Month: September 2019

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Impurity

Question: Is it possible for a person to become unintentionally involved in the vibrations of someone who is impure?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, it is quite possible. In spite of being absolutely pure oneself, one can become a victim of others impurity. What actually happens is that the person who has purity does not have enough inner strength to prevent others? Impurity from entering into his system. That is why spiritual teachers very often tell aspirants not to mix with people who are not pure. The aspirants may be absolutely pure themselves, but if they are not also very strong, then they are helpless. Their purity can be torn to pieces like a rose. The rose is beautiful to look at, for it is the embodiment of purity. But if someone wants to, he can easily tear the rose to pieces.

In our day-to-day life we very often come across people and places that are very impure. While walking along the street, a spiritual person may sense tremendous impurity at a particular spot where an ordinary person may not notice anything at all. To an ordinary person all places are practically the same.

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Rhe Wisdom of Sri Chinmoy; Willingness-and-eagerness: Agnikana’s Group

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Satisfaction

Each human life is a song. A seeker sings a new song every day. He sings and he discovers. What does he discover? He discovers a body full of enthusiasm, a vital full of determination, a mind full of peace, a heart full of bliss and, finally, a life full of satisfaction.

Satisfaction is needed in the animal life, the human life and the divine life. But the satisfaction that we get in the animal life is not true satisfaction. In the human life also we do not get true satisfaction. Only in the divine life do we get true satisfaction.

In the animal life we try to get satisfaction through destruction. In the human life we try to acquire satisfaction through possession. In the divine life we try to receive satisfaction from illumination. Through destruction the satisfaction that we get is not and cannot be the real satisfaction. Through possession the satisfaction that we get is not and cannot be the real satisfaction. Through illumination the satisfaction that we get is undoubtedly the true satisfaction.

We are all seekers here; we pray and meditate. Inside our prayer, inside our meditation, we always try to see the face of satisfaction. When we pray, we try to go up and achieve satisfaction. When we meditate, we try to bring Light and Delight to the fore from within ourselves, and enjoy satisfaction here inside our body, vital, mind and heart. When we pray, we try and cry to receive something from Above so that our thirst can be quenched. When we meditate, we invoke our own higher realities to manifest in and through us.

Meditation is preceded by concentration and followed by contemplation. Concentration, meditation and contemplation go together. Concentration is the speed, meditation is the confidence and contemplation is the victory. We can safely say that concentration has and is the deer-speed, meditation has and is the elephant-confidence and contemplation has and is the lion-victory.

It is always advisable for us to have speed, for we have to value the goal. The goal is not stationary. Today’s goal will be tomorrow’s starting point. We are in the process of going towards an ever-transcending, ever-illumining and ever-fulfilling goal, so we have to pay all attention to our speed, to how fast we can go.

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Sri Chinmoy: Everest-Aspiration; I fly in the Heart-Sky: Mountain Silence

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Austerity versus wisdom

Once I was walking in the gully at Aspiration-Ground, and I saw myself as a skeleton in a past life. I was practising such austerity at that time! I was absolutely all bones. I looked so ugly! My appearance was what you would call ugliness incarnate. I saw only my bones — I was thinner than the thinnest. I passed the austerity-examination in that incarnation.

What good does austerity do? If I want to go to God, shall I cut off my legs and say, “See how much I love You, God! See, I have cut off my legs! Without legs I am coming to You.” God will say, “Why did I give you legs?”

God has given us air. Some people meditate while practising severe breath control. God will say, “Why did I give them air? Why did I create things that are not going to be used?”

In every aspect of life God says, “Be normal, be natural. Be normal and natural. Then go forward, go forward, go forward and enter into the divine life.”

Not by cutting off our legs, not by practising austerity shall we go forward. Those days in the Himalayan caves belong to the past. Those austerities do not apply now.

Sri Ramakrishna said, “You have to cross the water. The boat is in the water, but the boat is not affected by the water.” The boat is carrying people across the water. The boat will not sink. Do we need to go under the water in order to prove that we care so much for our destination? No! Wisdom saves us by telling us to enter into the boat.

