Chandra Mohan: Meeting with you four years ago was a turning point in my life. I always talk to people about you, about our meeting. It is an obvious source of happiness and inspiration to think of you.
Sri Chinmoy: I feel the same about you! When I am with you, I get tremendous joy and inspiration. You have the divine qualities that we need both in our mind and our heart.
The mind itself is not bad, but we are sometimes using it in the wrong way – to suspect others, to doubt others and to find fault with others. The mind is an instrument, and we are the ones who use this particular instrument. Unfortunately, often we are unable to control the mind. The mind is controlling us. It is such a sad experience we are having. The mind can bring us the message of vastness, the message of universality, but it is not always doing this. It is not fulfilling its purpose, whereas the heart – no matter how small or how weak it is – is taking the side of God, of the Divine, of Right. It wants to establish its union and oneness with the rest of the world.
Very few people on earth have the illumined mind and at the same time the vast heart. Unfortunately, most human beings are taking one side. Most of them are taking the side of the mind.
Here science comes into the picture. Instead of building, we are demolishing everything in life. We see the destructive forces are now challenging the world, but not the forces of love. In every field, in every walk of life, we are seeing the poor heart is unable to come to the fore. The mind lords it over us in every field of life. The mind as such is not bad, but we are using it for a wrong purpose.
In your case, you have such an illumined mind and, at the same time, such a universal heart, so the divine qualities that you have are unparalleled. This is not flattery. Being a man of prayers and being an instrument of the Source, what I feel and what I see in you, I am telling you personally. These are the divine qualities that you have. They have to be manifested, and you are manifesting them according to your capacity.
But then again, when we increase our receptivity, our capacity increases like anything. Let us say you have abundant capacities to manifest God’s Light, no matter in which field you are now. But manifestation-capacity increases on the strength of our receptivity. The more we can open to the Light, the more we can receive and manifest. This is the role of spirituality. Spirituality does not negate the world. Real spirituality is not found only inside the Himalayan caves. Real spirituality, Swami Vivekananda said, is to serve mankind and to see the Divinity in each human being and in each sphere of life.
We are trying here, and I am trying with my students all over the world, to serve the Divine, to serve the Supreme in each human being. You are doing exactly the same. But to increase our capacity we must turn to spirituality. We are good, very good, but we can be excellent. Our goal is self-transcendence. Whatever you have achieved is not to be ignored. At the same time, we feel that we sing the Message of the Beyond. The ever-transcending Beyond is our motto.
This is the message that I would like to offer to you – not to stop at a particular point. I should not say, “Oh, I am old. I have been to so many places.” Instead, I should ask, “Have I completely fulfilled the mission that I have been given by the Absolute Lord Supreme?” Then the answer comes, “Still there is a long way I have to cover.”Chandra Mohan: I fully agree with you. Perhaps that is the signal which I should get, that I have come to this place, and you have very specifically arranged a meeting with me. Perhaps it is a signal from Above through you that I am getting.
I remember my father, who translated Aurobindo when he was ailing. He said, “Chandra Mohan, come. I will speak and you will write because I want not to die. I want to increase my longevity at least for three years so that you qualify for matriculation, and get a job. After I am gone, there is nobody to take care of the necessities.”
Then I knew Urdu, so he translated The Synthesis of Yoga. He spoke and I wrote, and we published it in this magazine Aum. Then he said, “Look, everything is fine. You will be praised. But this is not the goal. You may say, I achieved this, I achieved that, and my son has become this and my daughter has become that, and my family is fine. But ultimately you have to become one with the Lord, and that is not easy unless you put yourself into this completely.”
Then I said, “Okay, first thing is my livelihood. Of course, God will help me in my journey.” But now when you specifically tell me, then I think the time has come for me to put myself completely into this orbit.
Sri Chinmoy: Forgive me to say, your mind will say that you have accomplished 70 or 80 percent of what you were aiming at. But I would like to say it is not at all true in your case because you have consciously turned to spirituality. Spirituality always leads us to the ever-transcending Beyond. Your present capacity I know. But what you have offered to the world at large cannot be your true capacity. I can clearly see this because I am a man of prayers. You have not offered all of your inner capacities, because your heart-door is open, but it is not fully open so that anybody can come. It is open in a strict way so that only good people can come and bad people cannot come. When Swami Vivekananda opened his heart-door, he said, “If I claim good people to be my own, I must claim bad people also to be my own.”
Here, if you can keep your heart-door absolutely, totally open, twenty-four hours a day if you can sleeplessly keep it open, then you will see. You may be in Toronto, in Canada, but your life will be able to manifest in South Africa or somewhere else. When you have one good thought, that good thought will not be confined because that new, good thought has come from its Source, from its spiritual beginning. Then it is going to cover the length and breadth of the world.
That is what the spiritual Masters and the highly advanced souls have done for mankind. Swami Vivekananda used to say that if you are on top of the Himalayas and you have one good thought, it will immediately cover the four corners of the globe. We can do many things, but we should feel that we are the instruments, we are not the doers. There is a Source, and we are just representing the Source. According to our very, very, very limited capacities, we are manifesting the Source.
