Chapter 14. Never Give Up!

Keep trying! It so often happens that the last key opens the door. Likewise, it is your last prayer that may grant you salvation, and your last meditation that may grant you realisation.

CRY LIKE A CHILD

Successful meditation entirely depends on our inner cry. When a child is hungry, really hungry, he cries. He may be on the first floor and his mother may be on the third floor, but when the mother hears his cry she comes down immediately to feed the child.

Let us take meditation as an inner hunger. If we are really hungry, our Father Supreme will come running no matter where we are crying. If we have intensity and sincerity in our cry, then we begin to make spiritual progress immediately. Otherwise, it can take years and years.

Again, God-realisation is not like instant coffee—something that you will get immediately. God-realisation takes time. If somebody says he will be able to make you realise God overnight, then do not take him seriously. It takes twenty years to get a Master’s degree, which is based on outer knowledge. God-realisation, which is infinitely more important and more significant, naturally will take many more years. In no way do I want to discourage anyone. If your inner hunger is sincere, then God will satisfy that hunger.

If we practise concentration and meditation regularly, we are bound to succeed. If we are really sincere, we will reach the goal. But the difficulty is that we may be sincere for one day or for one week, and then we feel that meditation is not meant for us. We want to realise God overnight. We think, “Let me pray for one week, one month, one year.” After one year, if we don’t realise God, we give up. We feel that the spiritual life is not meant for us.

The road to God-realisation is long. Sometimes, while walking along the road you will see beautiful trees with foliage, flowers and fruits. Sometimes you will see that there is only a road, without any beautiful scenery. Sometimes you may feel that you are on an endless road through a barren desert, and that the goal is impossibly far away. But you cannot give up walking just because the distance seems far, or because you are tired and have no inspiration. You have to be a divine soldier and march on bravely and untiringly. Each day you will travel another mile, and by taking one step at a time eventually you will reach your goal. At that time you will definitely feel that it was worth the struggle.

Q&A

Question: What happens if, after meditating for a few months or a few years, you decide you want to take a rest and then continue your journey at a later time?

Sri Chinmoy: In the ordinary life, after you have covered one mile you can remain where you are for a while and take rest before continuing your journey. But in the spiritual life it is not like that. In the spiritual life, once you take rest doubt enters into you, fear enters into you and suspicion enters into you. All kinds of negative forces enter into you and destroy your possibilities. Your potentiality remains the same; eventually you will realise God. But the golden possibilities that you once had are lost. You will fall back to your old ways and be lost in ignorance, and the progress that you made will be destroyed. However, the essence of the progress that you made will remain inside the soul. The essence is never lost, even though in your outer life you cannot use it. The quintessence of the progress that you made will remain inside your heart, and after five or ten years, or in your next incarnation, when you want to meditate again, this quintessence will come to the fore. At that time, if you pray to God most sincerely to enter into the spiritual life again, your previous progress will loom large in your life.

Question: How can I maintain my enthusiasm to meditate every day? Some days I feel no inspiration to meditate at all.

Sri Chinmoy: Some days you do not want to meditate because early in the morning you do not renew your love, devotion and surrender to the Eternal Pilot within you. Every day your Eternal Pilot is ready to feed your inner hunger, yet you may not offer Him your gratitude even for a second. If you can feel a flood of gratitude flowing inside you, then easily you can have a wonderful meditation every day.

What should you do if you feel no enthusiasm or inspiration to meditate on a particular day? For a fleeting second remember what you were before you entered into the spiritual life. When you see the difference between what you were and what you are now, automatically a spring of gratitude to the Supreme will well up inside you, for it is He who has inspired you and awakened your inner cry, and it is He who is fulfilling Himself in and through you.

Another thing you can do is to think of a time when you had a most sublime meditation, and consciously dive deep into that experience. Think of its essence—how you were thrilled, how you were jumping with delight. At first you will just be imagining the experience, because you are not actually having that meditation. But if you enter into the world of imagination and stay there for ten or fifteen minutes, power will automatically enter into your meditation and it will bear fruit. Then it will not be imagination at all; you will actually be deep in the world of meditation.

There is something else that you can also do. Try to feel that the dearest in you—either your soul, or your Master, or the Supreme—is very hungry, and that you are in a position to feed your dearest with your meditation. Your soul, your Master and the Supreme are eternally one, but take them as separate individuals. If the dearest in you is starving and you are in a position to feed him, will you not do so? If you really call someone your dearest, your heart will compel you to feed him. After you feed him, he will give you satisfaction, and in that satisfaction you become eternal, infinite and immortal. When the child is hungry, the mother comes running to feed him. After the child is fed, he gives his mother a smile. The mother sees her whole world, the entire universe, inside the smile, because the child is her universe. So, when you feed the dearest and the dearest smiles, at that time you will feel that your entire world is smiling.

