Truth's fountain-melody

Part I — Discourses

Truth¹

Earthly truth awakens my sleeping body. Heavenly Truth disciplines my restless vital. Eternal Truth illumines my sighing mind. Universal Truth liberates my crying heart. Transcendental Truth immortalises my central being. The supreme Truth expedites my soul’s God-manifesting aspiration here on earth.

Truth is beauty. Beauty inspires a God-seeker to see God’s Face of eternal Beauty. Truth is peace. Peace inspires a God-seeker to feel God’s Heart of infinite Peace. Truth is power. Power inspires a God-seeker to watch God’s Eye of immortal Power. Truth is compassion. Compassion inspires a God-seeker to sit at God’s Feet of all-forgiving Compassion.

Truth frightens a weak mind in a human being. Truth enlightens a strong heart in a human being.

Truth nourishes the self-giving seekers. Truth treasures the God-realised souls.

Although man and truth are one, man cannot replace truth, but truth can easily replace man. How and why? Because man is by nature earth-bound and truth is always Heaven-free. Although truth and God are one, truth cannot replace God, but God can easily replace truth. How and why? Because truth is the creation. The creation cannot become inseparably one with the Creator at its sweet will. But the Creator can easily become inseparably one with His creation. Something more, the Creator can easily remain, eternally remain, infinitely higher than the creation’s reach. But out of His infinite Bounty, the Creator keeps Himself inseparably one, eternally one and — to our wide surprise — unconditionally one with His creation.

O my heart²

I shall not fear my mind’s confusion. I shall not fear my mind’s suspicion. I shall not fear. I shall not resist my heart’s aspiration. I shall not resist. I shall not insist on having a perfection-life. I shall not insist. I shall cheerfully and unconditionally wait for God’s Hour, God’s choice Hour.

O my mind, how can I believe you when you tell me that you do love the world? I find it extremely difficult to believe you. I do not believe you and I cannot believe you when you tell me that you do love the world, for at every moment you cherish world-criticism. Each fleeting moment embodies your world-criticism. Therefore, my mind, I do not and cannot believe you when you tell me that you love the world.

O my heart, I do not and cannot believe you when you tell me that the world does not need you. The world does need you, for the world needs oneness. In oneness abides satisfaction, and it is in you, O heart, it is with you, that satisfaction can and will dawn here on earth. Therefore, O heart, I do not and cannot believe you when you tell me that the world does not need you. The world needs you at every moment, for it is you who embody satisfaction in boundless measure. The world needs you, needs you, O my heart.

My mind’s illumining defeat in the battlefield of life is the most valuable contribution that I shall make to the world at large, for the amazing profits of blossoming posterity. My heart’s sweeping victory in the battlefield of life is the richest bequest I shall leave behind me here on earth smilingly and unreservedly when my life’s final hour thunderously strikes.

Receptivity³

The way we live either increases or decreases our power of receptivity. There are two ways of living: wrong living and right living. There are two kinds of human beings on earth: the ignorance-lover and the God-lover. The ignorance-lover wrongly depends on wrong living. The God-lover rightly depends on right living.

Receptivity is available in two worlds: the desire-world and the aspiration-world. In the desire-world, receptivity is found in the thick jungle of attachment. In the aspiration-world, receptivity is found in the beautiful garden of devotedness.

Receptivity succeeds and receptivity proceeds. When we invoke God the divine Light, our receptivity succeeds in the battlefield of life. When we invoke God the supreme Delight, our receptivity proceeds along Eternity’s all-fulfilling and all-satisfying Road.

Measureless and fathomless receptivity we can have if we are not afraid of the unknown and if we are ready to love the Unknowable.

Here we are at Harvard. Harvard embodies unparalleled capacities, and one unparalleled, sky-vast capacity is its sea-deep receptivity. Again, receptivity comes from God’s Compassion-Eye, and God’s Compassion-Eye comes from God’s Oneness-Heart. This Oneness-Heart each seeker can have, provided he claims God’s Oneness-Heart as his own, very own. Once a seeker can claim God’s Oneness-Heart as his very own, his will be the measureless and fathomless receptivity. And inside his fathomless receptivity, at every moment what will loom large is God’s own Transcendental Vision.

Surrender⁴

What do I surrender? I surrender my unconscious body, my ferocious vital, my doubting mind and my fearful heart.

To whom do I surrender all this? I surrender all this to my Beloved Supreme, to Him alone, whom I claim to be my only sweet Dream and my only pure Reality.

No pretence, no pretence! I do not want to pretend that I have made my surrender complete and perfect. No, my entire being I still have not surrendered to the dictates of my Beloved Supreme. My complete surrender, my unconditional surrender, is still a far cry. Yet I do feel that there shall come a time when my entire being will be His, only His. Then only will my surrender be complete, and will I be His Vision-Reality. For complete surrender what I need is intense aspiration, the constantly mounting flame that climbs up to reach not only the unknown but also the Unknowable.