Chandra Mohan: Very true! Sri Aurobindo knew the divine Order, and through you is coming the divine Order. It comes to my surrendering the rest of my life.
Sri Chinmoy: You have read the Bhagavad Gita. You are an expert. There Sri Krishna spoke of devotion and surrender. Love we have for humanity. We devote ourselves, and we are devoted to the cause of humanity. But surrender to the Will of the Supreme is different. We use the term unconditional surrender. There are three rungs of a ladder. Two rungs you have climbed. You have loved mankind. You have devoted yourself completely, sleeplessly and breathlessly to the betterment of the world.
Then comes surrendering to the Will of God unconditionally. That we have to accomplish. That is the last page. Happily, self-givingly, sleeplessly and breathlessly we have to offer ourselves. There is no other way to accomplish that. It is from our renewed prayers and meditation. The main prayer Jesus Christ taught us is “Let Thy Will be done.” That is our motto, everybody’s motto, whether we are Indians or Americans. Everybody has to have this prayer.
Again, the Gita has taught us that we have no right to the fruits of our actions. (Quotes in Sanskrit) Karmany-evadhikaras te ma phaleshu kadachana. “Thou hast the right to action, but claim not the fruits thereof.” 12
Our difficulty is, as soon as we human beings do something, we pray for the results, and the results have to be to our satisfaction. But we never say, “God for God’s sake.” The moment we can say God for God’s sake, we accomplish everything. At that time we are not the doers. We are the actors.
But I am not giving you advice. I am just telling you what you truly are. What you truly are, you have not yet manifested. Some people feel that they have done everything that they are supposed to do. But they are wrong. Until our last breath, we cannot say that we have accomplished everything that we are supposed to accomplish. When we offer our last breath to Mother Earth, if the last breath is founded upon gratitude, then immediately we serve Mother Earth in a very unprecedented way.
Chandra Mohan: I think this is very rightly said, and I take a vow to follow it because it is said at the right time. In a year’s time I will complete my teaching tenure. Then I will be devoting more time to spirituality, although I will still be involved with these Associations.
Sri Chinmoy: Again, my brother, you are making a mistake when you think of the future as such, saying, “When I finish all my activities, my teaching tenure and all that, in the near future or the distant future, I shall devote all of my time to Divinity.” That future never comes. Our philosophy is here and now, in the immediacy of today, through each action. Right now you are teaching at the university, but you must feel what you are doing is ordained by God. This is the secret. You can start right from today, from this very moment.
Here two spiritual brothers are talking, and they have opened up their hearts completely. We are complementing each other. I am bringing to the fore what I have, and you are bringing to the fore what you have within. It is not that you will wait four years or five years until you are through with your outer experiences. We cannot separate the outer activities from our inner experiences. They go together. Only we have to feel what we are doing outwardly is coming from the inner inspiration, from the inner aspiration, from the inner dedication.
If somebody is pushing us forward, we have to go forward. But I have to feel that I am not going forward on my own. Something else – my divinity – is pushing me forward towards the Light, infinite Light. Your future is here, right at this moment – in the immediacy of today. Only change your outlook, that what you are doing at every moment is an expression and a revelation of your inner divinity. Each action is an expression of our own divinity.
Chandra Mohan: Yes, I fully understand. Consciousness comes from within. My prayer and meditation should be regulated more to become a part of my daily routine. Then the whole attitude towards daily happenings could be linked with my divine inspiration.
Sri Chinmoy: When we separate action from meditation, we are committing a Himalayan blunder. Action and meditation go together. Right now I am talking to you. We feel that this is action, this is not meditation. No, this is meditation, because meditation means oneness, oneness with the entire humanity. You and I are two individuals. While we are acting, we are feeling our oneness. How sincerely, how self-givingly we are talking to each other! What else is meditation if not oneness? Meditation is oneness founded upon vastness. The finite in us is meeting with the Infinite. Together we are talking about spirituality and Divinity, which is the Infinite.
But again, we are using our human language. We are seeing each other as physical entities. Here the finite and the Infinite are going together. Your finite existence and your Infinity, and my finite existence and my Infinity, are going together. Action and meditation must go together. Otherwise, we separate them the way we are separating the mind from the heart, the heart from the mind. They have to be together. At every moment you have to feel whatever you do is an inspiration in the process of revelation and manifestation.
You are a professor. I am saying you have not given to Mother Earth fully. Some professors, after 20 years or 30 years, feel, “Oh, I have given even more than I thought I possibly could.” But that is the wrong attitude. Nobody can say this because at every moment we are inundated with new possibilities. Ever-new possibilities we have to manifest through our speech, through our actions, through our self-giving and in our entire being.
Traditional scripture, as quoted by Sri Chinmoy in The Oneness of the Eastern Heart and the Western Mind, Part 1<em>. New York: Agni Press, 2003.<p>↩
From:Sri Chinmoy,Depend on Grace, Agni Press, 2023
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/dg