When you offer your own will to the Will of God, you gain power, and this power will be utilised for God. God Himself will tell you how to utilise it. But if you try to heal on your own, in spite of your best intentions, you may stand against the Will of God.
Suppose you pray and meditate to acquire divine power so that you can cure people and help the world. You say, "I want to be a camel and carry the whole burden of the world on my shoulders." But if the camel is not illumined, then how can it help others gain illumination?
You are running towards your goal. If you ask God to give you something, then this is just an additional thing that you have to carry, and it may slow you down. So if illumination is your goal, think only of your goal and nothing else.
Again, if a remedy for a disease comes spontaneously from within and you don't have to exercise your mental power or will-power, then there is no question of ego, pride or vanity. If in your meditation, all of a sudden you see inner light, and in this light you get a cure for some fatal disease, then naturally you will be able to offer this inner illumination to the world at large. But otherwise, the best thing is to become illumined first. Then only will you be serving God in His own Way. Otherwise at times you will serve God in His own Way and at other times you will be feeding your own ego.Do your best.
At God's Compassion-Feet.
Devotedly
Do and fulfil
Unconditionally.
Do you know
He is your desire's Lord
Your aspiration's Slave.
Looking for you everywhere.
What have you been doing?
Ah, that is why I have been missing you.
“I have been thinking
I see, Daughter.
When you create a better world,
Not only are you disappointed
But I am also disappointed
After you leave the Centre and go home, you may not retain the same level of aspiration because of some family difficulty or other problems. But even if there is nothing to prevent you from continuing to aspire, your own limited being will not allow you to stay on the top of the tree. You aspire for half an hour with utmost sincerity and then relaxation starts. You feel that you have worked very hard and now you are entitled to rest.
But the spiritual life is not like that. If you want to maintain your standard, if you want to maintain the height of your aspiration, then your aspiration should be flowing constantly. Suppose you have meditated for an hour; then you may not be able to meditate again for another hour or so. It is difficult right now for all of us to meditate for eight hours. But no harm. For half an hour you can easily meditate. Then you can do something which will maintain and preserve your meditation. For the next half hour you can read spiritual books; then after that you can sing spiritual songs. Then you can go to the house of one of your spiritual brothers or sisters or, if that is not possible, you can call up someone on the phone and speak only about spiritual matters.
Again, you can write about your own experiences in your own way, not with the thought of publishing them but just to help your own consciousness. While you are writing them down, you are perfecting your spiritual nature. For half an hour you can write them down; then you will read what you have written. As soon as you have written down your experiences, you have created something. The creator always wants to enjoy his creation. Look at a gardener when he sees a beautiful rose. First he took great pains to plant a rosebush and to tend it; then after six or seven months when he sees the rose, he deeply appreciates and admires the beautiful flower. Similarly, you also may get joy from reading about your own experiences.
It takes fifteen or twenty minutes for you to eat. During that time try to remember what experiences you had while you were meditating early in the morning. Just imagine them. This imagination is not fantasy or self-deception. It is like charging a battery. You are charging your memory with your achievement, with your spiritual progress. Each time you think about your own experiences, you will be transported back to that time and you will get abundant Peace, Light and Bliss and so forth. So in this way you can always retain your meditation from the early morning and you will be able to maintain your standard until it is time for your next meditation.
But unfortunately people don't do this. We meditate for half an hour or forty-five minutes and immediately we feel that we are tired and exhausted. Then we do so many wrong things. It is a kind of negative reaction. We feel that we have seen one side of the river and now we want to go to the other shore. But the other shore is unfortunately all darkness. We have to try to remain on the shore that has light. So to preserve our meditation we will do other things which will increase or at least retain the power of the meditation.
During the week we have to go to work. Early in the morning we meditate and elevate our consciousness, but then we spend seven or eight hours at work and we are unfortunately compelled to mix with people who are unaspiring. We are thrown into a world of desire, fear, anxiety, worry and so forth, and our consciousness falls. So what do we do? Please meditate early in the morning and read spiritual books, sing spiritual songs, mix with spiritual people. Then, when you are in the office or involved in some other activity, try to remain in the consciousness of your early morning meditation and other spiritual activities. In your early morning meditation you have gained Peace, Light and Bliss, which is spiritual money. Keep that inside your own heart, which is the safest of all banks. Then, when you enter into the world, when you are in the office where it is all anxiety, worry and desire, you withdraw some of your spiritual wealth. You concentrate on your heart and bring forward a little of the Peace, Light and Bliss which you acquired early in the morning. It is your own wealth and you can use it. In this way you will be able to maintain your spiritual standard and keep your level of consciousness high.
