Self-giving and happiness³

Dear seekers, I hope at the very beginning I can make you feel what we mean by the term 'seeker'. A seeker need not be an individual who only cries and tries to realise God. A seeker can be someone who sees something that he does not have right now. He wants something that will give him joy and satisfaction in life, but he does not have that very thing.

Here we are in the company of some distinguished individuals of various professions. In order to become proficient in a particular profession, deep inside us we have to have an inner cry. We want to do something, to grow into something, to become something. This means we are seekers. In your case, this seeking eventually bore fruit and you have now become men and women of profession.

Each profession is like a quality that we offer to the world at large, a quality that satisfies and fulfils us. We have a human family and in that family one member is a doctor, another member is a professor, a third is a lawyer and a fourth can be a soldier. All feel an illumining and fulfilling bond among them. Each one plays his respective role in the family, and by playing that role he brings peace, light and delight into the family. The help of each one is needed. The help of each one is of paramount importance.

Each profession is a signal capacity of God. If we are afraid of using the term 'God', let us use the term 'happiness'. Each capacity offers us happiness. If someone is endowed with a special capacity, that means he has happiness and this happiness makes him go forward. In his life he embodies capacity, he represents capacity and he manifests capacity for the satisfaction of human life on earth.

In this world we notice only two things: quality and quantity. Let us take quantity as ignorance-sea and quality as wisdom-light. We observe an overwhelming quantity of ignorance in us and around us, within us and without. Again, in the inmost recesses of our being we observe quality, divine quality, which wants to illumine us and, at the same time, illumine the rest of the world. So let us take quality as something illumining and quantity as something that has kept us under the jurisdiction of ignorance-night.

Each individual has some special quality. That means he has capacity in abundant measure, in boundless measure. Yet, as individuals, we are not perfectly happy, in spite of having capacity in one particular field. How can we be happy? We can be happy only if we believe in the theory of change. We have to change ourselves. We have to change what we have and what we are.

What do we have? We have the physical body, the vital, the mind and the heart. The body is right now unconscious. The vital is aggressive. The mind is doubtful. The heart is insecure. The body is unconscious like a solid wall. The vital is aggressive like a hungry wolf. The mind is doubtful like a doubting Thomas. The heart is insecure like a child in the woods. Again, this can all be changed, transformed. We can have a conscious body, a dynamic vital, a believing mind and a secure heart. When we cry like a child, in silence, and our prayer is sanctioned, we get a conscious body, a dynamic vital, a believing mind and a secure heart.

What are we? We are followers of the neutral life. In this world very often we try to compromise as a last resort. We feel that we are not in a position to know right from wrong, that we are not in a position to judge; or we feel that the only way to remain in peace is to surrender or compromise. But this is a deplorable mistake. Compromise can never give us abiding joy. He who compromises is consciously surrendering to a neutral life. Someone who is neutral is not sure of what the truth is or what the truth should look like. We know we are in between ignorance-night and knowledge-light. It is up to us to accept knowledge, which is wisdom, and to free ourselves totally from the snares of ignorance.

We want happiness — happiness from life and happiness in life — and we want to offer this happiness to our near and dear ones. In order to achieve happiness in life, we have to give unreservedly what we have and what we are. What we have is the body, vital, mind, heart and soul. And what are we? We are God's constant Concern, constant Compassion and constant Manifestation. Again, if you don't want to use the term 'God', you can use the term 'happiness' or 'truth.'

We feel that everything in life disappoints us and deserts us with the exception of one thing, and that thing is truth. To live in truth is to live in happiness. There are various ways to achieve this truth in life. But only one way is most effective and that way is the way of self-giving — unreserved and unconditional self-giving to our own extended, expanded, enlarged, boundless, unlimited existence.

When we enter into our unlimited existence, we feel that we are of the One and for the many. At the same time we feel that we are in the many, for the One. This moment we are the tree; next moment we are the branches. The tree needs the branches, the flowers, the leaves and the fruits in order to prove to the world that it is actually a tree. And the branches need the trunk, the tree as such, to prove to the world that it is part and parcel of the tree.

Each profession here is a branch of the life-tree. And again, each profession knows that there is a root to the tree, to the capacity-tree. For if there is no root, then there can be no branches, fruits, leaves and so forth. We have to live in the root and this root is happiness. How can we live in the root all the time? We can live in the root only by self-giving: giving what we have and what we are. What we have is love and what we are is oneness. By offering love in any form to mankind — to our so-called superiors and so-called inferiors, or to our brothers and sisters of the world — we come to know what we ultimately and eternally are: oneness inseparable.

Some of you may wonder why we have invited today only the professionals and not ordinary people. On other occasions we always invite people irrespective of mental capacity or vital capacity, but today we wanted to observe something special here. We feel that each profession represents a special quality of the everlasting reality. And sometimes we do feel like being in a group where each member is well understood by the others. Birds of a feather flock together at times in order to add beauty, joy, light and delight to one another. It is with this understanding that today we have invited people of profession. Each one has something special to offer to the rest of the members. As a matter of fact, each individual has a special quality, a special capacity of the Source, and that Source is delight, happiness. Happiness is seeing what has to be seen, happiness is feeling what is actually to be felt, happiness is self-giving, happiness is becoming one with the eternal Source.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Reality-Dream, Agni Press, 1976
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