If you can open your heart
as a flower to the sun,
God will enfold you,
Your entire bering,
In His universal Peace.
Daily music here.
Sri Chinmoy: Love (63), Dyuloke Bhuloke: Mountain Silence
God Is The Doer
According to Indian philosophy, there are three principal paths that lead to God-realisation: the path of love and devotion, or bhakti yoga; the path of knowledge, or jnana yoga; and path of selfless service, or karma yoga. „Karma” is a Sanskrit world wich means action. Karma yoga is action undertaken for the sake of the Supreme.
When we practise karma yoga, we try to make all our work a true dedicated service to the Supreme. In our day-to-day life, duty is something unpleasant, demanding and discouraging. When we are reminded of our duty, we lose all our spontaneous inner joy, we feel miserable. We feel that we could have used our life-energy for a better purpose. Simply because we do our work with our ego, pride and vanity, duty is painful, tedious and monotonous. Duty is pleasant, encouraging and inspiring when we do it for God’s sake. What we need to change is our attitude towards duty.
In general, I advise people to take their work, whatever it may be, as dedicated service. Everyone needs money. If we go to the grocery store with only our aspiration, the owner will not give us any food. If we offer to give him light, peace and bliss in exchange for food, he will just laugh. Money is necessary for us. But when we work, we have to know that we are working for a special purpose: to keep our body on earth and become a divine instrument.
If you are doing something unpleasant or boring and are not getting any joy, or if your work does not seem rewarding, you are bound to feel miserable if you think that it is you performing the action. But if you feel that Good, the Inner Pilot, is doing it in and through you, and that you are just His instrument, then you will lose your unconscious attachment to your work and get joy from what you are doing. If you feel that Somebody else is acting in and through you, then you will find abundant peace int he day-to-day activities that now seem unpleasant to you. At that time the burden of responsibility, the tension and the disheartening thoughts and ideas that plaque your mind will leave you.
In ordinarí work, people immediately expect something in return; they expect succes or fortune or advancement. But when someone practises karma yoga, he works most devotedly and soulfully without caring for the result. He knows that the result will come int he form of either success or failure; he accepts bot has an experience. Also, he feels that this experience is not actually his; it is the experience of God. When the seeker goes deep within, he sees that God Himself is the doer, the work and the result. When the seeker is just a beginner, he feels that God is the giver and he is the reciever. But when he becomes advanced, he feels that God Himself is always acting and axperiencing Himself in and through him.
„Thou hast the right to act, but claim not the fruits thereof.” Lord Krishna has given this massage int he Bhagavad Gita, the Song Celestial. If we see God’s Presence in each action, then see the action itself as God, and later the result – success or failure – as God, and finally the doer of the action as God, then all our problems are over.
I am singing and dancing
Because my Lord took care of
The planning.
Sri Chinmoy: Divine Hero, The green of the forest: Sri Chinmoy plays flute
Do you want to touch
Do you want to touch
God’s Heart?
Then become either
The beauty and fragrance
Of a flower
Or the cry and smile
Of a child.
Sri Chinmoy: Heart Garden (46), Chalbo Ami: Mountain Silence group
Have faith in yourself
Have faith in yourself.
You will have a new heart of assurance.
Have faith in God.
You will have a life of accomplishment.
Menthal path – path of the heart
Question: What do you mean when you talk about a mental path versus the path of the heart?
Sri Chinmoy: The difference is quite noticeable. When we live in the heart, with the heart and for the heart, we always feel we can accept the world and become part and parcel of the suffering world. But when we are in the mind, we start criticising others and thinking that we are perfect. If I remain in the mind, I will see you as imperfect and myself as perfect. But if I live in the heart, then I will feel that what you have and what you are I have to claim as my own, very own. If we remain in the heart, we become one. Your imperfections I must accept as my own imperfections. And if you also live in the heart, you will take my imperfections as your own imperfections. Then if you are happy because you have done something great, I will feel that it is I who have done it and vice-versa.
But when we are in the mind, we are constantly doubting others. We cannot accept others’ joy as our own. Immediately, jealousy, insecurity and impurity attack us. If I am in the heart, then immediately I feel that you are God’s creation. We have to love each other, we have to become one, inseparably one. In this way we can solve all our problems. Otherwise, if I start doubting you, whether you are a good person or not, then this mental argument never ends.
The feeling of oneness inside the heart, once it starts, never ends. Once we enter into the river, we see that the river is flowing into the ocean and finally it becomes the ocean itself. But if the river does not flow, it becomes a stagnant pool. The mind is always trying to see the negative qualities of others. Whose mind is happy when it sees somebody else achieving something glorious? Nobody’s. But if you live in the heart, you will act like a child. A child is so happy when his father achieves something and the father is so happy when his child achieves something. So the simple way is to follow the path of the heart.