Right now, we have to be very careful and wise in our day-to-day life about how we spend each hour. But a time will come when our life itself will be a continuous flow of aspiration. Now after our meditation we use the mind and think, "Oh, the time has come for me to read some spiritual books." But one day we won't have to make any conscious effort. Our inner being will inspire us to read spiritual books. Right now the inner being is inside, deeply hidden, but we are trying our best, through Yoga, to bring it to the fore.Who you are?
I shall tell you who you are.
Of humanity.
Doubt, do you know
In case you do not know
You are the useless sickness
What my life of hope does.
What my heart of despair does.
What my mind of doubt does.
We have to shed soulful tears if we want to embody the Supreme consciously and if we want to fulfil and manifest the Supreme at every moment of our earthly existence. When a child cries, the mother comes running. Similarly, when we cry from the inmost recesses of our heart, our eternal Father, the Supreme, comes running to feed us, to illumine us, to carry us to the Golden Shore of the Beyond. The Supreme is our Father; He is our Mother; He is everything. We, like infants, have to cry and cry. Unfortunately, we have forgotten how to cry inwardly. We know how to smile, how to laugh outwardly; we know how to impose our proud ideas on others. We think more of perfecting other people's natures than of perfecting our own. We have no time to think of our own perfection. This is the tragedy of human life.
Every day when you meditate, try to feel that you are inside the Heart of God, the Inner Pilot. Although you have not seen the Supreme, just mentally imagine a human being who is absolutely golden. Imagine that He is right in front of you and you are inside His Heart or in His Lap or at His Feet. Do not think that you are eighteen or forty or sixty years old. No! Think that you are only one month old and that you are inside the very Heart of the Supreme or in His Lap.
Divine imagination is not a false way of looking at truth; it is the proper way to look at the truth. People who do not have the capacity to imagine cannot go very far. We see a poet and we may think that he is living in the world of imagination, but it is the poet who enters into the world of reality with his inner vision. Today's imagination is tomorrow's aspiration. Tomorrow's aspiration is the realisation of the day after tomorrow.The soul is the representative of God here on earth, a spark of God. God the Omniscient, the Omnipotent, the Omnipresent is one; but here in this world of multiplicity each soul represents a different aspect of God's multiplicity. When the soul takes human shape, it tries first to create possibilities and then inevitabilities. Then the soul tries to manifest the truth that it has already achieved. It sees the world of ignorance and tries to transform this ignorance into knowledge and wisdom.
There is an unmanifested Self, which we call purusha, and again, there is a manifested Self. The Self that is going to manifest on earth through the soul is called prakriti. Purusha is not indifferent, but it will always remain on the highest transcendental level of Consciousness. And the other Self, prakriti, will take part in the Cosmic Game through the individual soul.
When we become one with our soul, we enter into infinite Peace and Bliss — the highest Consciousness, which we call sat-chit-ananda. This is the triple Consciousness, where Existence, Consciousness and Bliss come together. When we live in the soul, eventually we enter into this triple Consciousness.According to the physical reality, you are perhaps 5'6" in height, but inside the physical reality is the inner reality — your teeming inner experiences. Some of these experiences are very high, very deep, and some are not. Again, some of these experiences are from this incarnation and some are from previous incarnations. Even when I see the experiences only of this incarnation, I see that you have had thousands of experiences.
Now, who is holding these experiences? The soul or what we call the psychic being. In Sanskrit we call it chaitya purusha. This psychic being has gathered and kept safe the experiences of previous incarnations as well as of this one. The quintessence of all your previous incarnations has been preserved by the psychic being. Deep inside our existence, inside the soul, inside the psychic being, inside the mind, inside the vital, inside the gross physical, all these experiences are there.
But when the doctors operate, or when they examine you, they cannot discover it, this inner wealth of yours. Why not? Just because this infinite inner wealth that you have can be seen only by something which is also infinite. Only Infinity can measure Infinity; only Light can measure Light. We may see something right in front of us, but in order to evaluate it we have to have something which is equally powerful or equally illumined.