Every day you cannot eat the most delicious food. In the spiritual life also, especially in the beginning, it is next to impossible to have a most successful meditation every day. Even spiritual Masters have gone through dry periods in their inner lives. But even if the food is uninspiring, still you eat in order to keep your body fit. When you meditate you are feeding your inner being, the soul. If you cannot feed the soul most delicious food each day, you must not give up trying. It is better to feed the soul something than to allow it to starve.

To maintain your inspiration, each time you sit down to meditate in the morning you have to feel that you are continuing the journey that you have already begun. You should not feel that you are beginning your journey anew. No, you should feel that you have already made considerable progress and that today you will make more progress. And each time you make progress you have to feel that you have touched a tiny portion of the goal. In this way you will feel that you are really advancing.

Even better, you should feel that your goal is not millions of miles away, but very close, right in front of your nose. If you always feel that your goal is within easy reach, but that you don’t know where it is, then you will desperately cry for it and search for it. At that time, your inner being will be flooded with dynamism. If you feel that your goal is far, you become relaxed and feel that Eternity is at your disposal. But if you feel that what you want to grow into is just beside you, and that you only have to use your conscious awareness to grasp it and claim it, then you will eagerly jump into your meditation.

Only a very advanced seeker can maintain the same level of meditation each day. In the beginning you should be happy if you have a very good meditation even occasionally. When you do not have a good meditation, do not allow yourself to become a victim to frustration, for that will affect your ability to meditate the next day as well. You have to know that God wants your realisation infinitely more than you want it, so your realisation is His responsibility and His problem.

If God has not given you a good meditation today, instead of getting angry or disheartened, try to feel that He is planning to do something more important for you in some other way. If you cannot meditate one day, feel that the Supreme wanted you to have this experience, and just offer your present achievement soulfully and devotedly at His Feet. Say to Him, “These are my possessions right now—unwanted possessions—and I am offering them to You. I place them at Your Feet.” If you can offer your existence to the Supreme in that way, then you will see that your daily meditations will become most fruitful.

Question: Will I ever reach the point where I will always have the inspiration and aspiration to meditate?

Sri Chinmoy: Right now your meditation is at the mercy of your inspiration or aspiration. When you are inspired, when you have aspiration, you are ready to meditate. Unfortunately this aspiration, this inner urge, lasts only for a day or for a few weeks and then it disappears. But when you become an expert, meditation will be at your command. How can you become an expert? If you want to become an expert singer or poet or dancer, you have to practise daily. It is the same with meditation. If you practise meditation daily, there comes a time when it becomes spontaneous; you develop an inner habit. After a while, at a certain hour you will feel compelled to meditate. You will feel that meditation is your soul’s necessity, and the inner urge to meditate will never leave you. Early every morning when it is time for your meditation, your inner being will come and knock at your heart’s door. Then you will have a good meditation every day.

Question: Why do some people always meditate well?

Sri Chinmoy: In your class at school, I am sure that you are a brilliant student. Again, there are some students in your class who do not do well at all. You are a good student because you study at home. Some of your friends do not study, so they do not do well. In the spiritual life also you have to know that some students meditate without fail every morning, noon and evening. When they meditate with all their heart and soul, God is pleased with them and intensifies their inner cry so that they are able to meditate well every day. Sincere seekers get from God additional capacity, and with that divine capacity they can always meditate well.

Question: My aspiration seems very feeble, and I’m worried it won’t get any stronger in the future.

Sri Chinmoy: Let us not worry about the future. Let us think of the present. As you sow, so you reap. In the past perhaps you have not sown the proper seed. Let us say your inner cry was not intense in the past, and that is why your aspiration is not strong right now. Right now you are not crying for God all the time; you do not have the feeling that without God you cannot exist. You feel that as long as there are interesting things in the world, as long as you have friends, as long as you are comfortable, you can go on. But when you feel that you can exist without water, without air, without everything, but not without God, at that time you can be certain that you will find fulfilment in the future.

If you sow a seed now, it will eventually germinate and become a plant. If we sow the proper seed—that is to say, aspiration—then the aspiration-tree will bear fruit, which we call realisation. But if we do not sow the proper seed inside ourselves, then how can we get the proper fruit? So let us not worry about the future. Let us only do the right thing today, at this moment, here and now. Try to aspire today, and let the future take care of itself.

Question: How can I improve my morning meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Every morning you have to offer your gratitude to God for having awakened your consciousness while others are still sleeping, and for all His infinite blessings to you. If you offer just a fragment of your gratitude, you will feel God’s Compassion. Then, when you feel God’s Compassion, try to offer yourself. Say, “I will try to please You only in Your own way. So far, I have asked You to please me in my own way, to give me this and that so that I can be happy. But today I am asking for the capacity to please You in Your own way.” If you can say this sincerely, automatically your morning meditation will be better.

