Success and Progress
A morning lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at St. Joseph’s College, Rensselaer, Indiana
I was delighted that a rather eminent religious leader was going to be in the Midwest giving a series of lectures here. He seemed to be interested in coming down to Indiana, so I jumped at the opportunity. I was a little bit concerned that this Wednesday morning would not be a time to get too many people to a lecture, but somehow my illusions have been smashed...
— from the introduction by Dr. John Philip Posey (Associate Professor of History and Director of Non-Western Core Programme)
Dr. Posey, I am most grateful to you for your kind words. Since last evening, your heart of magnanimity has touched my heart most deeply. In silence I pray to the Almighty Father to grant you His choicest Love and Blessings. Human life is a series of experiences. Six years ago, while I was in Puerto Rico, I went to a chapel and was insulted and scolded vehemently by the Mother Superior. What was my crime? That I was an Indian, a Hindu, and I entered a Christian chapel. But today at St. Joseph's College I am basking in the kindness of everyone here. Both experiences I offer at the Feet of the Almighty Father.
I am a seeker. I am a devoted brother of mankind. I try to serve the Almighty Father in each of my brothers and sisters. And if anybody asks, my foremost qualification is that I am a humble lover of humanity. Dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers of the Infinite Truth, we are all seated in a boat. The name of this boat is God's Dream-Boat, and our Pilot is the Lord Supreme. He is carrying us to the shores of the Golden Beyond. I wish to give a short talk on success in the life of desire and progress in the life of aspiration.
Success we want; progress we need. When we live in the word of desire, teeming desire, we want success. We feel that it is everything. But when we live in the world of aspiration, we come to realise that what we actually need is progress, continual and constant progress.
Success gives us name and fame. Progress gives us a higher inspiration, a deeper faith and a stronger assurance.
Our success is immediately claimed by many. It is claimed even by those who had nothing to do with its advent. But our progress is treasured by only one Person, our eternally beloved Father Supreme.
Success is the song of possession. We want to possess the world, but to our wide surprise we see that before we can possess even one person on earth, we have been mercilessly possessed and bound by the world at large.
Possession, ambition and outer success go together. The strength of ambition finally offers us success. But the strength of surrender to the Almighty Father grants us progress, which is what the Supreme wants from our lives.
When ambition becomes our bosom friend, when our inner being is surcharged with determination, we achieve success. But we have to realise that in the spiritual life when we offer and surrender our ambition to the Source, we make true progress. And in this progress we find real fulfilment. When we succeed in something in the outer world, we feel that we have done it in spite of opposition from the entire world. We feel that it is by virtue of our own capacities that we have achieved our desired success. But when we make progress — no matter in which field — within the inmost recesses of our heart we come to feel that the entire world helped us, that each individual on earth has helped us in some way or other according to his capacity.
A man of success, the moment he achieves success, starts adding up all the difficulties and dangers he encountered before success dawned in his life. A man of progress, the moment he makes progress in his life of experience or in his life of realisation, starts counting all the blessings he received from Above. Finally, he realises that the door of opportunity is marked by both “push” and “pull”. He pushes aside his life of bondage, his life of ignorance, his life of countless imperfections. He pulls down from Above Peace, Light and Bliss in boundless measure — slowly, steadily, devotedly and unerringly.
Renunciation is progress. We renounce our life of ignorance, our life of teeming doubts. Here I wish to recall the message of the Upanishadic lore:
Isavasyam idam sarvam...
The whole world is owned by the Lord Supreme. Let us not hunger after others’ possessions. In renunciation is the satisfaction everlasting: in renunciation we drink the Nectar-Delight of the Absolute.
Progress is like a lotus that blossoms petal by petal. Each time a petal comes into existence we feel that a new dedication, a new hope, a new self-mastery dawns in our life of service to aspiring mankind.
