Question: Guru, recently when you were not feeling well, it would be raining outside. When you were feeling a bit better, then the sun started to come out.

Sri Chinmoy: I do not feel that way. When I am not feeling well, my physical sickness does not depend on the outer weather at all — far, far from it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it comes from the disciples. I am suffering with my knee pain, stomach pain and other physical problems. God alone knows whether I have taken the karma of the disciples. A spiritual Master suffers from stomach pain or knee pain. If he had not taken this pain from somebody else, that person would have had cancer. Many, many times when the spiritual Master experiences pain in the ankle or knee, somebody would have fallen down and broken his legs if the Master had not taken the pain. Something serious would have happened. If the Master takes the pain, he may get a few bruises. If it had been the disciple, it would have been a compound fracture.

Openness, openness, openness! The whole problem arises when my disciples are not open to me. If they are open, if they are always open to me, their outer weather I can clear and their inner weather I can clear. But if people are not open to me, I cannot clear their outer weather and I cannot clear their inner weather, so they will be in difficulty. Openness, openness! If you are open to me, like an open book, in your heart, in your mind, in your entire being, then at every moment I am happy. I am in the seventh Heaven of delight and the disciples are also happy because they have really established their oneness with me.