The village had no water. A government expert advised the villagers to each dig a well in their back yards, to get water for their daily needs.
One villager starting digging, but after one hour, when he became hungry, he went in search of a good restaurant. After lunch he continued to the pub and joined some friends for a drink.
A second villager was making excellent progress, and had created a waist-deep hole already by lunchtime. He had arranged for food to be delivered, so didn’t need to leave his work when he became hungry. Shortly after lunch, however, with a jolt and a ringing sound, his spade struck solid rock. Realising the rock was larger than his hole, there was nothing for it: he had made a good attempt, but now would have to abandon the project.
Another villager had planned to start work early, but at 6am, had been called in to work. Another ceased digging because he didn’t have a hat: his doctor had cautioned him to always wear a hat under the hot sun. Another stopped when his son asked him to come and kick a ball around.
After two days, all had forgotten about digging – except one. Heeding the advice of the government expert and committed to his task, he continued, enduring heat and hunger, pounding through rocks, ignoring all temptations, distractions, and the demands of others. After two weeks, in the dead of night he reached a spring of cool, clear water. The spring didn’t need to be pumped; it flowed eagerly to the surface, where a series of pipes were installed to distribute the water to the entire village and beyond, free for all.
Many folks moved to the village from all around. The village prospered. All were happy.
We are eddies swirling in the river, and this river is God – but we are so busy being eddies, we don’t notice God all around us, we don’t notice we are flowing with God, one with God, inseparable from God. We are clouds floating in the God-sky; grains of sand of the God-beach; flowers, fruits and leaves of the God-tree; little fingers of the God-body, utterly absorbed in being this little finger.
How can we expand ourselves beyond our little ego-self, to become aware of our larger infinite Self, how can we unveil our oneness with God, how claim God as our own? What instruments do we have to sense and know the infinite God within and around us, what voice have we to sound the God-depths, what vision to scan the God-skies?
In truth, God is infinitely more eager to receive and answer our call than we are to cry it. We have only to turn all of ourselves, with all of our hearts’ ardour, eagerness and intensity, towards whatever conception of God we can love with all of our being – and let God, our highest, wisest, fullest Self, complete the picture, join the dots, finish our game.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“The moment God or the feeling of the Beyond comes into our existence, we will see God. The moment we repeat the name of God, or chant Aum, immediately the sound travels to the Beyond, and from there we hear the vibration echoing and re-echoing. When we call God, He will not simply remain in the Beyond; He will echo our call. God immediately receives our call in the Beyond and from the Beyond He sends His divine vibration into our heart. When this happens, faith is bound to come into our life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Seated comfortably with a straight back, begin by focusing on your breathing, regulating the inflowing and outflowing breath by counting slowly to a number of your choice. Dismiss all extraneous thoughts, feelings, desires and distractions as you hone your focus and become absorbed in just breathing, counting.
Our breath brings us a profound spiritual message: the message of oneness. All humans, animals, trees and plants are at once breathing the same air, the one earth-atmosphere. Though breathing through countless lungs, we are all sharing one breath – the breath of life. So it is, that our one breath in myriad breaths, connects us directly with every living breathing being on this planet: with every human, each animal, tree and tiniest plant.
Still focussed on your breathing, imagine our planet Earth slowly revolving in space inside your heart, a delicate tender globe enveloped in light. As you breath, imagine all the beings on our planet are breathing in sync with you: like one big orchestra, feel that you are breathing one breath – your breath – on behalf of all beings, on behalf of Earth herself.
We all know our world is imperfect, just as we are ourselves imperfect beings. We have so many weaknesses, shortcomings, problems and failings. Forget about our flaws – just imagine three qualities which our world most needs in order to be more perfect; three qualities you yourself need to become a better person. Now consciously breathe in each of these three qualities: observe them flowing directly into your heart, and into the hearts of all who are sharing your breath, the beating hearts of every living being of our world-family. From all hearts, perfection flows outward into the thoughts, feelings, eyes, smiles and actions of all.
Through your each and every breath, world-perfection slowly dawns.
Fasting has long been associated with spiritual practice. Monks, nuns and ascetics have routinely fasted for various reasons, mostly in the belief that fasting brings one closer to the divine.
Fasting cannot be considered a spiritual practice in its own right, and will never bring us to enlightenment, though occasional fasting can certainly benefit our meditation by helping to purify our physical system, clarify our mind and brighten our outlook.
One of the direct benefits of fasting has nothing to do with its physical effects. The discipline, determination and focus required to endure a fast of any duration can certainly be applied to enhance the discipline of our meditation, our self-control and detachment from desires, in turn boosting our self-confidence and aspiration.
