{{htmlmetatags>metatag-robots=()}}
Both the outer running and the inner running are important. A marathon is twenty-six miles. Let us say that twenty-six miles is our ultimate goal. When we first take up running, we cannot run that distance. But by practising every day, we develop more stamina, speed, perseverance and so forth. Gradually we transcend our capacity and eventually we reach our goal.
We can say that our prayer and meditation is our inner running. If we pray and meditate every day, we increase our inner capacity. The body’s capacity and the soul’s capacity, the body’s speed and the soul’s speed, go together. The soul is running along Eternity’s Road. The outer running reminds us of our inner running. In this way our body reminds us of something higher and deeper — the soul — which is dealing with Eternity, Infinity and Immortality. Running and physical fitness help us both in our inner life of aspiration and in our outer life of activity.Nils Lodin: It is a tough experience.
Sri Chinmoy: Yes, it is not a pleasant experience.
[Nils Lodin laughs.]
Sri Chinmoy: I get two kinds of experiences. On the physical, vital and mental planes, I get the experience which you can call suffering. It is an unpleasant feeling. From the beginning to the end, the body is being tortured. Again, there is also the inner experience. I feel that the outer experience which I am going through is something that my Inner Pilot wants me to do, and I surrender the results. I know it will take me more than four and a half hours. But if I can offer the results to Him, then I am getting a divine experience, the experience of surrender. One experience I am getting on the physical, vital and mental planes, and another experience I am getting on the psychic plane. Whatever I achieve, cheerfully I will give to Him; this is my inner experience. The outer experience that I am getting is torture, right from the beginning to the end, but that also I am offering to Him. Both the inner and the outer experiences I am offering to God, my Inner Pilot.Before we enter into the spiritual life, we want to possess the world. Our goal, let us say, is to become richer than the richest and to lord it over others like a Napoleon or Julius Caesar. Then gradually we come to realise that there is no satisfaction in this kind of life. We begin to reduce our material greed and diminish our desires. At the same time, we start trying to increase our positive qualities.
Take love, for example. As a child we start out by loving only our dear ones — the members of our immediate family. Then, after some time, we begin to claim the village where we were born as our own. Then we begin loving our district, our province, our country. But even this is not enough. At the United Nations all the nations are trying to become one. So we try to become citizens of the world and love the entire world. Like Socrates, we say, “I am not an Athenian; I am a universal man.” So you see how much progress we can make in a positive way. This is our philosophy: anything that is bad — fear, doubt, anxiety, worry, suspicion and so on — we shall decrease, and anything that is good we shall increase. On the positive side, we shall start with an iota of love and expand it until it becomes universal love. There is no end to the amount of love we can have; we can keep expanding it until it encompasses not only God the creation but also God the Creator, who is infinite. When we run in the inner world, we are running along the Road of Eternity, and we just continue, continue, continue.
The inner runner and the outer runner are like two brothers. The older, stronger brother can run a very long distance. But the younger one becomes tired after a certain distance because in the physical we are limited. Not only in the physical, but also in the mind and the vital we are limited. So after some time the outer brother takes rest and then he starts again — following the inner brother who is going on and on.
But even on the outer plane our capacity is constantly expanding. Right now 1,300 miles is our longest race. To run 1,300 miles in 18 days is almost beyond our imagination. We feel that is our ultimate capacity. But previously we felt that 1,000 miles was the limit. Who thought of a 1,300-mile race five years ago? At that time people would have thought I was a crazy man if I had suggested that. But now you see that this crazy man was right because people are doing it. Somebody just has to start. We always have to go ahead because life means progress.
The inner runner is always trying to inspire the outer runner. First the inner runner says, “Go forward, go forward, go ahead, go ahead!” Then the outer runner says, “How can I go ahead if you do not give me the aspiration and inner cry?” Then the inner runner gives the outer runner the inner cry to do something and to become something good. In this way the inner runner offers inspiration and aspiration to the outer runner.If it is God’s Will for us to do something, there is absolutely no limit to human capacity. One of my students from Washington, DC is thinner than the thinnest. If you see her, it will be beyond your imagination that she can run 1,000 miles. But she does it. Because of her aspiration and heart’s cry, God is supplying her with Grace from Above in the form of inner energy and strength.
