Question: What should our attitude be towards working at the United Nations?

Sri Chinmoy: Our attitude should be one of conscious self-giving. This self-giving can take various forms on the outer plane. Here we are dealing with many individuals. If we find it difficult to give ourselves to many individuals, many countries, at least we can have an attitude of forgiveness. We forgive in order to make forward progress.

If we have so-called enemies, then we will all the time harbour evil thoughts towards our enemies. When we feel that we have enemies around us we actually forget our own goal. We think only of our enemies — how to conquer them, how to annihilate them. This becomes our goal. Then what kind of progress are we going to make?

So the best attitude is to always think of the goal. The goal is always found in self-giving. The more we can give soulfully, the sooner we shall get satisfaction in what we are doing or what we are growing into. Each individual knows how to offer some things to the world at large. Each individual knows how to offer something to his body, vital, mind, heart and soul. Only we have to do it.

We create thoughts, ideas and ideals. Let us say that a thought has entered into our mind. Immediately if we want to nourish that thought, we can put a good feeling into the thought. And that feeling comes from the heart itself. If we do not nourish the thought with our heart’s psychic feelings, the thought remains powerless, it remains unfulfilled. Here we are talking about attitudes on the mental plane. But the real divinity, or the real essence of anything divine, lies only inside the heart. So anything that we see in the form of creation or anything that we create ourselves must be nourished by the feelings of the heart.

At every moment we can be attacked by negative thoughts, assailed by undivine thoughts. Again, at every moment with our inner will we can create good thoughts, loving thoughts, illumining thoughts, fulfilling thoughts. These thoughts can only function properly when we have an inner feeling from the heart.

The feelings of the heart we can increase only by self-giving. Right now we use the term “self-giving” precisely because we have not sufficiently cultivated or developed the capacity that makes us feel that we are of the one and for the many. We have not yet discovered our universal oneness. But once we have discovered our oneness with the rest of the world, then it is not self-giving; it is only the fulfilment of our own inner awakening. When my hand does some thing for my leg or vice versa, they do not take it as self-giving. Hand and leg are part and parcel of one reality; they are one reality.

Unfortunately, at the present state of our evolution, our limited vision has not granted us the capacity to feel everyone as our own. So let us start with the idea of self-giving. We shall give what we have and what we are; we shall give our good thoughts.

So the best attitude right now is the attitude of self-giving. If there are adversaries, wrong forces or others who do not see eye to eye with us, then we have to move forward on the strength of our forgiveness-capacity or our forgetfulness. We shall not forget our ideal, no. We will forget only unhappy, unhealthy experiences that we get from others while we are trying to serve the divine purpose within us.