Chaitanya (Mr. Juan Marina): How do we know what is the Will of God to which we have to surrender? We know what our intuition and reason are, but sometimes it is hard to know, for sure, what the Will of God is.

Sri Chinmoy: Through reason you can never, never know the Will of God. Reason and intellect will never take you to the Will of God. The Will of God we can know only when we live in the heart or in the soul. The mind can never give us the Will of God. Reason: where does it come from? It comes from the intellect or mind which still has to be purified and illumined. Until the mind has gone beyond its limitations, it can never be used to reach the Will of God. It is useless for us to feel that through the reasoning mind, we will be able to know the Will of God.

By constant aspiration, we can surrender to the Will of God, saying, "O Lord, give us no other will. We don't want any other Will. We want only Your Will to be our will."

The other day at my talk at the University of Puerto Rico, towards the end (I think it was my last paragraph), I said that some people cry because they have not made any plans to make their lives successful and fruitful. They are unhappy that they have no plans. Then there are other people who cry because their plans have come to a very lame end; their lives are not at all fulfilled, in spite of enthusiastic plans. But I cry to God not to have any plans at all, so that I can be at His Feet all the time.

If you have a plan, then you are using your mind. Your plan will have reasoning and logic. You will weigh the pros and cons and come to a conclusion. From the spiritual point of view, that is not the right method. The right method is to get the spontaneous feeling directly from the heart, as to what to do. If it comes from the heart, you will not be making any mistakes. It comes on the spur of the moment. You get the intuition from the third eye or an intuitive feeling from the heart, and you solve the problems very directly. But if it comes from the top of the head, from the intellect, ninety-nine per cent of the time, you will make the wrong decision.

Now that you have me as your Guru, I wish to say that if you want to surrender to God's Will, you should make no plans, make no decision about the future. But that does not mean that you will be lazy or stupid, or that one day you will be totally realised only because you have got me for a teacher. No, you have to make a personal effort. But this effort is not like pushing and fighting. It is the effort of aspiration. Your aspiration will climb up like a mounting flame and, at the same time, feel that I am bringing down the infinite Grace from the Supreme for you. So you go up, and I come down. You go up to catch me, and I come down to bless you.

So, Chaitanya, to come back to your question, it is not through reason that we can surrender to God's Will. It is through aspiration and through the constant feeling that we should have nothing in our consciousness but the fulfilment of God's Will. Then automatically we shall surrender. Now we are crying for surrender, but the moment we feel that God's Will alone will protect us, save us and liberate us, that He is our Protector, our Saviour and our Liberator, then our surrender will be spontaneous and unconditional.