Question: When you are meditating on us and I am looking at you, I think perhaps I should try to be as humble, pure and receptive as possible. Is that right or should I just forget about all this and keep my mind open?

Sri Chinmoy: This is a most significant question. It depends on the individual. If the individual is a student of mine, or a disciple of mine — that is to say, someone who has consciously given the responsibility for his spiritual life to me — if he becomes humble to me, if he becomes polite and very devoted, then he will get the utmost from me. If he is arrogant, stubborn and haughty, however, naturally he will not be able to receive anything from me.

Right now you are coming to the New York Centre, so you can consider yourself a student of mine. In your case, when you offer your humility, please feel that this humility is not touching my human personality. Feel that this humility is entering into the Supreme in me who deserves everything from you. I am not anybody’s Guru. Your Guru, your Master, is God. Your real Master is inside me. My Master, my real Master, is inside you. Just because I have the inner light and inner wisdom, when you enter into me, I try to bring your aspiring soul to the fore. When there is a devoted feeling to me, devoted love, divine love, then when you become one with me, you get what I have. I lived a life of spiritual discipline for twenty years in an ashram, and the inner peace, the inner light, the inner wisdom that I have gained, I offer to you.

In the beginning, when you are a student, it is better always to enter into the teacher’s heart consciously and with humility. This humility is not humiliation. When somebody is humiliated, he is crushed; but humility is a feeling of total oneness. You feel that you are absolutely one with me because God is the Lord of everything, the Cause of All. When you show humility, it is your own divine quality which enables you to become totally one with me. I am not superior and you are not inferior. But with your humility you can establish your oneness with me with the utmost sweetness. Try with your humility, softness, sweetness, divine love, to enter into me and feel your existence inside me. Once you enter into me, then it is my problem, my duty, my responsibility, to give you what you need by the Grace of the Supreme.

But some individuals come here just to get inner peace or inner joy. They are not my students; they have not given me the responsibility for their lives, and I have not taken the responsibility. In their case, what they should do when they look at me is forget about everything and make their mind absolutely calm, quiet and vacant — like an empty vessel — and not allow anything to enter into it during meditation. If they keep in their mind-vessel fears, worries, doubts and so forth, the vessel will be full. Then what can I do? The vessel has to be emptied so that I can fill it with divine Peace, divine Love, divine Joy, divine Harmony.

When the vessel is empty, the divine thought can enter into the individual aspirant and grow. As ordinary thoughts, undivine thoughts, grow in us, so also divine thoughts grow in us. When the undivine thoughts grow in us, ultimately they destroy us. Doubt enters into us, then anxieties, worries, despondencies and destructive qualities. But the same vessel can hold divine Truth, divine Peace and divine Light instead. When the vessel is full to the brim with divine thoughts, ultimately it will open the door to divine Peace, divine Light. If the vessel is not filled with divine thoughts, all the visitors that come will be undivine. They will act like thieves, robbers and murderers. But when the vessel is filled with divine thoughts, one receives all the divine gifts which God has to offer.

This is to be done by those who are not my students, who just come here once a week and who want to have a little peace and nothing else. But those who want to realise God in this life, who want to have infinite Peace, infinite Light and infinite Bliss, who really want to realise the highest on earth, have to follow a spiritual path. I have a path; so do other spiritual Masters. Each Master has a path of his own, and ultimately, each path leads to the same goal. All roads lead to Rome but one has to follow one road. Those meditating here who are not my students eventually will feel the necessity for a spiritual Master. Here I am giving them inspiration. Then, when they are inspired, when they want to go to the end of the road, to the ultimate Goal, they will try to get a teacher of their own. At that time, the teacher, the spiritual Master, will tell them what they should and should not do.