Again, wisdom may tell us, “Recite this prayer fifty times or seventy times once a year.”2 But it may happen that even that we cannot do! Then God says, “I need a special kind of yoga for these people.” He is simplifying, simplifying and simplifying the course to the extreme, but we want more simplification. God is so kind to us. He has already simplified the game for us to such an extent. Even so, He says, “All right, all right, you people are not serious enough in your spiritual life, but at least do this much.” Even that if we do not do, God says, “I shall have to create another course for you that is easier than the easiest!”

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Sri Chinmoy: Our Sweetest Oneness; Asar Age: Mountain Silence

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Grace and fate

Question: Can Gods grace change fate?

Sri Chinmoy: Fate can and must be changed. For that, what is required is Gods grace plus personal effort. There are some seekers who feel, “If I care for Gods grace, what necessity is there to make personal effort?” But they are mistaken. Personal effort will never stand in the way of Gods descending grace. Personal effort expedites the descent of Gods grace. God can give us all that He Wants without even an iota of personal effort from us. He says, “It is for your satisfaction that I ask you to make this little personal effort.” When we can make this personal effort, our whole life will be supercharged with divine pride: “See what I have done for God!” Our conscious oneness with God, who is infinite, who is eternally immortal, prompts us to do something for our Dearest and not for our ego.

If we sincerely make personal effort, God is bound to be thrilled with us. Why? Because He can tell the world, “My child, My chosen instrument, has done this for Me and that for Me.” Through personal effort we can make our existence on earth worthy and, at the same time, we can make God proud of us.

Ultimately, personal effort has to grow into dynamic self-surrender. When we offer the results of our aspiration and inner urge to God, that is called self-surrender. If we do not offer the results to God and just lie like a dead body at His Feet, letting Him work for us, in us, and through us, it is wrong. God does not want an inactive body, a dead soul. He wants someone who is active, dynamic and aspiring; someone who wants to be energized so that he can do something for God; someone who wants to realize God and manifest all the divine qualities here on earth.

Surrender is our ultimate achievement. There is no difference between Gods grace and our unconditional surrender. God: grace and our unconditional surrender are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. If God did not give us that kind of grace, then we could not make unconditional surrender. To achieve Gods grace is a real achievement. To make unconditional surrender is also a real achievement.

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The Wisdom of Sri Chinmoy; Peace..Constant-Grace:  Anahata

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To accept our age

Question: As I am getting older, I am finding it harder and harder to accept my age. Can you say something that will allow me to better accept the fact?

Sri Chinmoy: The moment you think of your old age, you destroy all your inspiration, aspiration, joy and enthusiasm. The moment you think of your old age, that very moment is your death. You have to feel that everything is a series of experiences. Do not take life and death as two separate things: this is life, that is death — no! Death is just a passage we are going through. There is life, and on the way we meet death. In the Eternal Life, there is life, then death, then again life. It is a game that is going on.

Do not think of your old age. Think of your life as a road that is twenty-six miles long — a marathon — and then divide it into four or five stages. In the beginning, say for twenty years, you were learning and learning and learning. Then, in the second stage, you were learning and at the same time you were sharing your wisdom. Now you are in the third or fourth stage. So you have to see what you could do at the age of twenty, what you could do at the age of fifty and what you can do at the age of sixty. Do not think that what you did at the age of twenty is infinitely more important than what you are doing at the age of sixty. When you were twenty years old, God experienced Himself in and through you as a great student. Then He experienced Himself as a budding professor. When you turned forty, God experienced something totally different in and through you. At the age of sixty, He is experiencing something else again.

It is a game. At this moment, God is playing a particular role in and through you. In a few years, in the same Cosmic Play, He can play another role. After another twenty years, He can play yet another role. We make a serious mistake by feeling that when we are fifty or sixty the role that God is playing through us is sometimes not as important as the role that He gave us to play at the age of twenty. We have to feel that whatever role God plays through us at the age of twenty, forty or sixty is equally important. For Him, sixty is not old age. After the age of eighty or even one hundred, when you go away to the other world, you will see that there He is still playing His role inside your soul.