Success and progress on the human level are two so-called rivals. Success wants to please itself according to its own receptivity's capacity. Progress wants to please God unconditionally in His own Way. My experience tells me that success has a short life which, at the same time, is dubious and precarious. My realisation tells me that progress has an everlasting and ever-transcending life. We achieve today's goal on the strength of our progress, which is founded on aspiration — our mounting inner cry. But then, today's goal becomes tomorrow's starting point. Tomorrow we have to start for a higher goal. Each time we reach a goal, our aspiration tells us that it is only the starting point for a higher, more meaningful and more fruitful goal. We are in the process of constantly transcending our reality. And the ever-transcending Reality is the Golden Shore of the ever-transcending Beyond.
Today's imperfect man, today's unlit man, grows into tomorrow's perfect and fully illumined man only when he feels that progress is the only thing that he needs. Each time we climb to a higher rung of the ladder of progress, we automatically achieve success — inner success. But if we run after success, there is every possibility that we may adopt foul means and do undivine things, because we are competing with others with whom we have not yet established a sense of inseparable oneness. When we want progress, we feel that if we have to compete with anyone or anything at all, our enemies are within us: fear, doubt, anxiety, worries, insecurity.
In order to reach the highest Goal, we must have faith in abundant measure, both in ourselves and in the Almighty Father. If we do not have faith in the Almighty Father all at once, no harm. Out of His infinite Bounty, He will illumine us, guide us, perfect us and fulfil us at His choice Hour. But if we lose faith in ourselves or if we are wanting in faith in our life of aspiration and dedication, then we shall be devoured by the ignorance-tiger. At that time nobody will come to our rescue.
We and God must have reciprocal faith. Our faith in God will make us His chosen instruments. His faith in us will inspire us to manifest Him totally, unreservedly and perfectly here on earth. Our faith in Him will give us what we desperately need — realisation. His faith in us will give Him the opportunity to manifest Himself in and through us. We need Him for our highest realisation; He, out of His infinite Kindness, needs us for His divine Manifestation.
Faith is the only thing that makes us feel that we are part and parcel of Eternity, Infinity and Immortality. Eternity, Infinity and Immortality are not vague terms. They are realities growing and glowing in the heart of the genuine seeker. When we have faith in abundant measure, the Lord Supreme assures us that in and through us He will manifest His perfect Perfection.
Published in Fifty Freedom-Boats to one Golden Shore, part 2
Wisdom-Light
An afternoon lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at Congress Room, Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois
Dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers of the infinite and eternal Truth, I wish to give a talk on Wisdom-Light. Each individual present here has Wisdom-Light. Today I will share with you my Wisdom-Light; tomorrow, easily and effectively you can share with many your Wisdom-Light.
What is Wisdom-Light? Wisdom-Light is something that eternally glows inside our heart and around our life eternal. Wisdom-Light tells us that there are only two mighty powers on earth. These powers are temptation-power and liberation-power. When we surrender to temptation-power, we come to realise that our body is unawakened, our vital is undisciplined, our mind is unillumined and our heart is unfulfilled. When we aspire for liberation-power, we come to realise that our soul is a fulfilled and, at the same time, a constantly fulfilling reality; that our soul is an illumined and, at the same time, an ever-illumining reality.
When we enter into the spiritual life, we come to realise that we have three teachers: ignorance-teacher, knowledge-teacher and wisdom-teacher. Ignorance-teacher teaches us how to talk. Knowledge-teacher teaches us how to talk and act. But wisdom-teacher teaches us only how to act spontaneously and unconditionally.
When we talk and talk, we enter consciously and deliberately into the domain of ignorance. When we talk and act, at times we see a yawning gulf between our speech and our action. We say something and we do something totally different. We make a solemn promise to do something, but when reality dawns we see a vast gulf between our promise and its fulfilment. But when we act spontaneously, soulfully and unconditionally — when we offer our dedicated service — an unseen Hand guides us, shapes us and moulds us into the very image of our Inner Pilot. It is only by devotedly serving the Inner Pilot in each individual that we can make our life meaningful and fruitful.
The brotherhood of man can never be achieved by talking, but only by becoming something, by achieving conscious oneness with the Tree which is God. Unless we establish our conscious, inseparable oneness with the Almighty Father, the Absolute Supreme, we can never establish in our inner life or outer life the full brotherhood of man. We have to touch the tree and climb up the tree. Only then can we approach the branches and enter into the millions and billions of leaves, which are our brothers and sisters. If we do not go to the tree and climb up the tree, how can we enter into the consciousness of the leaves, which are our brothers and sisters?
