The Chandogya Upanishad says

The Chandogya Upanishad says: Think of yourself as a traveller. You have lost your way, and a robber attacks you. He takes away all your wealth, and binds your eyes. Then he takes you to a faraway place and leaves you there. Originally you had vision, and you were able to move around, but now your fate is deplorable. You cannot see, you cannot walk, you are crying like a helpless child, but there is no rescue.

Now suppose someone comes and unties your eyes and goes away. You will then be able to see the paths all around you, but you will not know which one is the right one for you and, even if you did, you would not be able to walk on it because your legs and arms are still bound. This is the condition of the seeker who wants to realise God by himself. Now suppose someone comes, unties you completely, and shows you which path will take you home. This person has really done you a favour. If you have faith in him and confidence in yourself, then you will reach your Destination swiftly and surely. If you have faith in him, but do not have confidence in your own capacity to reach the Goal, then he will go along to help you. The same Teacher who freed you from blindness and showed you the path will go with you, inside you, to inspire you. He will act as your own aspiration to lead you towards your Destined Goal.

If you get this kind of help from a spiritual Master, then your life can be of significance, your life can bear fruit, and you can run the fastest towards the Goal. Otherwise, you will walk today on this path, tomorrow on that path, and the following day on some other path. You may have the capacity to walk, but you will come back again and again to your starting point, frustrated and disappointed. Along with capacity, if you know the right path and have a true Master to help you, who can prevent you from reaching your Destined Goal? Once you reach your Destined Goal, you reach God’s Heights and start manifesting God’s Light here on earth. You are fulfilled — fulfilled multiplicity in Unity’s embrace.

The Upanishads: the Crown of India’s; Ananda 2019-10-10

The beauty of a sweet hope

The beauty of a sweet hope
Has to be transformed into
The duty of a powerful promise,
And the promise has to be manifested
As the divinity of an infallible fulfilment.

Sri Chinmoy: Gratitude-Flower-Hearts (February 1987); Dream, Always Dream: Agnikana Group

Something Divine Within

If you have something divine within,
It is only a matter of time
Before it will manifest itself
And be received,
Consciously or unconsciously,
By the entire world.

Sri Chinmoy: Ten Thousand Flower-Flames (7918); Dak Eseche Call Has Come: Ananda

Who is fit for Yoga?

Who is fit for Yoga? You are fit for Yoga. He is fit for Yoga. I am fit for Yoga. All human beings without exception are fit for Yoga.

The spiritual fitness can be determined by our feeling of oneness, our desire for oneness. The tiniest drop has a right to feel the boundless ocean as its very own, or to cry to have the ocean as its very own. Such is the case with the individual soul and the Universal Soul.

Where is God and where am I? God is on the third floor and I am on the first floor. I come up to the second floor. He comes down to the second floor. We both meet together. I do not forget to wash His Feet with my tears of delight. Nor does He forget to place me in His Heart of infinite Compassion.

What is Yoga? Yoga is self-conquest. Self-conquest is God-realisation. He who practises Yoga does two things with one stroke: he simplifies his whole life and he gets a free access to the Divine.

In the field of Yoga we can never pretend. Our aspiration must ring true. Our whole life must ring true. Nothing is impossible for an ardent aspirant. A higher Power guides his steps. God’s adamantine Will is his safest protection. No matter how long or how many times he blunders, he has every right to come back to his own spiritual home. His aspiration is a climbing flame. It has no smoke, it needs no fuel. It is the breath of his inner life. It leads him to the shores of the Golden Beyond. The aspirant, with the wings of his aspiration, soars into the realms of the Transcendental.

God is infinite and God is Omnipresent. To a genuine aspirant, this is more than mere belief. It is the Reality without a second.

Now let us focus our attention on the spiritual life. It is a mistaken idea that the spiritual life is a life of austerity and a bed of thorns. No, never! We came from the Blissful. To the Blissful we shall return with the spontaneous joy of life. It seems difficult because we cater to our ego. It looks unnatural because we cherish our doubts.

The realisation of God is the goal of our life. It is also our noblest heritage. God is at once our Father and our Mother. As our Father He observes; as our Mother He creates. Like a child, we shall never give up demanding of our Mother, so that we can win our Mother’s Love and Grace. How long can a mother go on unheeding her child’s cry? Let us not forget that if there is anybody on earth on whom all human beings have a full claim, it is the Mother aspect of the Divine. She is the only strength of our dependence; she is the only strength of our independence. Her Heart, the home of infinitude, is eternally open to each individual.

We should now become acquainted with the eight significant strides that lead a seeker to his destination. These strides are: Yama, self-control and moral abstinence; Niyama, strict observance of conduct and character; Asana, various body postures which help us enter into a higher consciousness; Pranayama, systematic breathing to hold a rein on the mind; Pratyahara, withdrawal from the sense-life; Dharana, the fixation of our consciousness on God, joined by all parts of the body; Dhyana, meditation, the untiring express train speeding toward the Goal; and Samadhi, trance, the end of Nature’s dance, the total merging of our individual consciousness into the infinite Consciousness of the Transcendental Supreme.