Now we always see the physical. We talk about our physical age, but the truth is that the moment we take a physical body, death becomes an inevitability. We may die tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Again, inside the body, if you can be in touch with the soul, then you can take the body as a toy. You are playing with the toy, and then afterwards you are finished with the toy. This is always how it should be.

If you take it in that way, then the mind does not come into the picture. Use only your heart. Otherwise your mind will come forward and expect you to be able to do what you did at the age of twenty, to have the same youth and enthusiasm. But now that you are more advanced in years, wisdom is dawning in your life. When you are at the age of sixty, then you have the wisdom to say, “Over the years, I have not prayed enough to God. I came from Him; I will go back to Him. At that time, will I be able to show Him my physical capacity, my mental capacity or my vital capacity? God will say, ‘Enough! I have seen your physical capacity, your vital capacity and your mental capacity. Now show Me your psychic capacity, your heart’s capacity, your inner capacity. Let Me see how much you have really loved Me.’ “

You are at the age of sixty, but you have to forget about being sixty. You are playing a new role; you have got a new task. How much are you ready to pray and meditate and lead the spiritual life? Do not think of all the mistakes that you have made as mistakes as such, but think that you have played a certain role and now it is over. If you start thinking of all your past mistakes, then it will only be an added burden for you. Instead just say, “I went there, and I had an experience.” Now wisdom has to come to the fore, and you will not do the same thing again because you did not find your goal inside those experiences. Now that you are sixty, only think of spreading your wings. You are already flying, but you have to spread your wings. How? By loving God and serving Him inside mankind. You should not say, “I am old. I do not have the capacity I used to have.” Instead you should say, “God does not want me to have my former capacity because God does not want to play that role in me any more. Now He wants me to dive deep within, as deep as possible. He wants me to have inner experiences to share with mankind.” Is that not infinitely more important than what you did in your youth?

Again, everything has its own importance. The experiences that God gave you at the age of twenty or forty are also valuable. If a child does not have enthusiasm at the age of four or five, then will he get it at the age of fifty or sixty? Even if he gets it, it will not be the same because it is not coming slowly from a tender age. All of a sudden the tree is looking nice but while the tree was growing, when it was a tender plant, it did not look nice at all. So, every phase of life is equally important because our good qualities must develop slowly, slowly, slowly. If the seed does not germinate and become a tender plant, how can it become a huge banyan tree? Similarly, how can we think of becoming one with God if we have not prayed and meditated for many years? Before we took human incarnation, we were one with God. But He made us a tiny drop. Then He told us to expand, expand, expand and become the ocean. It is a continuous growth, a continuous expansion.

The mind is never to be used at any time. If the mind is used, then you are finished. When you are ten years old, the mind will make you feel that you are as old as ninety years! Only think that at this particular stage of life you are supposed to do something. Then after ten or fifteen years you are supposed to do something else. Continuously a new game is starting, a new part you have to play. Each time you are given a new role, you have to play it well. When you become a huge tree, at that time more responsibility comes. A tree has to give so much, so much. Under the tree at first only one pilgrim can stay. Later many individuals can come and stay. Finally, the tree has to feel the responsibility of giving shade, protection and shelter to all. The higher you go, the more shelter, protection and illumination you have to give to others. In terms of human age, you may be only sixty or seventy, but in terms of divine light and divine wisdom you will become hundreds and hundreds of years old.

When it is a matter of light, there are no earthly years involved. Light, delight, peace and so on do not belong to an earthly calendar. They came from Infinity, they remain in Infinity and they will always remain in Infinity. We have to consciously try to grow into that Infinity. Our life-river is flowing, flowing, flowing and entering into the ocean. Do not take the life-river as something that can be divided into years. It is a oneness-flow that is going towards the infinite Light. The important thing is not to use the mind when age is descending upon you. Only use the heart. Just say, “At this point I have to blossom in this way; at that time I had to blossom in a different way. A few years from now I will have to blossom in a totally different way.” Each moment has its own most significant beauty. When the time comes, when your life-flower is fully blossomed, then it will be able to give much more joy and fragrance to mankind and be of more help to sincerely aspiring seekers.

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Sri Chinmoy answers part. 21, Father O Father: Silence-Hearts