Ignorance is self-enjoyment, knowledge is self-examination and wisdom is self-perfection. When we swim in the sea of ignorance, we enjoy. This enjoyment is followed by frustration, and frustration is followed by destruction. When we try to examine ourselves, we see imperfection looming large. But, at the same time, perfection is within our easy reach. Self-perfection is wisdom. When we pray and meditate, we enter into the reality of silence, and this gives us the opportunity to perfect our life within and without. Silence embodies perfection. Silence is ready to reveal its perfection in and through us on the physical plane, which is now inundated with ignorance, darkness, bondage and imperfection.
How do we discriminate Light from night, Truth from falsehood, Immortality from death? We discriminate the one from the other by praying and meditating, by trying and crying. When a child cries, his mother comes to the rescue and offers him toys or food or anything else that he wants. Similarly, when we cry in the inmost recesses of our heart, the Mother Divine, the Mother Supreme, comes to our rescue and inundates our inner and outer being with infinite Light. This Light is our real Divinity, Immortality and perfect Perfection.
Very often we feel that knowledge and wisdom are one and the same thing. But when we enter into the spiritual life and get inner experiences, we come to realise that knowledge and wisdom are two totally different things. Knowledge is like the younger brother in the family, and wisdom is the older brother. Naturally, the older brother will be infinitely wiser than the younger one. Knowledge sees something and then wants to utilise that thing. Wisdom feels the Truth, wants to grow into the Truth and finally becomes the Truth. Knowledge and wisdom are two brothers at the foot of the Realisation-tree. Let us call it a mango tree. Knowledge starts counting the leaves, the branches and fruit, but wisdom climbs up the tree, plucks a mango and eats to its heart’s content.
Now, where can wisdom exist? It can exist everywhere. It can exist in knowledge, in intelligence, in the intellect, in intuition. But the wisdom that abides in the soul is the wisdom that leads us and guides us fastest towards our destination. When we pray and meditate we go deep within and hear the dictates of our soul. Once we hear the dictates of our soul, we establish a free access to the world of divine Reality, Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.
Here I wish to quote the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.” Work I take as dedicated service in the spiritual life. Every day it is our bounden duty to offer our dedicated service to the Supreme in all human beings. Dedicated service greatly helps us to reach our destined goal. Now, we have to know that today’s goal is not and cannot be the goal forever. Today our goal is realisation of the highest Truth and the highest Light. Tomorrow our goal will be the revelation of the highest Truth and Light. And the day after tomorrow our goal will be the perfect manifestation of the highest Truth and Light, which we will then embody.
“Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.” A seeker of infinite Truth must feel that each moment is a most sacred opportunity for him. Tomorrow death may snatch us away from the world arena. So we have to feel that this is the last time, the last opportunity, the last moment we have to realise the ultimate Truth. On the one hand, we know that death is nothing but a short rest in the flow of Eternal Time. On the other hand, we know that here on earth we have to accomplish quite a few things for God’s fulfilment and for our fulfilment. Right now, our fulfilment and God’s fulfilment are diametrically opposed. But when we pray and meditate, we come to feel that God’s fulfilment is our fulfilment, that God’s fulfilment is the only fulfilment. If we pay considerable attention to the value of time, we do not wallow consciously in the pleasures of lethargy and ignorance. We can utilise each moment for our ever-increasing fulfilment and ever-fulfilling illumination on the strength of our inner cry to see something, to grow into something and to become something.
About an hour ago when I arrived here, I was deeply moved to see the motto of this august college: “Equal opportunity for all, freedom to see and discriminate the truth and the brotherhood of man.”
Equal opportunity for all. Now who can give us equal opportunity? Only the Inner Pilot can give and does give equal opportunity to all. Every day, early in the morning, He knocks at our heart's door. When He knocks at our door, some of us wake up and answer the door while others remain in the world of sleep, inconscience and ignorance. In our outer life, once we lose an opportunity we seldom get it back. But in the inner life we get a new opportunity every day, every hour, every minute. He who responds to the inner opportunity immediately runs fast, faster, fastest towards the ultimate Goal.
