Listen to the live recording.
Duration: 29 min. 15 sec.
November 21, 1970 – London
Transcription from the original live recording.
0:00 I wish to say a few words about our path.
0:10 Our path is basically the path of the heart and not that of the mind. This does not mean that I am criticising the path of the mind. Far from it. We feel, that the path of the heart leads us faster towards our goal.
0:53 Now, each individual is sincere or has to be sincere. And at the same time each individual can be wise, too. Sincerity is one thing; stupidity is something else. Again, sincerity is one thing. Along with sincerity if we have wisdom, then we can fulfil our task sooner than otherwise. So, when we follow the path of the heart, we feel only one thing that is constantly required, and that is love. If there is love, there is fulfilment. If there is fulfilment, then God is bound to be there. God is there, where there is fulfilment. He will never be satisfied with something incomplete, unfulfilled, unrealised, unmanifest.
2:32 He wants from us realisation, revelation, manifestation and perfect perfection. These are the things that each individual seeker has to perform or acquire in his lifetime. And if it is not possible to acquire all these things – realisation, revelation, manifestation and perfection – in one short span, if he cannot acquire all these things, then he has to take many more incarnations. But God will never allow anybody to remain unrealised and unfulfilled. Today it is time for you to realise God, tomorrow it will be the time for somebody else to realise God, the day after will be the time for me to realise God.
3:34 There is an hour, which we call ‘God’s Chosen Hour’. At God’s Chosen Hour, when it is chosen for you, you will realise God, when it is for you; you will realise, when it is for you; you will realise – it is bound to.1 But now, the chosen hour, we can hasten the chosen hour with our aspiration. Yes, we can go here – this is the goal. Now, I can go walking, here I can come. I can come on cycle. I can come here, cycling. I come by car, I can. Again if I take the plane, I can come. Now, I have to know if I take the plane I will come faster, infinitely faster than if I just started walking. So in the spiritual life also it is like that. Some things will help us to reach our goal faster than other things. And that is what, as I said, love – as the jet plane will take you faster to your destination, so also love is going to lead you faster to your destination. This love is inside the heart, not inside the mind. Inside the mind there is very limited [love], in a very limited measure. Inside the heart it is in abundant, in infinite, measure.
5:28 Now why it is inside the heart and not it is inside my mind, or inside my hand, inside my fist? No. Inside the heart is the soul. Soul is not here; soul is not here. Soul is not inside my shoulder. It is not inside my knee, inside my elbow. It is inside my heart, here. Soul permeates. So, whole consciousness, the consciousness of the soul, permeates my entire body. But the actual location of the soul is here, inside the heart. So, soul has everything – Peace, Light, Bliss – in infinite measure. Now from the soul we get these divine qualities inside the heart. Now from the heart, again we can bring them to the mind. From here, we bring it to the heart, and then we can bring upward to the mind. So my path is the path of the heart; and inside the heart, I see, it is all love. The heart, means our spiritual heart, is flooded with divine love.
6:43 Now, whenever we think of God, we think of God as something vast, something divine, something boundless, something most powerful. God the Omniscient, God the Omnipotent, God the Omnipresent – this is our feeling of God, conception of God. But when we go deep within we see that the conception of God that we have – God the Omniscient, God the Omnipotent, God the Omnipresent – do not entirely satisfy us. God is omnipotent, so what? Somebody is richer than I, so what? Somebody is more capable of doing something more than I, so what? He has his own capacity; I have my own capacity. My capacity is, true, infinitely less than his. His capacity far surpasses mine. So, I stay with my capacity and he goes on with his own capacity. But what happens is that God has another quality, which is called love – God the Love. That quality is like a magnet. It pulls us. Mother has that love, the child runs towards the mother. The child has that love, mother runs towards this child. This magnetic pull is in the love. So God pulls us with His Love and we pull God with our magnetic love, magnetic love, together. He pulls us with His Love and we pull Him with our love.
8:55 Now, so when we think of God, the seeker, the seeker thinks he needs God just because he needs fulfilment. He needs the feeling of inseparable oneness. And love gives that feeling of oneness. Not power, not any other thing, not any other quality of God. But it is the quality of love that gives us the feeling of oneness with God. Now inside love, other qualities grow – Peace, Light, Bliss, Power. So love is the strongest force here, because inside love everything can grow.
9:51 God’s Peace can grow, God’s Joy can grow, God’s Delight can grow, God’s other divine qualities [can grow]. So, our path we feel is easier, more effective, in this sense. Here, we don't have to read millions of books to know where the Truth is. Here, we don't have to exercise our mind day in and day out to know what Truth looks like. No! Truth is inside us. It is crying to come to the fore. But unfortunately, we have kept the door closed and we are not allowing the Truth to come out. Now, how can we try, how can we bring the Truth out of the prison cell that we have created?
