Spiritual Masters Becoming Conscious of Who They Are

Question: When a great spiritual Master takes birth, when is it that he is fully conscious of what he is and what he has to do? From very early childhood does he have to play a certain role, or at a certain point does awakening come?

Sri Chinmoy: It is an individual matter. Some know at the very beginning of their lives, while others in the evening of their lives. There are some spiritual Masters, like Lord Krishna, who from the very beginning was conscious. When his mother was trying to punish him as a child because he was stealing curds, he showed her the whole universe inside his mouth. Some take time – 15 or 16 years or even longer. Sri Ramachandra did not show his divinity in the beginning. Sri Ramakrishna started after the age of 35 or 38.

Jesus Christ only showed his 37 miracles during the last three years of his life. Before that we say he was a carpenter, he took up his father’s profession. We are absolutely sure that he went to India and was there, at least for 12 years, if not 16. At that time what was he doing? He was a seeker. In India he was not a spiritual Master. He was studying spirituality and yoga from different people. Again, some, very few, like Sri Krishna, right from the beginning they were conscious of who they were and were doing work.

Again, even if you know who you are, you cannot always start your role immediately. When I was inside my mother, my brother knew who I was. He saw very clearly in his vision that I was a spiritual Master of the highest height. But then my father died when I was young. My brother played the role of the father, and how many times he scolded me! Again, he absolutely knew who I was.

I became conscious of who I was at the age of 12 ½ or 13, let us say 13 years, with Sri Aurobindo’s grace. I knew who I was; I just had to turn the pages, the pages that I knew so well – that kind of thing. But in terms of working for manifestation, when I came here in 1964, then I had to wait again for two or three years. I knew at the age of 13 who I was, but I did not start manifestation until the age of 34 or 35.

There is no hard and fast rule, at what point a spiritual Master will know. Some know from the beginning. There are some who came to know who they were only a few years before they left the world. Lord Buddha was not at all aware. He was a prince. When Lord Buddha saw the suffering of the world, then he said, “Now I do not want this life. I do not want to have pleasure.” Then Lord Buddha prayed very hard at the foot of a bodhi tree and attained enlightenment.

Mahavira also was a royal figure, and he gave up that life. Both Lord Buddha and Mahavira were princes who stayed as royalty for over twenty years. Then they left their palaces. If they had stayed in the palace, there would have been so many things that would have distracted them – singing, dancing, luxuries, all kinds of things. In my case I entered into a spiritual community and lived a simpler than the simplest life. So God decides if He will allow the person, the spiritual Master, to know what he will be.

Again, Sri Ramakrishna told about Rakhal, Swami Brahmananda. In terms of spirituality, he was higher than Swami Vivekananda. Sri Ramakrishna said, “The moment Rakhal comes to know who he was, he will leave the body. I will not be able to keep him.” He had been a very, very close associate of Sri Krishna in Brindaban. When Sri Krishna came into the world, at that time he was one of his closest. So Sri Ramakrishna said, “If he comes to know who he was, he will leave the body.”

In Swami Vivekananda’s case also, Sri Ramakrishna said, “I have kept it under lock and key. You have to work.” Otherwise, if Swami Vivekananda had the key to open up the box, then he would say, “O my God, I was this, I had this occult power. Who wants to work?”

God gives everything, but it is like parents who have amassed great wealth. They give everything to their children, but they give little by little. If they see that somebody is misusing the money-power, then the parents wait and wait, to give their children some wisdom. It is absolutely like the human world.

Each avatar has a different time. In the case of some spiritual Masters like Sri Chaitanya, in the beginning he did not know. He was a Sanskrit scholar who was teaching. Lord Buddha and Sri Ramakrishna became aware quite late, after the age of 28 or 30, not at the beginning of their lives.

God chooses everything, when He wants to show us who we were. First we have to become. Then we know and we are. First we were monkeys and donkeys. Then we become lions. God says, “You have to become the lion itself.” It is all up to God to tell us, not that you have become a lion, but you were a lion for many, many centuries. For each spiritual Master God chooses the year, the day, the hour.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Only One Reality Sri Chinmoy, Agni Press, 2025
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/oor