Each individual has to be given freedom to seek the Truth in his own way. We cannot thrust our truth on others. Each has to go deep within to the Truth. Truth is the Goal, but in order to reach the Goal, we can and do adopt different paths, different roads. Different roads allow different individuals to run the fastest. If others force their freedom upon us, it will be totally valueless for us. But if we search deep within, our freedom is our revelation, our illumination, our perfection. The Vedic lore offers us a momentous message:
Asato ma sad gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
mrityor ma amritam gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real.
Lead me from darkness to Light.
Lead me from death to Immortality.
I am extremely happy that the state of Illinois is proud of calling itself “Land of Lincoln”. Lincoln was a seeker in the pure sense of the term. God gave him a magnanimous heart. Emerson said of him, "His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold a wrong." I wish to elaborate on this most significant utterance.
When we become a seeker, we try to have a heart as vast as the world itself, or try to have a heart even vaster than the world. In this vast heart, a real seeker does not see the ignorance of the world as belonging to others. The heart of a true seeker sees the imperfections, limitations and bondage of others as its very own. Emerson says Lincoln's heart did not hold a wrong, but I wish to say that his heart did not hold a wrong of his own. His heart did hold the wrongs of millions and billions of human beings, and he accepted these wrongs of others as his very own — not with a sense of pride, but with a sense of oneness.
Since we are all seekers, the world is within us, not outside us. Each individual that we see around us is within us as well. Also, when we go deep within we see that we have a large family, a very large inner family of doubts, fears, anxieties, worries, imperfections and limitations. When we transform them on the strength of our conscious concentration, meditation and contemplation, we see that our outer world is also totally transformed.
I am here in Chicago. The very name of this city gives me enormous joy and delight. When I was eleven years old, I read a biography of the great spiritual figure, Swami Vivekananda. In 1893, when they held the Parliament of Religions here, Swami Vivekananda came and offered the eternal wisdom of the soul's light. My young heart was so delighted and moved, for he came from the same place where I was born, Bengal. So the younger brother feels a oneness with his elder brother. Vivekananda was divinely and supremely blessed to be able to offer the wisdom-light of India here at the Parliament of Religions.
To me, each religion is a soulful, powerful, meaningful and fruitful house. Each individual should live in a house; he cannot live in the street. But a man need not stay all the time in his house. He comes out to study. Here our inner school and our inner subject is Yoga. Yoga is conscious oneness with God. We are all seekers, sincere seekers. For us God does exist. And it is only a matter of time before we will be able to see Him, feel Him, fulfil Him and grow into His Image.
Published in Fifty Freedom-Boats to one Golden Shore, part 2
Love and Perfection
An evening lecture by Sri Chinmoy
at Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois
This evening, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to give a short talk on Love and Perfection. We are all sailing in the same boat, the boat of aspiration. One day this boat of ours will reach its destination, the Golden Shore, which is our ever-fulfilling and, at the same time, ever-transcending Reality.
Love and Perfection. Love is perfection and perfection is love. Love is the soul of perfection; perfection is the goal of love. Perfect love and perfect perfection are one and inseparable. Perfect love lies in our self-giving and self-offering. Perfect perfection lies in our liberation and eventual God-becoming. Love without perfection is a blind force; it can be a destructive force as well. Perfection without love is a precious jewel without a safe; it is impossible to keep that precious jewel.
Fulfilled love cannot and does not exclude perfection, for fulfilled love is itself perfection. Similarly, perfection cannot and does not exclude love, for fulfilled perfection necessarily carries love with it.
Animal love, human love, divine love. Animal love is not conscious of the soul’s life. Human love is conscious, but does not care for the soul’s life. Divine love is the flower and fragrance of the soul’s life. Love is reality’s life. Today we are nothing but reality’s life. Tomorrow we shall become Immortality’s life. Love and life grow together in the same family. Love offers its powerful arms to life, and life offers its soulful eyes to love.