11:03 Again, I have to say, it is through love. Love for whom? Love for God. And who is God? It is the highest illumined part in us. God is not something else. God is not somebody else. He is within us. When you think of God, if you can feel that our feet and head – let us say – feet, still in ignorance, it is under clay, and head is up above, in the skies. So here, if I have to go up, I have to know that my highest part is head, and my lowest part is now the feet. But if I know the highest and the lowest are mine and this lowest has to be transformed into the highest one day, or the lowest has to enter into the highest so that it becomes totally merged with the highest.
12:19 So, in our path, we see the identification is absolutely necessary. The highest has to feel its oneness, total oneness, with the lowest. The lowest has to feel its oneness with the highest. Now, highest always feels its oneness. It is the lowest that finds it difficult, out of fear, doubt, jealousy and so forth. The one who has the light, the possessor of light, is not afraid of entering into darkness, because he knows as soon as he enters into darkness, he will be able to illumine the darkness. Now in this room there is no light, and I come with a torch, flashlight. Immediately I know that I am the possessor, I am carrying a flashlight, the room will be illumined.
13:23 So, in the spiritual life also, when we have light, we are not afraid of darkness. But what happens is that darkness is afraid of light. Darkness feels, “Oh, I will be exposed. I have done many things wrong. I’ve told lies, I have cheated someone, I have misbehaved. Then, light will come and I'll be caught like a thief. I'll be caught red-handed.” Then, darkness wants to hide. Now what can the light do? Light is coming not to expose. Light is coming to illumine, and transform darkness into light. This room was unlit, obscure for a long time. Then light wants to enter to transform the very face of darkness. But darkness is afraid of light. So this is what is happening in the modern world. In spite of the fact that man needs light, men are afraid of light.
14:31 Now again, where is this light? In the mind? Never! It is in the soul. The little light that we always see in the mind can never, can never, guide us to our goal, destined goal. The destined goal is very far and we need light. What kind of light the mind has? A candlelight. When the storm of doubt comes – whooh2 – it is blown. Then, again, we are in the same darkness. In darkness we are groping. Now look at the power of the candlelight – when there is wind, immediately the candle is blown. Now again, we are the beggar, we are the blind, we cannot walk. Who, what has caused this? How is it that the candle is extinguished? By doubt, by our own fear, by our own anxiety, by our own jealousy and imperfection. Now, here the mind has this candlelight. How long can you stay? But here we have got ceaseless light. So, because it is part and parcel of the highest, and it has the direct contact with the Self, with this Ultimate, with the Absolute. So here it is a continuous flow of light. It does not end.
16:19 The ocean of light, you can use it all you like. You won’t feel that you are running short of it. But here, if you use the light – gone, like the candlelight, in a matter of a few seconds, not a few minutes – gone. Now again, we say we have very scanty light here, very limited light. But is it true that we shall always have limited light there? No. Since head is also, mind is also, God’s creation, it has to get abundant light. Otherwise in the mind we shall remain practically animal. Doubting people, suspecting people, hating people – this is what we shall do with the mind. God will not tolerate this; God will not allow us. So, God wants us to bring the light from the heart, from the soul, and transform the mind that doubts, that is scared to death, that hates people or that wants to lord it over others.
17:40 Again, I wish to come back to our path – it is the path of the heart, the path of love. When we love someone, we really want to give all that we have and all that we are. God loves us, that’s why He is ready to give us at every moment His infinite Peace, infinite Light, infinite Bliss and infinite Power. But, unfortunately, we don’t love Him the way He loves us. So when He wants to give us something – His infinite Peace, Light and Bliss – either we suspect Him or we suspect ourselves. We suspect ourselves: “How can...? I never prayed to Him. I never thought of Him. I did so many things wrong. Why should He come to me?” In this way, we try to justify ourselves. “I have done millions of things wrong, and why should God come to me?” We suspect, and then when He is standing right in front of us, [we say] no! It is like a false coin. Coin is true, but it seems it is a false coin. So this is a false god – we start doubting.
18:58 Now, in the spiritual life, when we meditate, the first thing we do is conquer doubt. If I doubt myself, who is the loser? I will be the loser. If I doubt you, who will be the loser? I will be the loser. God has all divine qualities in boundless measure. If I doubt God, God is not going to lose anything. He will go back with His own divine infinite qualities. He will stay with His qualities, if I don’t want to take from Him. If I feel that it is a wrong god, false god, fake god. Like this, is the thing. Then, we don’t get anything from Him, we don’t.
19:50 Then if I doubt myself, at the same time, that I am not fit for spirituality – as we read out the article ‘Who is fit for Yoga?’3 – I am not fit for spirituality. I am not meant for God, I am not meant for God-realisation, if I start doubting myself. Again, it is I who am not getting what God wants to give me. But, if I have real love for God. Like a child, he has pure love for his mother. He runs towards his mother in spite of the fact that his whole body is full of mud, clay and sand. He knows that as soon as he gets to his mother, his mother will throw off this rubbish, sand and all that. His mother will embrace him, kiss him and so forth. He knows that his mother is going to do that. And he knows that it is his mother only who can clean him – not him[self]. He knows how to mix in the clay and all these kind of things, he will do. He will soil his own body. But here he knows he is not in a position or he does not have the capacity to clean himself properly. So he runs towards his mother, crying. And, the mother with all her affection, mother will purify him.
