My captain commands, "Go on!"¹⁹

My captain commands, "Go on! Go on! Go on!" The captain is the Lord Supreme within us. The captain has commanded, "Children, go on, go on." But right now we have become inseparably one with the body, the vital, the mind and the heart.

The human body tells the seeker in us, "Look, we have become one. Let us tell God that we wish to sleep for some time and then we shall accept Him, we shall accept His command." So the human body and the seeker tell God that they will enjoy sleep for a short while and then they will listen to God's dictates.

God immediately says to the human body and the seeker in us that they can do so. If they want to sleep, they can sleep. But after some time they have to wake up; they have to accept God and walk along the road of Light and Delight. So the body and the seeker start to sleep and sleep and sleep. They do not want to wake up. Sometimes they forget to get up; sometimes they deliberately do not get up. Therefore, they do not proceed along the road of Light and Delight to the Golden Shores of the Beyond.

The vital and the seeker within us say to God, "Lord, we shall listen to Your command. But before that, allow us to fight, struggle and win. That is to say, before we proceed, before we march on towards the ultimate Goal, let us dominate and lord it over the world for a few days, a few months, a few years. After that, we shall definitely abide by Your command; we shall walk, march and run towards the destined Goal."

God says to the vital and the seeker, "Granted. But don't forget that after you have fought with the world and won your supremacy, after you have dominated the world in your own way, you have to walk along the road of Eternity to reach perfection in life."

Both the seeker in us and the vital in us then fight against the world and bring the world under their feet. They dominate the world and they are satisfied. But then they don't want to walk along the road any farther. They don't want to reach the destined Goal. They are satisfied. They have forgotten the promise they made to God that after they enjoyed their supremacy they would walk along the road to reach the highest Truth and Light.

When the mind and the seeker become one, they say to God, "Lord, we shall definitely listen to You. You want us to march on along the road, and we shall do so. But before that, please allow us to think, to judge, to see if the world deserves our faith or our doubt. Let us spend some time either in doubting the world or in having faith in the world, in thinking of ourselves or in thinking of the world. When all this is done, we shall without fail proceed along Eternity's road. To please You, to fulfil Your command, we shall without fail reach the highest Height."

God, out of His infinite Bounty, says to the mind and the seeker in us, "Children, all right, I wish to fulfil your desire. But don't forget to fulfil My desire after you have fulfilled your own desire. You have to walk far, farther, farthest. You have to walk along Eternity's road in order to reach the highest Goal."

So the mind and the seeker within us start thinking of the world, thinking about the world within them and the world without. Then day and night they start doubting the world, or occasionally they exercise their faith in the world. That is enough for them. They become satisfied and totally forget their promise to God. They don't want to walk any more. They don't want the highest Truth, the highest Light, the highest Reality, the illumining Perfection and fulfilling Satisfaction.

So the body, the vital and the mind fail.

But the seeker in us also has the heart, and the heart has the seeker. They become friends. They are doubtful in the beginning whether they will be able to walk along this eternal road. They see that their brothers, the body, the vital and the mind, have totally failed. They had good intentions — they just wanted to sleep a little, they just wanted to dominate a little, they just wanted to doubt a little and then they were ready to please God in His own Way. But they failed. They did not keep their promises to God.

So the heart in us and the seeker in us are confused and worried when they start. They say to God, "We want to please You in Your own way, in spite of knowing that the rest of the members of our family have failed You. We would also like to come to You by doing something."

God says, "What is it?"

The seeker and the heart say, "We wish to identify ourselves with the achievements of the body, vital and mind."

God says, "Their achievements are nothing but frustration and destruction."

The heart says, "We know, but we are tempted to feel their frustration and destruction first, then immediately come to You for satisfaction. We will definitely start walking along Eternity's road, for we desperately need abiding satisfaction."

God says to the heart and the seeker, "Yes, My children. You can try."