You will be able to see, feel and become one with Infinity when you become one with your spiritual heart, which is itself infinite. And this oneness you achieve through prayer and meditation.Now, 'three hundred sixty-five opportunities' means that each day you are getting an opportunity to make your promise or your prayer fresh. Every day you bloom like a new, fresh flower and the following day you grow into another flower — a flower of dedication, absolute dedication. When you read this aphorism, try to feel that you have become a real flower, ready for dedication.
In each meditation you will see a world. If you read these meditations four or six times most soulfully, I wish to tell you that each time you will get something more meaningful, more significant. It is not that you will have different ideas and a different truth. No! It will be the same truth, but each time you will see it being expressed more powerfully. This is how you can meditate on an aphorism of mine.I wish to tell you a story. There was once a great scholar who was being ferried to the other shore by a boatman. On the way, the great Pundit said to the boatman, "Have you studied the scriptures? Have you studied the different systems of Indian philosophy? Have you studied the Gita, the Upanishads?"The poor boatman said, "No, I have not studied them. I do not know what they teach." The scholar said, "Then you are a real fool." Now, all of a sudden there arose a storm and the boat was about to capsize. The boatman said to the Pundit, "The boat will now sink. Do you know how to swim?" The Pundit did not know how to swim, so the boatman placed him on his shoulders and took him to the shore. Then he said, "What shall you do with all of your knowledge? I know only one thing — how to swim — and that has saved us."
What do we learn from this story? If we are in the sea of ignorance, if this world is the sea of ignorance, then what real help shall we get by learning subjects that are taught in the schools? Now, I am not saying that education is unimportant. Far from it! In the outer life it is most important. But by getting knowledge and information from universities, one must not feel that one has acquired real wisdom. The world is a sea of ignorance. In order to swim across the sea of ignorance, one needs only one thing, and that is meditation. And for that, one needs the heart, not the mind. If one can meditate well, one will eventually cross the sea. But by studying books, by getting outer information, one can never do it.Now, we have to enter into the inner life to see what good qualities a Westerner has. First and foremost, a Westerner knows the value of time. Each second counts in the West. Not only each hour, but each second counts. It is a great blessing to know the actual significance of time.
The second outstanding divine quality of the West is its dynamism. Unfortunately, some people misuse this dynamism and it becomes a kind of aggressive quality. With dynamism we can move forward or backward or downward; at least movement is going on. We are all the time moving, moving, moving. And if we are conscious, we will move forward and not backward.
The West knows the value of time and the significance of dynamism, so it already has two helping hands. But it has to learn a third lesson. Every individual, no matter where he is or what his standard is, can spend ten minutes a day to feed his soul. To feed his body he takes three meals a day. If he does not eat for one day he may feel he will die the following day. But what about his inner existence? There is a divine child in each human being that we have completely forgotten. If we feel the necessity of an inner life, we must then practise the inner life and feed this divine child every day.
The inner life is not at all foreign to us. It is something natural and spontaneous. The outer life has been imposed on us, but the inner life came with us from the soul's world. It is self-evolving. The outer life will be meaningful only when the inner life comes to the fore.
The spiritual life, the inner life, is not the sole monopoly of the East. The West has every right to accept the inner life and fulfil itself. It was in the West that a great, great spiritual Master once said, "I and my Father are one." As in the East we say, tat twam asi, "That Thou Art", so also in the West you have the message of Christ. Now, if God is the Father and you are His son, then you must also possess all the divine qualities that your Father has. The only thing is that up to now you have not cared for His qualities. If you can care for them, your Father is always ready to bestow upon you His highest and most precious riches.After four hundred or five hundred years there will still be animal incarnations. There will be animals and there will be people. But there will also be more perfection on earth. Today, say out of ten thousand people perhaps one person may aspire. But a time will come when only one person out of ten thousand will not aspire. It will be just reversed.
But we cannot say that evolution will reach the point where everybody will come to earth God-realised. It would be like this: I have worked for years and centuries in order to realise something and you won't have to work at all. No, everybody has to work hard; God's Grace will descend only when we work hard. Some people realise God when they are in their teens. Perhaps you may say, "Oh, I have been meditating for twenty or thirty years and he has only meditated for five or ten years. How is it that he has realised God?" But you do not know how hard he worked in his previous incarnation. Perhaps for years and years he meditated. We see him with our human eyes, but we don't use our third eye to look at what has happened in his previous incarnation.
