Question: How can one accept and love one's fellow man?¹⁸⁷

Sri Chinmoy: First of all you must feel that your fellow man is part and parcel of your own existence. I have two eyes. If my left eye does not function as well as my right eye, do I become angry with my left eye and take it out of my body? Do I keep my left eye closed or cover it and say, “I will not let you see?” No! I simply accept my left eye as less capable than my right eye, but still as a part of me. When I have to look at something, I use both eyes, and the eye that is more powerful naturally does more work.

You must regard the persons around you as limbs of your own body. Without them you are incomplete. You may feel that you do not need them, but they also have their own role to play. Your thumb is much more powerful than your little finger, but the little finger also has its job. If you want to play the piano or type, you need all your fingers. God created the human hand with five fingers and, although some are shorter and weaker than others, all are necessary if the hand is to be perfect.

You can love the people around you only when you feel the necessity of real perfection, for their perfection is part and parcel of your own perfection. If you remain isolated as an individual, then your achievement will be limited. Your very sense of perfection will be limited. But if you want to have unlimited achievement and unlimited perfection, then you have to look to your wider self; you have to love humanity and accept humanity as your own, very own. For it is only by accepting humanity as part and parcel of your own life, and by perfecting humanity with your own illumination, that you can fulfil yourself.