Anger

Your letter was all about your anger. You are positive that your anger is of the quickest. I challenge you with a mighty “No!” I have studied your nature. I wish to say that your fear, especially fear of God, is of the quickest. You say that you have, at long last, discovered that your worst enemy is anger. Anger is not your worst enemy. Doubt, undoubtedly doubt, self-doubt, is by far your superlative foe. However, I am not saying that doubt and fear have caused your anger. I only say that you have to pay more attention to doubt and fear.

You wanted to know if spiritual persons can experience anger. I tell you, not only spiritual persons but even the great spiritual Masters can have anger. Some have realised God, but they have yet to conquer their lower nature. Until they have conquered their lower nature, anger can and does torture them, their outer life.

Again, I must tell you that it is extremely difficult for others to know whether the spiritual Master’s anger is genuine or whether it is just a clever pretence. Sometimes a Master feels that by expressing tempestuous anger to his disciples, whom he considers to be his very own, he can destroy their ignorance-night sooner than if he had employed any other means. True, at times he may express animal-like anger. It is equally true that his anger is immediately followed by Compassion-Flood. This Compassion of his is pure Nectar. Drink it, drink it to your heart’s content. Lo, your life is changed. Totally and for good.

Dear Ethel, your last question is: how to conquer your anger? There are various ways to conquer your anger successfully and gloriously. Suppose right now you are angry with your husband. By the way, I am sure you are amused when I call your husband Socrates and you Xanthippe of the twentieth century. Yes, sometimes you get angry, terribly angry, with my Socrates. When this happens, the first thing you have to do is to repeat aloud three times: “Perhaps he is right, perhaps he is right, perhaps he is right.” Then, silently, you repeat three times: “He is right, he is right, he is right.” Then you say aloud: “In this case, I might have done the same. In this case, I might have done the same. In this case, I might have done the same.” Then, silently, you say: “In this case, I too would have done the same. In this case, I too would have done the same. In this case, I too would have done the same.”

By this time, anger will lose all its hunger for you and it will not be at all interested in devouring you. It will leave you, it will go elsewhere to knock at the door of somebody else.

You have launched into the path of spirituality, dear Xanthippe; you have been meditating. You are making good headway. For some time, concentrate only on divine Peace and leave aside all other divine qualities. During your meditation, try to bring down Peace, sublime and solid, from Above. Your enemy is anger. Anger’s enemy is Peace. Anger openly hates Peace. If you invoke Peace soulfully, then anger will hate you ruthlessly and never will it enter into you, your life, consciously or unconsciously. One thing more: before you invoke Peace, surrender your life-breath ten times to the Will of the Supreme. There is no other way to become one with the Will of the Supreme than to make a conscious surrender to the Will of the Supreme. Your surrender is your safeguard. Right in front of your surrender stands God with His Omnipresence. With your surrender is God’s Omniscience. And in your surrender is God’s Omnipotence.

Anger: just put a ‘d’ before anger and it becomes danger. I do not want you to play with danger, but I want you to play constantly with your soul’s surrender, your heart’s surrender, your mind’s surrender and your body’s surrender.

Your anger-chasing friend,

Chinmoy

Dec. 20, 1968