If you give from your heart,
Then your offering will be
Not only unimaginable
But also indisputable.
Sri Chinmoy, Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, part 51, Agni Press, 1984
Dear seekers, dear sisters and brothers, I wish to give a short talk on life. Needless to say, I shall speak on life from the spiritual point of view.
Life is a lost opportunity if I do not aspire.
Life is a gained prosperity if I aspire.
Life is a lost soul if I do not aspire.
Life is a gained goal if I aspire.
Life is an animal destruction if I do not aspire.
Life is God Perfection if I aspire.
When I do not aspire, earth does not need me and Heaven does not need me. When I aspire, earth needs me and Heaven needs me; also, God needs me. There was a time when I lived the desiring life. At that time, I wanted to capture the world; I wanted to own the world. Now I aspire. I wish to become a perfect instrument of God. I wish to serve humanity and be constantly dedicated to humanity.
For me, life is a forward march.
For me, life is an upward climb.
For me, life is an inward dive.
When I march forward, I see God's Sound Power.
When I climb upward, I see God's Silence Power.
When I dive deep within, I feel God's Love Power.
God's Sound Power has awakened my life.
God's Silence Power has liberated my life.
God's Love Power has immortalised my life.
My life needs inner guidance. When I am guided by my Inner Pilot, my life is safe amid earth's storms. When I am guided by my Inner Pilot, I am certain amid the world's insecurity. Life does not mean only to know the truths about God. Life means an intimate connection, an inseparable union, with my Inner Pilot. In order to be guided by my Inner Pilot, in order to know Him intimately, I have to pray and meditate. I have to know that each thought that I think is a prayer. I have to know that each action that I take is a meditation. In order to pray well and have a good meditation I have to offer my gratitude to my Pilot Supreme. It is His Compassion that has given me the capacity to pray and meditate.
When I pray, I climb up God the Tree. When I meditate, I bring down the mangoes from above and distribute them to aspiring souls. Both my prayer and my meditation are of paramount importance. If I do not climb up God the Tree, then I remain unrealised. If I do not climb down with the fruits, then God remains unmanifested. Perfection dawns only when I am realised and God is manifested.
Countless human beings are afraid of the spiritual life because they feel that it will take them away from the life they are now living. They feel that their present life is a life of satisfaction. At times, when they are mercilessly frustrated by the life that they are now living, they feel the necessity of God and the divine life. But to them, God is a stranger and the divine life is something unknown. They feel that a stranger and an unknown life cannot be trusted. But here they are totally mistaken. God is not and cannot be a stranger. And the divine life is the real life. The real life is something that inspires us and makes us feel that Infinity, Eternity and Immortality are our birthright.
Nothing can be more normal and natural than a divine life. The life that we are leading now is abnormal and unnatural. Why? Because it has made friends with darkness, ignorance and bondage. How can ignorance offer us God Beauty, God Light and absolute Truth?
When we make progress in our spiritual life we feel that our life is of God and our life is for God. What we want from life is satisfaction and nothing else. When we live the desiring life, no matter what we gain, there can be no satisfaction. We have an unceasing hunger that constantly wants to devour others and the entire world. By devouring others and devouring the world we cannot have satisfaction. We can have satisfaction only by establishing our inner oneness with the rest of the world. In order to achieve satisfaction we must walk along the road of aspiration and not along the road of desire.
We have seen that the world's richest man wants to become still richer. No matter how much money he gets, his needs increase more, and the more his needs increase, the more he becomes a beggar. The seeker wants to decrease his desires. The more he decreases his desires, the sooner he sees the Face of God. When he decreases his desiring life, only one desire remains; that desire is the aspiration which comes from the very depth of his heart. This aspiration wants only one thing: God. Aspiration feels that just realising God is not enough: It also wants to manifest God here on earth in His own Way. When our aspiration has realised God and manifested God in His own Way, then supreme Satisfaction dawns both in Heaven and on earth.
July 7th, 1974
L'Aula
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland