Sri Chinmoy: It was after the Bicentennial. Jefferson’s vision should have gone up high, higher, highest. Many things caused it to descend, starting with complacency. When we are complacent about our achievement, that is our downfall. For years and years, we became so complacent about our achievement: we have this, we have that. Here we look, we are most powerful. There we look, we do not need anybody. The feeling that came to the American mind was, “We do not need anybody.”
Now at every moment we see that we need this little country, we need that little country. There was a time after the Bicentennial when Americans said: “We do not need anything. We are doing a favour to the world.” The whole thing started when America felt it was self-sufficient. I always say we are not self-sufficient. No, we are God-efficient. The moment we think of self-sufficiency, we descend!
Only our ego ascends.We had a disciple who left our path. Before she left, she wrote to me that she wanted to be self-sufficient. I said, “Once you accept the spiritual life, if you feel self-sufficient, that is your downfall.” Self-sufficient you cannot be. At every moment you will see that you are weak in some aspect of life. You need somebody else’s help.
We always need somebody’s help, and then we should be grateful to that person. Our first Avatar was Sri Ramachandra. He had to fight to bring back his wife, Sita Mata, from Sri Lanka. There were huge monkeys building a bridge for him. We call them monkeys, but they were not actually monkeys. They were a less evolved form of human beings, building the bridge.
One squirrel, a little squirrel, wanted to help but said, “Ah, what can I do? I am so small and weak. What can I do?”
Then the squirrel said, “No, I want to give more. I want to use the little capacity that God has given me.”
The squirrel entered into the mud and clay and started rubbing his body against the sand. His body became full of sand. Then he came right in front of Sri Ramachandra and shook the sand off of him, in this way adding to the bridge structure.
Sri Ramachandra was so moved, “See, here I have got huge, huge monkeys. Some are working, some are not, some are fooling around. But this little squirrel, how much love he has.”
Then Sri Ram caught the squirrel. With three fingers he put on the squirrel’s back a sign, Rama’s sign. Even now, if you see an Indian squirrel, there is a mark – we say that it is the mark of Rama’s gratitude. This little squirrel gave everything. His capacity was next to nothing, but he gave whole-heartedly, whereas some huge monkeys were fooling around and not helping. Sri Ramachandra could have said, “I am self-sufficient. I do not need your help, you silly squirrel.” But he was grateful for what the squirrel could offer.
Self-sufficiency: that is the problem. One of my disciples wanted to become self-sufficient, to be a greater than the greatest musician. He said, “I will be self-sufficient if I can pursue my music.” I said, “No, no, no,” that his musical talent could go hand and hand with his spiritual life. Finally the decision came that he did not want the spiritual life. He wanted to be a great musician. Some years later, he was found lifeless, collapsed on a piano bench – finished!
Recently another individual said the same thing, “I want to be self-sufficient.”
I begged that person, “What are you going to do?”
They said, “I want to be a poet. I will write poems.”
After praying and meditating for 20 years, they wanted to choose poetry over spirituality. Can you imagine? One wanted to become a poet. One wanted to become a musician. They felt that if they became a poet or musician, they would be self-sufficient. They would not need the spiritual life.
Complacency comes when you feel that you are self-sufficient. Pride and ego fool us, but the real in us sees that we need everybody’s help. The little squirrel could only give a few grains of sand, but how grateful Lord Ramachandra was for his little bit of help. To change the world we need everybody’s help.
1. The Bicentennial of America’s independence, marking 200 years since its founding, was celebrated in 1976.
↩2. Sri Chinmoy gave a talk in response to her letter, as printed in Sri Chinmoy Answers, Part 1. New York: Agni Press, 1995.
↩3. According to Indian mythology, this is how the Indian palm squirrel got his stripes. The story teaches us that every contribution, no matter how small, is valuable and essential to achieving a greater goal, and that the sincerity of effort is more important that the capacity of the person performing it.↩
From:Sri Chinmoy,Only One Reality Sri Chinmoy, Agni Press, 2025
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/oor