Question: Guru, how does power help us enter into sweetness and into our loving consciousness?

Sri Chinmoy: There are two types of power: destructive power and fulfilling, illumining power. It is in destructive power that the ego plays its role. “I am superior to everybody and everybody is at my feet.” This is destructive power. But fulfilling and illumining power says, “I won’t be satisfied with myself alone, as an individual. Only the Universal Self can satisfy me.” The power that we concentrate and meditate upon in order to become universal, which is the illumining and fulfilling power, is the power of oneness.

When you offer the fulfilling and illumining power to mankind, you do it with the feeling that you as an individual are unsatisfied or dissatisfied with your possession. You will be satisfied only when you can claim the universe as your very own and when the universe can claim you as its own, on the strength of your mutual self-giving. By giving yourself you become one, and this oneness is founded upon sweetness, affection, sympathy, love, concern, compassion and gratitude. The oneness-tree has many branches. There you will see affection, sweetness, concern, compassion.

If you give me money, naturally I will be grateful to you. But if you are really spiritual, you will also be grateful to me because it is I who received from you properly and am using your gift properly. If I misuse it, then immediately the world will say, “Where did he get this power from?” Then you will also be the culprit. But if you give me something divine and I use it properly, people will first appreciate me and then they will appreciate the source. They will ask where I got it from, and then they will see you. So when we use divine power, it is not only the one who gives but also the one who receives that is important. He who gives and he who receives are of equal importance.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Creation and perfection, Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/cap