Preface

Inspiration is not a contemporary word. It seems to belong to a faded dispensation, or, if used at all today, it is applied to artists who by some special gift are still able to experience a sudden heightening of their abilities. We ordinary mortals of the twentieth century, however, appear not only uninspired, but uninspirable. It is a result of the pace and density of modern urban life, we say, the routines of our labor and the clamor of our leisure, that we have seen inspiration fall away from us.

Though not our need for it. Each of us in his or her own way seeks in some form an increase of spirit. Inspiration means literally to breathe into. The Bible's vision of man's creation records the primal act of inspiration: God breathes his breath (spiritus) into his clay. Inspiration transforms. All through human history man has sought ways of inspiration, honored his longing to he awakened, to be trans­ formed from one state to another. That longing is still with us, fiercely perennial. The need for inspiration is part of our nature. So, too, our capacity for it.

This need and capacity of our nature are of supreme value. They attest to the survival in us of the many-leveled relation between our energies and the energies outside ourselves. We are beings in context: physiologically we need air, psychologically we need to respond and to be responded to. On both levels the essence of our sense of being alive involves our experience of receiving, and in that receiving the feeling of fullness.

It is a high truth that it is better to give than to receive. Perhaps it is also true that it is impossible to give without receiving. Nothing comes from nothing; only from a fullness may we offer ourselves. Consciously or unconsciously our behavior bears witness to that principle. It is vital for us to be filled and we seek the means.

Moreover, though we might think receiving was in some way instinctual, it appears to be an instinct which may be diseased. Many of us are obsessive givers, but rarely permit the gift of letting another give to us. This is the pattern of much of our mis-loving. It is easier to say “I love you” than to hear it. Like the act of listening, being loved demands an openness, even a vulnerability. To some of us, such an openness may feel acutely difficult. We are defensive, and only guardedly permit something to enter us, a thought, a feeling, the life of another.

But we need to receive. We need the flow of breath, the circulation of response. And if this is true on physical and interpersonal planes, it is true, as well, on more subtle levels. Beauty is becoming a dog-eared word. Beautiful has become a cliche in our culture, yet perhaps the very frequency with which we apply the word attests to the persistence of our hunger for beauty's genuine inspiration. It is not that the sources of beauty are vanishing from us; on their profoundest levels such sources have always been in our presence and in ourselves. What appears to be decreasing is our ability to be inspired by beauty.

Like beauty, inspiration may come from everywhere and anywhere when we are open. So it becomes for some a question of the utmost urgency whether we can relearn or repossess our capacity to experience inspiration. Is inspiration ultimately a matter of grace? Or are there ways-once we have admitted the need to ourselves - to open to what may inspire?

In some ways the answer is contained in the question. "Once we have admitted the need to ourselves." The word admit has a kind of double meaning here: it means to confess and also to let in. Admission is itself an act of receiving, and when we admit something to ourselves we are actually opening ourselves to a new source of awareness.

From a psychological point of view this makes perfectly good sense; in effect what we are doing in admitting our need is accepting something about ourselves which we had previously not been willing to accept. Thus we have repossessed ourselves of an energy, an awareness, a feeling, rightfully integral to us. We begin, then, with admitting our need. It is, in some ways, our most radical act.

From that admission, if it is sincere, a new openness will flow. Consciously and unconsciously we will begin to seek out sources of nourishment to feed our need. That seeking is aspiration's first call. We aspire to be inspired; we seek to move into relation with possible sources of energy and light. We will find ourselves stopping before new windows, hearing things that had been in the air all the time but which we had never noticed before. And we may turn to books with a new eagerness.

One such book might well be this one. How might you find out? By reading it. Yes, but there is the question of how. Surely not like a novel. There is no plot here. Nor is it like a usual book of essays, for these pieces are not arguments, not acts of reasoning or persuasion. Nor like informal talks transcribed and arranged, for though many of the prose pieces in this volume were originally delivered as talks, they are not casual or chatty. In fact, it will be immediately apparent that this writing is in some sense decidedly difficult. Capitalized abstractions are likely to strike our eye immediately. Sentences appear tautological. The voice we hear in this writing, in the prose, at least, seems to speak ex cathedra. Inspiration may be here, but how to receive it?

It may be helpful to know something of the man who spoke and wrote these words and the conditions under which they were heard. Sri Chinmoy was born in Bengal, India, in 1931. At a very early age he began those meditative practices which perfected him in self­knowledge. He came to the United States in 1964, worked for the Indian Consulate and gradually drew to himself people who felt his power and light. The number of such people who have been drawn to him has grown steadily over the decade. His has by no means been a wildfire popularity, and though today he has meditation centers in Europe, in Canada and throughout the United States, his following is not large. Only those who are ready for him, for his purity, his intensity and his height, does Sri Chinmoy call disciples. But in his writing, his lectures and public meditations, he makes himself fully available to both the aspiring and the curious. Every year he travels to Europe and to campuses in America and Canada, speaking to audiences small and large, providing inspiration for those who can receive it.

Each of the pieces in this book was delivered to such an audience. Each talk was preceded by silence, the silence not of a speaker waiting for his listeners to settle, but of a meditation master filling a room with his stillness and peace. All Sri Chinmoy's talks emerge directly from high meditative states; they bear the fullness of his highest conscious­ ness. For that reason they require from us more than the usual act of passive reading. We must enter into, admit, as best we can the consciousness that is in these pages. Sri Chinmoy speaks slowly. His voice is musical. Often his sentences spin brief harmonic patterns. He never talks for very long, always spontaneously. Always his words point to feelings, point to possibilities of awareness; they map out or evoke states of consciousness, aspects of our nature and condition which offer us a clearer sense of identity.

How, then, might we come to his words on the page before us? First we must let ourselves become still. It will not do to rush at his words with a mind buzzing from the noise of the day. It will not help to have a sharp pencil in our hands. It would be good to close our eyes for a moment. To take some measured breaths, letting the breath come more quietly. Perhaps we are sitting comfortably. Alone. The TV set is not on. The radio is not on. The record player is not on. We have admitted some silence. Then let that openness which led you to take up the book in the first place surface in yourself again. Trust that what you are about to read is something you need to hear, though you may not "understand." Let the book open to any page, let your eyes fall where they will. Hear the words in your heart, slowly. Do not question; listen.

Reading Sri Chinmoy is possible only as an act of meditation. As such what is important is the quality, not the duration, of the act. In reading him we are advised to persist only as long as we are feeling receptive. We may read no more than three or five minutes. We may find we have paused, hovered, over a phrase and that it has repeated itself in our mind. Or we may find the intrusions of thoughts push the writing out of our attention; and we may strain to pit the writing against distractions to din them out. This will not work. Do not force the writing upon your mind; better to close the book and return another time.

Only under such circumstances may the writing be given its chance to breathe. This writing is an invitation to a dance. It will lead us, if we dispose ourselves; however, without our assent and sincerity, grace will elude us. The experience of such reading is unique. As a friend of mine has written: "Making friends with the written words of a genuine soul-master is as delicate and rewarding as making friends with the master himself, because his words are not simply tools for the expression of intellectual knowledge, but the living seeds of spirituality: seeds which germinate in the heart center-the center from which we love, not in the center of calculation."

These words come from that center. May you feel their inspiration.

Brihaspati Dr. Peter Pitzele

Associate Professor of English, Brooklyn College