings, each song is my dedication to aspiring mankind. Each song embodies my aspiration, my realisation and my dedicated oneness with you all.

It is my wish that the seekers of the ultimate Truth will learn these songs if they can sing well. While practising them, they are bound to get delight, and when they perform before the rest of the world, they should feel that they are offering their aspiration in the form of dedication.

Those who are listening to the songs will be meditating as much as those who are singing. Meditation does not mean to remain closeted, to keep your eyes and ears shut and not to know what is going on around you. Meditation is a form of self-dedication, and this dedication comes from our aspiration. Those who are singing can offer their dedicated service through their soulful music, and those who are listening to them soulfully and devotedly can also be doing their best meditation.

Suppose I sing fifty songs and it takes two hours. During these two hours, your mind can roam and think of millions of things, or you can feel that singing is not important, so you will feel drowsy and fall asleep. Or you can take it as an opportunity to do your best meditation because here the music is adding to your own aspiration. If you are trying to aspire, the soulful songs will add to your own aspiration.

Each song is a golden opportunity to increase our spirituality, to increase our aspiration. Each song is like an additional plant in our garden. Naturally the plant will offer us more beautiful flowers. Each song soulfully sung gives us tremendous inner joy, and this joy gives us the message of heart-expansion. Our heart expands when we are in joy. If we are wise, we shall adopt all means in order to expand our heart so that in our heart’s joy and delight we can see the entire world.

A song is a seed. The seed will germinate and grow into a tree and the tree will mature and offer many flowers and fruits. The flowers will offer their fragrance and beauty to increase our aspiration, and the fruit will give us immortal joy. So these soulful songs will give us the message of Immortality by helping us to become one with the universal Light, the universal Delight, which they embody.

It is my wish to write at least fifty songs for the United Nations. We will have a book with fifty songs and it will be the possession of the United Nations Meditation Group. You will learn them and sing them at various places, and many things will be done with these songs. Very soon I shall be able to offer the Meditation Group quite a few songs, which will be most applicable to the United Nations ideas and ideals.