21:09 So in the spiritual life also, when we have that same kind of love for God, we go towards God with everything – with our bondage, imperfection, limitations – what we have right now. If you have love – a child has love, that’s why he goes with all his imperfection, with his ugly body. So if you also have that same kind of love for God, you will run towards God with that same kind of imperfection. No fear, because you will know that it is God who has the capacity to perfect your nature, to perfect your life, to perfect everything that is undivine right now in you.
21:50 So, our path is the path of love, path of heart, path of perfection. And then, one thing, I wish to say, our path is the path of total acceptance. We have to accept the world. Now we have to know, if we enter into the Himalayan cave or sit on the mountain top, or dive into the blue vast ocean and cry for peace there, then we are not going to do anything for earth.
22:33 It is like this – I will eat food and let my brothers remain unfed; let them starve. That is not good. If I’m a real human being, if I have got my meal, I have to see if my brothers are also eating or not, whether they are starving or not. If they’re starving, then I will not eat. I have to feed them. When we are eating together, then only we will get real satisfaction.
23:07 So in the spiritual life, real Spiritual Masters ... they feel that, if they are eating, they’ll eat in front of humanity and share with humanity. Now again, it depends on the hunger of humanity. If my brothers are not totally hungry, naturally they will eat very little, or next to nothing. So if humanity, as a whole, does not want to eat as much as it should, then what can this Spiritual Master do? But, if there is somebody sincerely hungry, then the Spiritual Master has the meal, so you eat. I have got it. Let us share.
24:00 So my path is the path of acceptance, here we have to accept the earth as it is. But we have to know one thing, that this is not the end. Earth is far, far away from perfection, far from perfection. Unless we have accepted the earth, how are we going to perfect it? Unless we touch anything, how are we going to transform it? If somebody has pain, he needs massage. Then naturally, I have to touch his head and massage his head. Then only his pain will go.
25:00 Here earth is defective at a particular place. And that defective part, if I don’t touch, how am I going to transform it? Anything that is defective has to be made perfect. Now, if I don’t touch the thing, how am I going to perfect it? If you see that I have something wrong in me, by staying there you cannot change my nature. You have to enter into me and then only you can transform me, change me.
25:37 If we really love mankind, then we have to be with mankind. And for that, again, what we need is love. If we do not have love, we will never stay with mankind more than a fleeting second. But if we have love for mankind, then we shall say, “As long as this earth-consciousness is not realised, I will try to stay on earth to be of help, even for one individual.” If love is there, constant sacrifice can be made. And then we come to realise, where is sacrifice? As I said before, if it is my highest, or if it is my lowest part. Right now one part of mine is not conscious of the highest and the highest is trying to make the other part conscious.
26:50 So if humanity is right now not crying for Peace, Light and Bliss – Happiness – then we have not to give up our enthusiasm, or our inspiration, our service. No! We shall continue slowly, steadily. We shall mix with thousands of people. Out of a thousand, if one person cries for Light, or if one person is pinched with hunger, let us try to feed that one. And others, when they are hungry tomorrow, I will feed them tomorrow.
27:35 So we are not going to give up our hope. Only what we have to do is to exercise our patience when patience is required, we have to offer our service, when service is required. We have to offer everything as the time demands us.
28:02 To come back to my path, my path is the path of love. And within the path of love only we can have the feeling of inseparable oneness. And wherever you see oneness, you have joy. In unity, is our prosperity and reality. But in diversity we do not get [joy] according to our satisfaction. When we are one, we stand. When we are many, we just pull one another down, pull down, break down, like that.
28:52 So love is oneness, inseparable oneness. God is ours on the strength of love, you can say. And, God also claims us on the strength of His Love.
– End –
Endnotes:
1 Indicating various individuals, or groups of individuals, in the room with each “you”.
2 Sri Chinmoy makes a blowing noise.
3 The original talk, ‘Who Is Fit For Yoga?’, was given by Sri Chinmoy on April 29, 1966, at his home in Brooklyn, New York. It was first published in AUM Magazine (Vol. II No. 2, September 27, 1966), and later published in Yoga And The Spiritual Life: The Journey of India’s Soul by Sri Chinmoy, Agni Press, New York, 1971.
Published versions:
‘Our Path’ by Sri Chinmoy, first printed in AUM, The Message of Sri Chinmoy, (Vol. VII, No. 1, August 27, 1971), AUM Press, Puerto Rico, August 27, 1971. It was revised and reprinted in The Master And The Disciple, Agni Press, New York, 1985. The talk was also published in various brochures in London and New York during the 1970s. In an interview on January 22, 1974, on WRVR’s ‘Connections’ in Connecticut, Sri Chinmoy was asked to clarify what he meant by “the path of the heart”.