Yoga is our union with Truth. There are three unfolding stages of this union. In the first stage man has to feel that God needs him as much as he needs God. In the second stage man has to feel that, without him, God does not exist even for a second. In the third and ultimate stage man has to realise that he and God are not only eternally One, but also equal, all-pervading and all-fulfilling.

Sri Chinmoy: Yoga and the spiritual life; Param Pitar: Infinity’s Sky Group

When I think of the suffering that is going on in the world

Question: I feel unhappy when I think of the suffering that is going on in the world, that children are starving and things like that.

Sri Chinmoy: The fact that you are suffering is a sign that you have a very big heart. You feel sorry that although you are able to feed your children, your neighbour is unable to feed her children. God has given you what you need while He has not given somebody else the things that she needs. But we have to know that we are all human beings. Our compassion is good, but the amount of compassion that we have is next to nothing when compared to God’s Compassion. God created you and it is His Compassion that has given you money and material wealth. Do you not think that since He is Infinite, He also has the capacity to give the same amount of material wealth to others? There is a special purpose in what He is doing. Why He has not given wealth to others, He alone knows. In this incarnation God has given you money, material wealth, a husband and children and many other things. But who knows in your past incarnation what kind of suffering you may have gone through? And what will happen in the next incarnation, we also do not know.

It is like a game. Suppose one of your team’s players has been attacked by your opponents and is badly injured. Naturally you will feel sorry that you have lost a player from your team. But if you constantly think of the player who is suffering, how will you be able to play the game? God wants you to play your own game. You have lost a partner in the game, but you must also remember that in this game, your team needs you badly.

What your side needs is your joy. Your cheerfulness is like the strength of a lion, the strength of an elephant. When you identify yourself with suffering humanity, your heart may be big, but your cheerfulness is lost. It is true that your team-mate has fallen, that humanity is weak. But when your own cheerfulness goes away, then you become weak in a different way. You cannot make your own progress. If you are dwelling on the thought that people are sick, or people are poor, then while they are weak in one way, you become weak in another way by losing your own joy. So instead of one weak soldier, now there are two.

Again, there are many people who feel sorry for the suffering of others and it is right to feel sorry for others. But in some cases the after-effect is often a kind of inner revolt. We ask, “What kind of God is He who cannot take care of His children?” Instead of accepting God’s Will and surrendering to it with the knowledge that He knows what is best for all of His children, we blame God and criticise Him.

When we see suffering, we must immediately throw unhappiness from our minds and make our minds clear. We must feel that this is an experience God is having in and through those people and that when the time comes, when the hour strikes, those people also will be given material wealth. You may sympathise for a second, but you must maintain your cheerfulness; you must make your own progress. Your progress means your joy. When you make your own progress, you will have joy that you will be able to spread all over the world.

If we try to make our fastest progress, we will become one with God. When we go into our highest, automatically real power enters from the highest into the earth-consciousness. At that time, the suffering of humanity is helped. The higher we go the more we spread our wings. We spread our wings and can carry all of humanity. In this way we can really save ourselves and humanity. All the spiritual Masters do this.

Sri Chinmoy: The Illuminations of Life-Clouds; Dharatale: Shindhu

I am sharing

Judge nothing;
You will be happy.
My own personal experience
l am sharing with you.

Try to forgive everything;
You will be happier.
My own personal realisation
l am sharing with you.

Love everything;
You will be happiest.
Gods own personal Secret
I am sharing with you.

Sri Chinmoy: The Goal is won (180); Shunya hate: Agnikana’s Group

Progress

My very desire
To make progress
Is the first step
Of my progress.

Sri Chinmoy: Twenty Seven Thousand Aspirations-Plants (21870); Tomara Charane: Temple-Song-Hearts

 

Spirituality and profit

Question: If you work for a company and are selling a product, you are trying to get material gain for the company. How do you reconcile that and put your energies into it?

Sri Chinmoy: The important thing you have to know is whether or not you are participating in deception. Suppose you are selling sugar for a company, and you know that they have mixed something into the sugar to deceive the customers. Then, if you really want to be spiritual, you must not work for this kind of company. But if you sell something for what you call profit, that is not deception. If you buy something for two dollars and sell it for two dollars, then how are you going to earn your livelihood? You have to sell it for two-fifty or three dollars. Profit is not deception. But how much profit? If you buy something for two dollars and sell it for twenty, then you are just exploiting people. During the war, people knew that the price of things would go very high, so they bought things for six dollars that should sell for twelve dollars at most. Then they were able to sell them for ninety dollars. Just because something was unavailable and people wanted it badly, this kind of exploitation was possible. So you have to know if you are deceiving or exploiting your customer, and you have to strike a balance between exploitation and stupidity.

Sri Chinmoy: Politics and Spirituality: Can they go together?; Alor Panel: Mountain Silence

 

 

Love-light

God’s Love-Call
Has transformed my animal past.

God’s Love-Call
Is illumining my human present.

God’s Love-Call
Will immortalise my divine future.

Sri Chinmoy: Ten Thousand Flower-Flames (133); Every Time You Love: Sahadeva Ensemble

Satisfaction takes birth unseen

Satisfaction takes birth
Unseen within.
We see it only
When it dies without.

Sri Chinmoy: Ten Thousand Flower-Flame (2296); Sri Chinmoy plays flute