So the heart becomes one with the body, the vital and the mind. Then the quality of the body, lethargy, the quality of the vital, aggression or supremacy, the quality of the mind, suspicion and division, all immediately enter into the heart! On the one hand, it was more than eager to please God in His own Way when it saw the confusion that the body, vital and mind had created by not doing so. But temptation arose in the aspiring human heart, and because of this temptation the heart became one, inseparably one, with the rest of the members of the family before it was in a position to offer its existence totally to the Supreme Pilot, the Captain Supreme.

So the heart and the seeker become helplessly and hopelessly one with the body, vital and mind for some time. Then, after having known and felt their suffering, torture and ignorance-night, the heart starts to cry out for Light and Truth. The body is satisfied with its achievements. The vital is satisfied with its achievements. The mind is satisfied with its achievements. But the heart, fortunately, is not satisfied with its achievements. The heart wants to achieve something else, something higher, something deeper, something more fulfilling and illumining. So the heart leaves the body, vital and mind and approaches God.

It says to God, "Lord, I am entirely Yours. Now tell me, shall I stay with You and receive Your Light while walking along the road, or shall I stay inside the body, the vital and the mind to cry for Your Light? Which do You want? Shall I give up my body-consciousness, shall I give up my vital-consciousness, shall I give up my mind-consciousness in order to please You? Or shall I remain inside them and invoke Your Light? Please tell me."

God says to the heart-seeker, "If you are really brave, if you feel that you can pray and meditate inside the lethargic body, the aggressive vital, the doubtful and suspicious mind, then I have no objection. But it is an almost impossible task. You have to come out of the body-consciousness. You have to come out of the vital-consciousness. You have to come out of the mental consciousness. First you have to be inundated with boundless Light, and then only can you enter the body-consciousness and change its lethargy into alertness and dynamism; then only can you change the aggression of the vital into a positive will for God-manifestation; then only can you change the mind's doubt and lack of faith into constant faith. If you want to please the young members of your family — your body, vital and mind — you have to first become strong and please Me. Heart, if you please Me in My own way, only then will the rest of the members of your family be pleased."

The heart fully accepts God's Command and wholeheartedly tries to fulfil God's Will; therefore, the heart becomes inseparably one with God's Will, and receives and achieves Light in abundant measure. Then God tells the heart to enter into the mind, to enter into the vital, to enter into the physical body for their illumination, and the heart enters. It suffers a lot because the body-consciousness does not want to accept the heart's light, the vital-consciousness does not want to accept the heart's light and the mental consciousness does not want to accept the heart's light.

But the heart in the meantime has developed boundless patience, and this patience is the lengthening of time itself. Patience is the constant expansion of time within us. So now the seeker and his heart are inundating the seeker's physical body, inundating his vital and inundating his mind, with the Light of the Supreme. They are not being compelled to do this by any outer forces or by the members of their family, but they are acting out of their inseparable inner oneness with the Lord Supreme who wants them to illumine the younger members of their family.

Here we are all seekers. Individually we seek, collectively we seek. We seek for Truth, we seek for Light, we seek for perfection within and without. In order to discover perfection in life, what we need is a flood of Light and Delight within us.

We have to know that what we have principally is the heart and the mind: the mind that is constantly bringing us the message of subtraction and division, and the heart that is constantly bringing us the message of addition and multiplication. It is through addition and multiplication that illumination, salvation, liberation, realisation and perfection evolve.

We are all seekers of the infinite Truth. Let us feel from now on that what we have is only the heart. The heart can not only fulfil the divine in us, but it can awaken the stone consciousness and the plant consciousness in us and transform the animal in us. It is the divine qualities of our heart that can awaken the stone life and plant life in us and at the same time, transform the animal in us, illumine the human in us and fulfil the divine in us. So let us try to become this heart which has the inner longing to fulfil God in all the members of our family.

[Sri Chinmoy sings _"My Captain commands, go on, go on"_]