The world is now imperfect. Gradually, gradually, the world will become perfect. It is not that at a fixed time, all of a sudden, the Light will dawn and non-aspiring people will suddenly run towards the goal. No, it is a slow, gradual process.Please keep a candle burning in front of you and try to feel that it is actually burning inside you. The flame is your own aspiration, which wants to climb to the highest. The candle will outwardly convince your physical mind that your existence is inside the heart and not in the mind. After a few minutes try to feel that you do not have a head at all. You do not have arms and legs; you have only the heart's soft, sweet feeling of oneness with God, your Inner Pilot. It is here that you have to grow, where there is constant, infinite Light from the soul. The heart which is purified by the soul's light will never have any tension.
You have to know that the mind will never be able to identify itself with the Vast. It will always feel like a stranger, an intruder; so there will always be fear. But if you meditate in the heart, there can be no fear. It is all oneness. A child looks at his father who is so big, but he does not feel afraid. He knows that his father's strength will not be used to hurt him. But if the person is a stranger, then the child may be afraid. The heart always feels the message of oneness, and in oneness there can be no fear.
So when you feel pressure in your head, please feel that you are not the mind but the heart. That which separates you from everything cannot be yours; that which unites you with everything is the real you. Feel that the mind does not exist. Only the heart exists. The moment you feel that you are the heart, you will feel your oneness with the Vast, and boundless Peace, Light and Bliss will enter into you.If the inner world could really inspire the outer world, then the outer world would have real meaning and, by this time, the outer world would have succeeded in manifesting a considerable amount of divinity. But very often the inner world is too weak to inspire the outer world. Actually, the inner world has the capacity, but the outer world is not accepting its inspiration. The inner world is not given the opportunity. The mother has the capacity to wash and clean the child, but the child does not want to be cleaned. The inner world is like the mother, but the child won't listen. He just mocks her and says, "No, I don't want to be cleaned."
The outer world gets joy by separating; the inner world gets joy by uniting. In cases when the outer world is inspired by the inner world, at that time the outer world really has something to offer. When the outer world consciously accepts the inspiration of the inner world whole-heartedly, people realise the highest Truth. At that time, full realisation, full revelation and full manifestation can easily be achieved.You meditated this morning
Become
Don’t forget this divinely adorable discovery.
Because
You have once more
The beloved friend of the whole world.
How ruthlessly I have ignored God.
I never want to forget
My darkness-pride
My ignorance-night.
So please try to rest for half an hour after meditating, before you eat. Also, if you want to meditate after eating, please wait at least two and a half hours. Otherwise, your nerves will become heavy: the three major channels of the subtle body — ida, pingala and sushumna — will find it extremely difficult to allow the cosmic energy to pass through them.
Again, if you are very hungry and it is time for your meditation, please eat something light and then meditate. Otherwise hunger will play the part of a monkey inside you, pinching you all the time. I remember an incident in India. A young boy used to always come late to see his spiritual teacher. He was poverty-stricken and could not eat properly, so he was always hungry and could never meditate well. His spiritual Master observed this and he used to keep popped rice for this particular disciple. He would give this disciple two or three mouthfuls of popped rice and then the disciple would meditate. All the other disciples were surprised to see this, because they got nothing from their Guru. One day the Master had to tell them, "All of you come from rich families and all of you come here without hunger. But when this poor boy comes running here, I always see that he is hungry. So I feed him first and then he does his meditation well."So I always tell my disciples to care only for God. God has created all power, so if you can please Him, then He will give you power if it is necessary for you. But if you try to steal power by hook or by crook, then you are acting like a real fool. It is like going to a mango tree. I can climb up the tree and snatch one or two mangoes without asking the owner's permission. But then the gardener will order me to leave. However, if I can please the owner and get his permission to take some mangoes, then nobody can order me down and I can eat mangoes to my heart's content. But you have to know that it is not mangoes that will make us immortal; it is nectar, divine Nectar. It is not occult power but Peace, Light and Bliss that can make us immortal.
From the highest point of view, it is up to God whether He gives us occult power or other kinds of power. After realising God, if God says, "I want you to use your occult power," then you will use it. But if He says, "No, you will use only spiritual power for My divine purpose," then you will do that. Whatever He wants us to do we have to do.From:Sri Chinmoy,God-Journey's Perfection-Return, Agni Press, 1975
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