Question: Thank you. That’s a useful distinction to make. Some traditions or some teachers have used the notion of the path of the mind to mean something like jnana yoga.
Sri Chinmoy: The mind needs illumination. There are two rooms. One is the heart-room; one is the mind-room. The heart-room already has light in it. So we have to enter into the heart-room and then take the light from there to the mind-room. But if we enter into the mind-room first and find that the mind-room is unlit, how are we going to bring light into it? We have to be wise. If we enter into the mind and stay there, we will never come to the heart-room. But if we enter into the heart-room, we will get illumination in abundant measure and then finally in measureless measure. Then only shall we enter into the mind-room. We are not going to neglect the mind-room. Only we have to be wise. For the time being, we have to remain inside the heart-room in order to collect light and bliss. Then there shall come a time when we shall enter into the mind-room. Nothing on earth will remain imperfect. But we have to be very wise. Only the things that are inspiring, aspiring and illumining we have to accept in the beginning.
Surrender
Question: What is the most important inner wealth that a seeker can have?
Sri Chinmoy: In the spiritual life our most precious wealth is surrender. We are born with surrender, so that no one is without this wealth in infinite measure. But unfortunately, some seekers are unable to use this wealth.
In our path, surrender is the most effective key to open the door of the Eternal. This surrender has to be vigilant, conscious and constant. Before each action is performed, while it is in the process of being performed and after it has been completely performed, the seeker has to feel the living breath of surrender. To whom? To the Inner Pilot.
Question: What is the meaning of conscious surrender?
Sri Chinmoy: The meaning of conscious surrender is to surrender our ignorance to our light, our imperfect nature to our perfect nature, our undivine consciousness to our divine consciousness. We have to know that although the feet and the head are in the same body, there comes a time when we see or feel that the feet are in deep ignorance, whereas the head is in light and delight. If the feet want to enjoy the light and delight that the head is enjoying, then they have to surrender their existence to the head. But before surrendering, the feet have to feel that they are part and parcel of the head. Similarly, when our lower consciousness is aware of the fact that it is part of the higher consciousness, the higher existence, then we can try to transform our lower nature into our higher nature.
It is like climbing up a tree: we have to climb up from the root at the bottom of the tree. When we reach the topmost bough, there we get the most delicious fruits. But if we don’t start at the root, if we don’t climb up right from the ground, then how are we going to get the fruits? While we are on the ground we have to know that there is fruit at the top.
Conscious surrender means awareness, awareness of our highest existence or our most aspiring part and awareness of our lowest existence, our least aspiring part. The moment our lowest existence surrenders itself to our highest existence, the lowest becomes completely one with the highest.
When earth surrenders, the unaspiring qualities in us surrender. To whom do they surrender? To Heaven. What is Heaven? Heaven is our aspiring part, our illumining part.
Today you are afraid
Today you are afraid
To do the right thing.
Tomorrow God will think
A million times
Before He will grant you
Another chance to do the right thing.
Clarion call
My eternal children sweet,
Hearken to my clarion call:
No fall there is, no fall,
Just quit, ignorance, quit.
Sri Chinmoy: The Dance of Life III. (14), Nije Jao More: Mountain Silence
Spirituality
Question: Many people feel today that there is a growth in spiritual influence in the world, and I wonder how you feel about this. Do you see this as a time of spiritual expansion for humanity?
Sri Chinmoy: Since the beginning of creation, there has been spirituality. God and God’s creation cannot be separated. God the Creator and God the creation are one. People have been praying from time immemorial. There are various ways to pray and meditate, and there are various ways to reach one’s destination. Spirituality is not the sole monopoly of any individual or of any country. Spirituality is universal. I take each individual as an instrument of God, and those who consciously pray and meditate are chosen instruments of God. There shall come a time when everybody will be awakened. Very often, we say that now spirituality has come to the fore and many people are practising spiritual life. But my inner feeling is that there has not been any time when there was no spirituality on earth.
Question: Do you feel that the degree to which humanity is aspiring changes from age to age or is it constant in your view?
Sri Chinmoy: It changes. Sometimes the weather is good, sometimes the weather is bad. So, for a few years, let us say for twenty, thirty or forty years, spirituality may not be as strong as it is at other times. Now a very significant aspect of spirituality is peace. If there is no peace, then spirituality in its purest sense has no value. Previously, peace was only a dictionary word. It was not a living reality. Although we use the word ‘peace’, people must have a conscious hunger for peace. But now, for the last thirty years, people have been paying more attention to peace.
Sri Chinmoy answers, part 18, Mahasamadhi-anniversary-2017-part-2/05-Mountain-Silence
Sunlit path 