Sri Chinmoy’s New Year’s Message for 1969
Three hundred and sixty-five opportunities to realise the Supreme, to reveal the Supreme and to fulfil the Supreme.
— Sri Chinmoy
Notes:
On December 31, 1968, at midnight, all of Sri Chinmoy’s students in their various homes around the world begin the New Year by reading this special message. It is published by Aum Centre, New York, in Sri Chinmoy’s first book in the West, Mediation: Food for the Soul, in 1970. A second edition of the book is published by Harper and Row in 1971.
Sri Chinmoy’s Comments:
Many of you have asked me how to meditate on a sentence or an aphorism. When you study these aphorisms, please read them very slowly and soulfully three times and then concentrate on each individual word. Let us take the first aphorism in Food for the Soul, the aphorism for January first: “Three hundred and sixty-five opportunities to realise the Supreme, to reveal the Supreme and to fulfil the Supreme.”
The word ‘Supreme’ is the main word. Do not try to see the Supreme in a human form or in the form of the sea or a cloud or a star or anything like that. No, do not try to imagine anything; only repeat the word ‘Supreme’ and try to feel the word vibrating in your ear.
Next try to concentrate on the word ‘realise’. You know what Realisation means. It is not just seeing something, it is not a feeling; it is something more tangible. When you realise something, that means you have become one with it. Realisation means oneness; total oneness is realisation.
Then comes the word ‘reveal’. When you have realised something, you have to reveal it, not for name and fame but just because you have become the instrument of the Supreme. When the Supreme makes you realise what He is, when you become one with Him, then you have to reveal Him. What you have inside, you have to show to the world; and what you have inside is the Supreme. After you have revealed Him, He is not only inside you but all around you as well.
First you realise the Supreme, then you reveal Him to the world and finally you have to fulfil Him. How to fulfil Him? This is very complicated because you have to fulfil the Supreme in the way He wants to be fulfilled, not in the way you want Him to be fulfilled. You want to please everybody and you want to be pleased in your own way. But in the case of the Supreme, it is different. The Supreme has to be fulfilled in His own way. When you concentrate on the word ‘fulfil’ you have to pray to the Supreme, “I wish to fulfil You, but please tell me how I can fulfil You the way You want to be fulfilled.”
Then comes the phrase ‘three hundred and sixty-five opportunities’. This means that each day you are getting an opportunity to make your promise or your prayer afresh. Every day you can consider yourself a new, fresh flower ready for dedication. When this day ends, the following day you grow into another flower of absolute dedication.
Food for the Soul was originally entitled Flame-Stars and Flame-Worlds. Now I would like to explain the original title. ‘Flame-stars’ comes from particles of divinity that are entering into each aspiring soul. ‘Flame-worlds’ means that in the message of each meditation you will see a different world. If you soulfully read these aphorisms three or four or six times, I wish to tell you that you will see something more meaningful and more significant than if you just read them once. It is not that you will have different ideas or different thoughts. No, you will see that one truth is being expressed powerfully, more powerfully and most powerfully. So this is how you can concentrate on an aphorism.
Published in Dependence and Assurance