Within Us is Our Goal
Sri Chinmoy’s second talk on Yoga
at 350 East 54th Street, New York City
We are God’s all-fulfilling Dream. Our within is God’s boundless Plenitude. Our goal is Infinity’s Heart and Immortality’s Breath. Our goal is within our very body.
In the physical world the mother tells her child who his father is. In the spiritual life our aspiration tells us who our God is. Who is God? God is an infinite Consciousness. He is also the self-illumining Light. There is no human being who does not own within him this infinite Consciousness and this self-illumining Light.
If we want to see anything in the outer world, in addition to keeping our eyes wide open, we need light. It may be sunlight or electric light or some other kind of light. But in the inner world, we need no light whatsoever. Even with our eyes closed we can see God, the self-illumining Light.
God is not something to be obtained from outside. God is that very thing which can be unfolded from within.
Each human being has millions and millions of questions to ask. In his spiritual life, a day dawns when he feels that there is only one question worth asking: “Who am I?” The answer of answers is, “I am not the body, but I am the inner Pilot.” How is it that a man does not know himself, a thing which ought to be the easiest of all his endeavours? He does not know himself precisely because he identifies himself with the ego and not with his real “I.” What compels him to identify himself with this pseudo “I?” It is Ignorance. And what tells him that the real “I” is not and can never be the ego? It is his self-search. What he sees in the inmost recesses of his heart is his real “I,” his God. Finally, this seeing must transform itself into becoming.
The other day a friend of mine, or perhaps I should call him a student, said to me: “I can’t think of God. My mind becomes restless.”
“What do you do then?” I asked.
“Why, I just think of the world.”
“Now tell me, when you think of the world, in all its activities, can you even for a second think of God?”
“No, never.”
“So, my young friend, is it not absurd to know that, when you think of God, restlessness takes your mind away from God, but when you drink deep the pleasures of the world, your restlessness does not take your mind away and place it at the Feet of the Lord? No, this should never be. If you have genuine hunger for spiritual food, the same restlessness, or what you may call ‘uneasiness’, will take your mind speedily and dynamically and place it in your heart to drink the Nectar.
“To be sure, your mind cannot do two things at a time. If you are thinking of God with an implicit faith, if the flame of aspiration is burning within your heart, your outer restlessness-monkey, however mischievous it may be, will not dare to touch you, much less pinch or bite you. Further, if you see the situation from a different angle, you will feel yourself extremely fortunate that you cannot do two things at a time. You cannot look at your own two shoulders with full attention at the same time. Similarly when you see your God within, you cannot see the ignorance-tiger of the outer world.”
What we shall have to do first is to see the ego, touch and catch the ego, and finally transform the ego. Believe it or not, in Indian villages even now when a Brahmin’s son gets angry with his friends, he boldly says: “Look, I am a Brahmin. All the sastras, the scriptures, were at the command of my forefathers. We are the possessors of the inner knowledge. Our curses act like volcanoes. Be careful!” His friends are struck with fear and keep silent. In the spiritual life when the ego enters into us, and bothers us, we shall have to think of ourselves as the Brahman, the One without a second, and we shall have to feel ourselves as the all-pervading Consciousness. The ego disappears into nothingness.
Even if we think of ourselves as the ego-centric body, we can use the senses to fulfil ourselves fully and divinely here on earth, and prevent the senses from using us according to their sweet fancy.
We all know that the mind plays an important role in our material life as well as in our spiritual life. So we must not discard the mind. What we should do is to be always conscious of the mind. The mind becomes restless; that does not mean that we shall have to punish the mind all the time. If the master of the house comes to learn that his old servant has now formed the habit of stealing, he does not immediately dismiss the servant. The servant's past sincerity and dedication are still fresh in his mind. He waits and observes unnoticed and unconcerned, feeling that his servant will turn over a new leaf. In the meantime, the servant becomes aware that his master has come to know of his late conduct. He stops stealing. He goes one step further; to please his master, he works even more sincerely and more devotedly than he did before. Similarly, when we become aware of the mind's restless activities and its tricks, we shall have to be silent for some time and observe the mind quite unconcerned. Before long, we shall see that our mind, the thief, will feel ashamed of its conduct. We must not forget that during that time we have to think of ourselves as the soul and not as the body, for the soul can alone be the master of the mind. The soul alone is our true identity. At the appointed hour, the mind will start to listen to the dictates of the soul.
Action, action! We shall always act. Action and inaction. According to the Gita, we shall have to see action in inaction, and inaction in action. What does this mean? It means that, while acting, we shall have to feel within ourselves a sea of silence. While we are without activity, we shall have to feel within us a dynamo of creative energy. Let us not think of actions as ours. If we can do this, our actions will be more real and more effective. When a servant does something, say, cooking for his master, he does it to the best of his capacity. Why? To get his master's appreciation and favour. But when he cooks for himself, he does it as negligently as possible. In the same way, if we act to please our soul, the inner Pilot, we shall be able to act most devotedly and most successfully.
Our Goal is within us. And to reach that Goal we shall have to take to the spiritual life. In the spiritual life, the thing that is most needed is the awareness of consciousness. Without it, everything is a barren desert.
When we enter into a dark place, we take a flashlight or some other light in order to see. Now, if we want to know the existence of our unlit life, we shall have to take the help of our consciousness. Let us go deeper into the matter. We know that the sun illumines the world. But how are we aware of it? We are aware of it through our consciousness, which is self-revealing. The functioning of the sun is not self-revealing. It is our consciousness in the sun that makes us feel that the sun illumines the world. It is our consciousness that is self-revealing in everything. And this consciousness is an infinite sea of delight. When we drink a drop of water from the sea, it tastes salty. In the same way, during our meditation, if we can drink a tiny drop from the sea of delight, we shall realise that the sea is full of delight. This delight is nectar. Nectar is Immortality.
Within us is our Goal. Let us go deep within and hear the Vedic Seer singing:
Vedaham Etam Purusham Mahantam
Aditya Varnam Tamasah Parastat.
“I have known this great Being,
Radiant as the Sun beyond darkness.”
Published in AUM – Vol. 1, No.11, June 27, 1966