Lo, I have made my surrender to my Lord Supreme complete. Now, what have I learned from my complete surrender? Previously I thought that God is all Power, but now I clearly see that His Power is nothing other than His Love. I see that I have surrendered not to God the Power but to God the Love, to God who is all Love. This is not my mind’s hallucination but my heart’s illumination.

Before, I thought that I had many enemies. I did not want to surrender to anybody for I thought that the entire world was my enemy. But now I clearly see that all along I had only one enemy, and that enemy was myself. Now that I have surrendered my very existence to my Lord Supreme, I have no enemies — not even myself. I have only oneness-friends inside the Heart of my universal Oneness-Friend: my Source, my Beloved Supreme.

Before my life of surrender, I wanted world-attention in order to please myself. Now I wish only for my Lord’s constant examination so that I can perfect myself in every way. My new life of surrender will make the world feel that unconditional surrender to the Lord Supreme is not an impossible task. No, it is a task that every human being will eventually have to perform so that perfection will become his outer name and satisfaction will become his inner name.

Now that I have surrendered, I am enjoying vastness in infinite measure. Surrender is my oneness with Eternity’s Peace, Infinity’s Bliss and Immortality’s Love.

Part II — Interview on the Steve Powers Show, WMCA-AM Radio

Steve Powers: I’d like to introduce you to a special guest. His name is Sri Chinmoy. I welcome you, Sri Chinmoy. My first question is: when did you feel that you wanted to devote your life to spirituality?

Steve Powers: Do you think that is in every person?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, it is within every person, but one has to cultivate this reality. It is like a muscle. If you take exercise, then you develop the muscle.

Steve Powers: Why is that not more natural to us? Shouldn’t that just come naturally?

Sri Chinmoy: It comes naturally, but the difficulty is that we have been wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance for millennia. Then there comes a time when we start walking along the right path. Once we are well established in our path, it becomes normal and spontaneous.

Steve Powers: Why do we have so many problems finding that path? Especially in our society today, people are awfully confused. People do not know which way to go, what to believe in, what not to believe in, what is the truth, what is not the truth, what is good and what is evil. And there is such tremendous input into our minds of new ideas that it’s difficult for us to know what is good and what is not.

Steve Powers: You are not an anti-intellectual as such, are you? You do believe in the intellect?

Steve Powers: Many people get up in the morning, swallow a quick breakfast, run out of the house and go to their subway, get to work and get completely involved with everyday survival. And before the end of the day it's pretty tough to sit back and take a spiritual view of what's going on because you have to go out there and hustle. You have to earn a living. Is there a way of integrating the spiritual life into what we call the economic life?

Steve Powers: Do you believe that God provides?

_Steve Power:_ Now, let us go to our phones. Good morning, you are live on WMCA.

Steve Powers: When you say, Sri Chinmoy, that someone should look at his Guru as an instrument of God, are you saying that he should accept whatever the Guru tells him without question?

Caller: If you learn peace and serenity from a Guru, you may have peace and serenity in your own mind and heart, but what do you do about people in the street who are not the same way?

Caller: How do you know whether you are speaking to God or just speaking to yourself and saying it's God?

Steve Powers: In other words, experience it in part yourself?

Steve Powers: I think one of the callers was asking, in effect: if I become sensitive and mellow and spiritual, will I not get eaten up on the street by the sharks? Do you know what I mean by that?

Steve Powers: One of the problems I think people have is that even if they pray and meditate or if they just try to be good, when they go out into the world they find there are people there just waiting to rip them off. They see no justice.

Steve Powers: You are telling me we can transform humanity as the direct result of prayer?

Sri Chinmoy: Prayer and meditation can solve all our problems. But we cannot expect immediate or overnight results. Everything takes time.

Steve Powers: But don’t you think people are living in very difficult circumstances who do pray, and then watch their children fall prey to drugs and crime and all sorts of abuses in our society?

Caller: I was brought up in my daily life to ask God to help me with the things that I wanted out of life. But I find that I don't have any of the things I wanted, and now God is asking me to do things for Him rather than to expect things from Him.

Caller: I have tried for several years to become a more spiritual person in my own way, with very little knowledge of it. I had one or two experiences which have frightened me. I don't understand them and yet I believe in them. I would like to ask Sri Chinmoy how I could continue to further my knowledge and develop myself so that I could begin to experience more.

Steve Powers: Sri Chinmoy, I know people who are most kind and gentle and yet have no belief in God. They seem to be fine human beings even though they have no interest in spirituality. From your point of view, do they need realisation of what you are talking about?