Question: How do you feel about collective meditation or group meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Individual meditation should be done early in the morning at home, when you are alone. But collective meditation also has its time. When you enter into the spiritual life you try to widen your consciousness. If you claim to be a member of a larger spiritual family, then it is your duty to be of service to others. When you meditate with others you can be of real help to them, and they can be of real help to you.

Nobody meditates well every day. Let us say that today you are in a very high state of consciousness, while the person who is sitting beside you is not in his highest consciousness. If both of you are meditating together, your aspiration and even your very presence will inspire and lift up that person. Then, tomorrow it may happen that you are not inspired to go high, whereas the other person is in a high consciousness. At that time he will be able to lift you up. So collective meditation is meant for mutual help.

You have to feel that collective meditation is like a tug- of-war. Suppose that you are in a very high state of consciousness and the seeker beside you is also in a very high state of consciousness. If ten persons meditate together and they are all in a very high state of consciousness, then it is like ten persons on one side in a tug-of-war against ignorance. Since ignorance is only one person, then naturally it will lose the tug-of-war. If you are meditating at home alone and are fighting against ignorance all by yourself, then you may soon become exhausted and give up. But if you can meditate with others, it becomes much easier.

When you meditate in a group, you have to feel your oneness with others. You should not feel that you are competing with anyone else, or that you are stronger or weaker than anyone else. Each individual has to feel that he is strong only by virtue of his oneness with the others. He has to feel that he is strong because he has become one with the aspiration of his brothers and sisters.

During collective meditation try to feel that others are not separate entities. Feel that you are the only person meditating, and that you are entirely responsible for the meditation. When everyone has entered into you, when everyone is flowing in you and through you, at that time you will get the maximum benefit from your collective meditation. If twenty persons are sitting together, they have to feel that they are only one vessel. They are not individuals; they have become one vessel, and they are one in their receptivity. But each one has to feel that it is his obligation and responsibility to do his part. You cannot feel, “Oh, since we are all one, let him meditate for me.”

During collective meditation you should have a good feeling for the other persons meditating with you, but do not think of them specifically. If you think of someone in particular, and that person is not aspiring, then your meditation will be on that unaspiring person and not on God. You have to feel that the highest consciousness is the goal, the target, and you are aiming your aspiration-arrow at the target. On the outer plane, if one member of the team scores a goal, that is enough. But in meditation each person has to score. If ten persons can score at the same time, only then does the group get a very high mark.

Question: Is there anything wrong with seekers meditating together if they follow different Masters?

Sri Chinmoy: It is not advisable for seekers following one path to meditate with seekers of another path. If you are following one path and the person sitting beside you is following a different path, in spite of your best intentions there will be an inner conflict between your aspiration and his. When you are ready to fly, the person next to you will pull you back. Unconsciously each of you will have the urge to surpass the other. He will try to go beyond you, and you will try to go beyond him. Even if you consciously say, “We are not competing,” this does not help. There is an unconscious competition. You feel that your path is better than his, and he feels that his is better than yours.

It is always advisable that the disciples of one spiritual Master meditate only with those on their own path or with those who have not yet chosen a path. It is not that you are being mean; far from it. Only you feel that you live in your house and somebody else lives in his own house.

But when it is a matter of inspiration, if you want to talk with spiritual people who follow other paths, you can. You are trying to reach God, and they are trying to reach God. That means that you and they both possess inspiration. So if you speak with them, you will both get inspiration.

Question: What happens if we are meditating next to someone who is thinking worldly thoughts?

Sri Chinmoy: If your meditation is very high, very powerful, at that time inner fire emanates from you. If someone who is cherishing worldly thoughts sits with you, he will be compelled to give up those thoughts. Many times I have seen this when three or four people are meditating together. If one of them is in a very high meditation, then those who are cherishing worldly thoughts either have to leave the place or they are compelled from within to meditate soulfully.

Question: How can I maintain the peace that I feel at a group meditation when I get home?

Sri Chinmoy: If you meditate at home every day, then it will be very easy for you to maintain that peace. It is very important to meditate every day without fail. Early in the morning is the best time, before the day dawns. Every day begins with new inspiration, new hope. New life is entering into us every morning, so morning meditation is indispensable for anybody who would like to follow the spiritual path.

Also, if you can mix with spiritual people, they will be able to help you. You will not ignore or hate others; far from it. Spiritual people do not hate mankind, but they have to be cautious. You have to know that your power, your capacity, is very limited. As long as your capacity is very limited, you cannot mix freely with all and sundry. So try to mix with spiritual people and meditate regularly. When you have enough inner strength, then you won’t lose anything no matter what you do. Whatever you get from group meditations and whatever you get from your own meditation you will be able to preserve.