God created the universe with His Silence-Power. He sustains the universe with His Sound-Power. In order to realise the highest Truth, our consciousness climbs high, higher, highest on the ladder of aspiration. When it reaches the highest pinnacle, we realise the Ultimate Truth, the Truth Transcendental, the Truth of the ever-transcending Beyond. In order to manifest the inner divinity that we bring down from above, we need the help of the cosmic Sound, the Sound-Power.
When we reach the Highest we become the realisation of Perfection. When we manifest the Absolute, we become the manifestation of Perfection.
Love is peace. Love is delight. When love illumines, it is peace; when love fulfils, it is delight.
"Ᾱnandādd hy eva khalv imāni bhūtāni jāyante
ānandena jātāni jīvanti
ānandaṃ prayantyabhisaṃ viśanti"
"From Delight we came into existence.
In Delight we grow.
At the end of our journey’s close, into Delight we retire."
We are all seekers. A seeker eventually becomes a Divine Lover. A seeker sees the ultimate Truth and cries for infinite Light, Peace and Bliss. But there comes a time in his life of aspiration and self-discovery when he comes to realise that unless and until he becomes a God-lover, he will not be able to fulfil himself. As long as he remains a seeker, God plays hide and seek with him. But when he becomes a divine lover and offers God his unconditional surrender, when he asks God to use him in God’s own Way, at that time God-realisation dawns in his life of aspiration and dedication.
All Masters of the highest magnitude showed us how love can be offered to mankind. When we think of the Son, the Saviour, we see nothing but a flood of love within and without. Once he was criticized mercilessly by some of his adversaries as he was walking along the road. His disciples asked him why he had to walk along that road when people were mercilessly abusing him. The Saviour replied that he had to give them what he had, and what he had in his heart was unconditional love.
The Buddha was prepared to give his life to save the life of a bird. In his heart of love, he felt his inseparable oneness with the life of a bird.
Gauranga, a spiritual Master, once was badly hurt by an adversary. He said to his adversary, “You have given me your anger, your passion, your undivine qualities. Since you have given me something, I also wish to give you something, and what I have is my illumining Love. I accepted from you what you had to give, so please accept from me what I have to give.”
A human being has two major instruments: the mind and the heart. The poor mind cannot grasp the meaning of love but the heart continually loves and the soul constantly supplies the heart with love. The mind finds it difficult, extremely difficult to love anything other than its own existence. And there even comes a time when the mind finds it difficult to love its own existence. It sees and feels a barren desert within and without it. But the heart feels it is the bounden duty of its earthly existence to accept the imperfections and limitations of the body, vital and mind as its very own. The heart, which has free access to the soul, has received this message from the soul, that unless and until all the members of its family become perfect, perfect perfection cannot dawn in the heart either. So the heart accepts everyone as its own and tries to serve, feed and illumine all the members of its inner family.
The heart comes to realise that human love — unlit, obscure, limited love — acts like an express train, whose destination is frustration. But divine love grows within us slowly, steadily and unerringly and proceeds like a local train slowly and steadily to its destination, which is illumination. The heart discriminates human love from divine love and then transforms the one into the other. Then, finally, it manifests divine love in and through each individual being and each creature in God’s Creation.
Love and perfection are one and the same. Perfection right now is a far cry, but today’s impossibility cannot remain impossibility forever. Today’s weakness can easily be transformed into tomorrow’s solid, adamantine strength.
The power that builds the palace of Truth is not the same as the power that destroys the palace of Truth. When we cry from the inmost recesses of our heart, we see the inner flame climbing up high, higher, highest, and the Grace from above descending. When we see the two of them meeting together on a higher plane of consciousness, we call that plane the plane of perfection. There union is perfection. When Grace descends, it descends in the form of God’s Smile. When our ascending cry and God’s descending Smile are fused into one, our love of Divinity and God’s Grace of Immortality become perfect in our life of aspiration, in our life of dedication, in our life of unity’s multiplicity and multiplicity’s unity.
Published in AUM – Vol. 1, No. 4, 27 April 27 1974