Caller: I was trying to give some healing to my father who was not too well, and I felt some energy moving in my hands. Am I right to feel that this and other kinds of experiences that I’ve had may be coming from God?

Sri Chinmoy: I do believe in the force of healing.

Steve Powers: And the source of the force?

Steve Powers: If there is a healing power, why do we need specific methods in order to heal? In other words, let's assume that God is the Source and He is capable of healing whomever He wishes. Why do certain people feel that they have to go through a number of incantations, wave the hand over the disturbed area four times to the right, three times to the left and so on? Why these systems?

Caller: I have intellectual pursuits, but I do believe in a very, very deep spiritual life and I have become much more of what I would call a human being. But the more you become that, the more you are eaten, as you said before, by the sharks, by the life around you. What is to be done?

Caller: If God is all-loving, why does He permit suffering?

Steve Powers: Nonetheless, the person who is suffering, in the common sense of the word, is in pain.

Steve Powers: If I drop a hammer on your foot, will you feel suffering or will you feel delight?

Caller: I recently made a decision to change my lifestyle and let my family and friends know I was living a spiritual life. Instantly I was besieged with a barrage of complaints and criticisms.

Caller: I had a deeper study of religion for about seven years, which gave me a closer relationship to God. I tried to see the good in everyone around me, always to see them as God, as spiritual beings, as good children. At this time I lost a son in an accident. How am I supposed to accept this in my life? Is it God's plan, or is this my reward for being good?

Steve Powers: But don’t you still suffer the loss on a human level?

Part III — Questions and answers

Question: What is the best way to be in a divine consciousness when we are working very hard?

Question: What is the difference between determination and will-power?

Question: Is there a difference between 'will' and 'will-power'?

Question: How can we get will-power from determination?

Question: How can I best inspire others to lead a spiritual life?

Question: Guru, when you want to express the divine music of the Beyond, do you feel that the instruments that you play — such as esraj and flute — convey properly what you want to convey?

Question: Will the inner music ever be heard outwardly on earth?

Question: Will it ever happen that they are able to offer it?

Sri Chinmoy: The inner world will always remain higher, deeper and better than the outer world. But in the process of time, as we evolve and everything evolves, music will also become better and better, and the expression of music will become far better. The things that I am unable to express today will be expressed by me at some later date, or by future generations. What is really beyond our imagination today will someday be expressed by Tom, Dick and Harry. But, unfortunately or fortunately, the inner world will also have a higher music at that time.

Question: I know it helps my meditation to have an inner cry, but when I have the inner cry I always feel that I can cry more.

There are two kinds of satisfaction. One is the satisfaction you get after eating the whole fruit; another is the satisfaction you get from knowing that you have something delicious to eat at some other time.

Question: Guru, whenever a really spiritual or devoted feeling comes to me, I always sneeze. This breaks the mood completely and I never regain it.

Question: I take the vibration of other people easily. How can I transform this into a divine quality?

It is when we do not have a sufficient amount of purity that we suffer from the vibrations of others. It does not mean that you have no purity. But when the amount of purity that you have is not enough, then it is very easy for others to attack you.

When you are physically weak, you become susceptible to colds, let us say. In the spiritual world, a cold is impurity. If you become spiritually strong, if you can surcharge yourself with purity, then you will not be susceptible to the vibration of others. Their vibration will not be able to hurt you. You do not have to try to transform or illumine this capacity. You just maintain your purity, and they will not be able to attack you.

It is not good at all to take the vibration from others. You have enough headaches. The load that you have on your shoulders is very, very heavy, so why take others’ loads on your shoulders as well? The best thing is to take care of your own burden, and not to accept anybody’s vibration — good or bad. Remain absolutely neutral and unperturbed. Remain in your own height or in your own depth.

Question: Why can't we get up in the morning?

Question: Is that why it is harder to get up after you have been asleep for a longer time? Sometimes when I sleep for only a short time it is easier to get up.

Question: Are there certain times in the day when you should not sleep?

Question: If we slept for two or three hours at night and then got up for a half hour and read your books or meditated and prayed and then went back to sleep, would that be better?

You have to train the body in such a way that as soon as you go to bed, in five minutes or ten minutes you will fall asleep, before the mind starts thinking of incidents and events. Just think one sweet thought of me — that I gave you a smile one day, or something else. Remember that smile and swim in the sea of that smile as you go to sleep. Anything that gives you joy, that very thing remember. If you can remember that joy for five minutes as you go to sleep, from that joy, peace will enter into you.

Joy gives you peace. Even if you went to bed after quarrelling and fighting, or if unfortunate things have taken place at your job or with your friends, think of my smile, or of how I appreciated you once.