In my case, I have lifted heavy weights. In a year’s time I have also lifted 1,300 people using only one arm. Many of them were heavier than I am. I have even lifted two people at once, although I am fifty-four years old and my muscles are smaller than the smallest. How is it possible? I have a mind, and I am the first person to disbelieve it. But through God’s Grace, it is possible.By laughing at others’ stupidity to your heart’s content, you may or may not get rid of your own mental headache, but you are definitely hurting others. Even when you say it is innocent laughter, others do feel it — some part of their being is hurt. You may feel that it is insignificant, that you are enjoying harmless laughter, but the other person does get hurt.
If you wish to take laughter as spiritual, then apply it to yourself and your own stupidity: “How could it be possible for me to make such silly mistakes?” If you laugh at your own stupid mistakes so that you do not want to repeat them, then definitely laughter can become part of your spiritual awakening and spiritual fulfilment.Suppose in this incarnation I aspire to be a great violinist. In my next incarnation I may not care for the violin at all. But the excellence that I acquired from studying the violin is still there in my soul, although my soul may not want to manifest that particular quality any more. My soul may want me to be an engineer or to do something else. But the good qualities the soul always keeps.
At the same time, the determination or the discipline that I needed in order to become a great violinist will also remain with me. In this lifetime if I want to enter another field and become a great athlete or something else, then if I can bring forward that discipline once more, it will definitely help.
Any good quality that the soul has acquired over the years through patience, perseverance and discipline, the soul will never lose. But the soul may not want to utilise all the good qualities that it has in a particular incarnation. The soul comes down to manifest particular good qualities in order to expedite God’s manifestation on earth. Only the good qualities that are needed in a particular incarnation will be chosen by God to be manifested.“O Lord Supreme,
May we do the right thing,
The right thing to say: “We love You, God.”
The right thing to do: serve God.
The right thing to become: God’s perfect children, who do not quarrel, who do not hate anybody and who do not wage war.
We want to love God in our inner life of prayer. We want to serve God in our outer life of action. We want to please God and we want to be true members of His universal family.
This is the prayer that I am offering to the Lord Supreme on behalf of all truth-seekers and God-lovers in the world and also on behalf of the beautiful, powerful, illumining and fulfilling soul of Bali.Very often we are not getting others to join the spiritual life for one particular reason: we feel that we know too much. We feel that we have so much light to give them. That feeling is the downfall of our life. You know better than that person, true. But if you want to be a better spiritual seeker, if you want to make real progress, then you have to bring forward more humility. Otherwise, if you think that you have made all the progress that you need to make and now you can teach the whole world, then you are making a mistake.
If we can sincerely feel that God is giving us the supreme opportunity to serve Him inside each seeker, that is the best approach. We should be eager to serve God inside others, but so often we forget our purpose. We feel that since we have been following the spiritual path for so many years, that since we have read so many books, we know everything. But we know nothing.
If we take a humble approach, we will say, “The Supreme has given me the golden opportunity to serve Him inside others.” If you approach others with humility, then it becomes very easy. If you go and touch somebody’s feet with humility, then he will have some compassion for you. He will ask, “What do you need from me?”In your case, you are the Centre leader. If you are absolutely sure that you have the right plan, then whom are you hurting? You are not hurting the person, you are only increasing your own ignorance if you do the wrong thing. Again, you have to know whether it is your ego that is speaking or not. Your ego may tell you, “I am the Centre leader. Therefore, my idea has to be the right one.” If this is the case, just discard your ego. But if your sincere awakening is telling you that your idea is absolutely right, then if you do not do the right thing because it may hurt someone, you are only feeding your ignorance. You have to see if you are dealing with your ego or whether you are fully conscious of your inner feeling of the right thing to do.
This applies to anyone, not only to the Centre leaders. If you have the inner conviction that you are doing the right thing, then who becomes the loser if you do not do it? If you receive the light, but you do not use the light properly, if you hesitate, then not only you, but the whole Centre becomes the loser.SCA 1012. Sri Chinmoy answered this question in New York on 5 October 1991.↩
From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy answers, part 29, Agni Press, 2001
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/sca_29