Question: How can someone achieve the strength to go forward on the spiritual path?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to constantly ask yourself one thing: do you want God or do you want ignorance? Both are standing right in front of you at every moment, and you must make a choice. Everybody knows that one cannot serve two masters. So when these two masters stand in front of you, you have to decide immediately which one you want. If you choose God, then you must come to Him and enter into him. And each time you find that you have come out of a divine consciousness, you have to enter into it again. If you can re-enter into God’s Consciousness faithfully and quickly every time you come out of it, then eventually you will reach the point where you will not come out of it and enter into ignorance anymore. A day will come when your conscious choice of God will be permanent, and you will be totally merged in God forever.

As you begin your spiritual journey, always try to feel that you are God’s child. Early in the morning you can soulfully repeat, “I am God’s child, I am God’s child.” Immediately you will see that whatever is dark, impure and ugly in you will go away. Later in the day, when ignorance comes to tempt you, you will feel, “I am God’s child. How can I do this? I cannot enter into ignorance.” By repeating, “I am God’s child,” you will get abundant inner strength and will power.

Question: How can I always maintain a strong and intense aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: The mistake that you and others make is that you have a fixed goal. If you come to a certain standard during your meditation, you feel that you have reached your goal. Or if you get a little joy in your inner life, then immediately you get a complacent feeling. You want to rest on yesterday’s laurels. But I wish to say that our goal is an ever-transcending goal. Yesterday you got an iota of joy, and today you are crying to get that same iota of joy. But how do you know whether the Supreme wants you to have that iota of joy or whether He wants you go farther, higher and deeper?

In your case it happens that you always try to reach a particular goal. If you know how to run fifty metres, then after you have run fifty metres you feel that your part is over. But the Supreme does not want you to be satisfied with fifty metres. He wants you to run fifty- one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four metres. When you have a higher goal, automatically your aspiration increases. Otherwise, if you always aim at the same goal, you don’t make progress, and it becomes monotonous. If you always go to the same place, after a while you don’t want to go there anymore. But if you feel that your goal is constantly farther, higher, deeper, that it is ever-increasing, ever-ascending, then there is constant enthusiasm.

Joy is in progress, not in success. Success ends our journey, but progress has no end. When you have a fixed goal and you reach it, that is your success. After that, you are finished. But if you don’t have a fixed goal, if your goal is going higher all the time, then you will constantly make progress, and you will get the greatest satisfaction.

So do not be satisfied with success. Aspire only for progress. Each time you make progress, that is your real success. Every day when you meditate, feel that you will go still deeper, fly still higher. Then you will be able to maintain your intensity and enthusiasm.

Question: How can we maintain a good standard consistently, instead of going up and down?

Sri Chinmoy: Please feel that every day is equally important. Your difficulty is that when you do something well you feel that you deserve some relaxation. Today you do a wonderful meditation, and then you feel, “Oh, since today I had a wonderful meditation, tomorrow I can relax.” You feel that your meditation will maintain the same speed, but it doesn’t.

Every time you meditate, you have to feel that this may be your last chance. Feel that tomorrow you may die, so if you fail today, then zero will be your mark. When the teacher gives you the examination paper today, please don’t feel that tomorrow again he will give you the same examination. The past is gone. The future does not exist. There is only the present. Here in the present, either you have to become divine, or else you will remain as undivine as you were yesterday. Since you want to become divine, you should do the right thing here and now. This should be your attitude.

You should make yourself feel that today is the last day for you to achieve everything that you are supposed to achieve. If you fail today, then tomorrow again you have to feel that this is your last day. No matter how many times you fail, you should feel that each day is your last. If you feel that opportunity will come back and knock at your door tomorrow, then today you will not try. You will feel that you don’t need to aspire today because you have so many tomorrows. But before those tomorrows come, the aspiration that you have today may be lost.

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Do not give up. If you persist, tomorrow’s peace will come and feed your mind today, and tomorrow’s perfection will come and touch your life today.

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Love the battlefield of life, for joy is always breathing secretly and openly in both your victory and your defeat.

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Long for anything divine and it will immediately start to approach you.

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My life of progress is the result of my heart’s little cry and my Lord’s big Smile.

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When you are right, everything around you is right, for the beautiful flow that is inside you has the capacity to spread its fragrance of oneness-light all around you.

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God is ready to dawn in your mind’s chaos, but being a perfect gentleman, He awaits your gracious invitation and precious dedication.

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When you have the courage to try, you have everything, for God-revealing reality loves you and needs you.