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“If you fast once or twice a month, it will purify your subtle nerves. Purity is of great importance in the spiritual life. But this purity does not come from fasting only. We also have to meditate properly. We have to offer our inner life to God. Then only will our outer life be properly purified and transformed. In addition to our inner prayer and meditation, if we fast twice a month or three times a month, it will aid us in purifying the body’s outer existence. It will also aid us in our concentration and meditation.”
“It is through aspiration, not fasting, that we reach our goal. In order to increase our inner cry, we have to meditate regularly and devotedly. If we meditate, then purification is bound to come. Fasting is not indispensable in the spiritual life. Only aspiration, our inner cry is indispensable. If we know how to aspire, then our nature will be purified. Then, in our meditation and contemplation we get the results of fasting.”
– Sri Chinmoy
We know it is important to remain calm and quiet for some time after meditation, to allow the peace, light and bliss we have experienced to settle, be absorbed and take root in our consciousness. It is best to not speak, eat a meal or engage the mind in complex tasks for a while. Instead, read spiritual books, listen to spiritual music or enjoy some gentle exercise.
Yet assimilation starts during meditation itself. If we feel we are a spectator in our meditation, we will never assimilate our experiences, for we will feel them to be separate from ourselves, something foreign which can be lost or taken away. Only when we see ourselves in our experience, when we can claim our experience as our own deeper and true self, can assimilation be permanent.
What quality do we need to cultivate, to develop this capacity for identification, and hence, assimilation? Sri Chinmoy speaks of the primary role of gratitude in our hearts:
“I ask my disciples to assimilate the Peace, Light and Bliss they get during their meditation. Unless and until it has been assimilated, there is no guarantee that it will come back again or that it will remain permanently in the system.
“Assimilation means conscious, consecrated oneness with the Source, conscious and consecrated oneness with the Source. We receive something, and then we have to think of the Source. Where did it come from? It did not come from you; it came from the Source. And then you have to feel your absolute oneness with the Source, and this oneness you can establish on the strength of your gratitude-heart, a grateful heart. So, when your grateful heart has become inseparably one with the Source, then assimilation has taken place.”
– Sri Chinmoy
No matter how tasty it is, if food is not properly digested, we derive no energy or nourishment from it; even so, if the peace, light and bliss we experience in meditation are not assimilated, they will simply evaporate and our meditation will not have any lasting benefit.
Just as there are both inner and outer steps that help us to prepare for meditation, so there are several inner and outer factors which help us assimilate our meditation.
Outwardly, the simplest, safest and surest way to assimilate our meditation, is to remain in silence for some time. During this silence, our subtle nerves are absorbing and being nourished by our inner experience: the moment we open our mouth and start talking, or listen to someone else, our mind is engaged and we are drawn away from the subtle, sweet, soft realm of the heart. During this time, we can read spiritual writings, listen to spiritual music, hum quietly to ourselves or go for a gentle walk somewhere quiet. Then when we do talk, it should initially be spiritually focussed, not discussion of mundane, disturbing or complex matters.
While it is not harmful to take some fruit or a light drink, we should not eat a proper meal for at least an hour after meditation, as the process of physical digestion drains our energy and dulls our subtle sensitivity.
As for the inner approach to assimilation, in addition to consciously cultivating gratitude and treasuring our experiences, Sri Chinmoy gave this very clear and simple advice:
“You can assimilate all the beautiful experiences only by increasing, deliberately increasing, joy in the heart, joy in the mind, joy in the vital, joy in the physical — always joy, joy, joy! Joy is the answer to help you assimilate.”
– Sri Chinmoy
To do anything well, requires our preparation. Whether climbing a mountain, sitting for an exam, baking a pie, driving to the beach, or even going to bed, we need to make suitable preparations in both our outer environment and inner focus.
Meditation is an inner journey, so our preparation involves reorienting our consciousness away from its usual absorption in the outer world, and towards the inner.
Take a shower or a proper wash to give you the feeling of a fresh start. Wear light-coloured, loose-fitting clothing. Choose a place where you can be alone, quiet, undisturbed and undistracted by outer influences and obligations such as work, family and friends. Switch off and put away all devices with a wifi or phone connection. Use a candle, flowers and incense if these objects inspire you – anything which will reflect back to you the qualities we need in ourselves for meditation – simplicity, purity, beauty and sincerity.
Because digestion takes so much energy and dulls our subtle nerves, it is best to avoid eating anything substantial for a few hours prior to meditating.
We cannot just discard our outer consciousness like taking off a coat: it takes time for the waves of outer thoughts and preoccupations to subside. Spend some time in quiet without talking: read, sing or listen to spiritual music, all the while our mind is receding and our heart gently opening.
It is pointless to set off without a clear purpose and objective. An archer will never hit the target without first taking aim. First take careful aim, then shoot. After sitting to meditate, take a minute to preview the ideal meditation you are about to enter into. Prepare your defences against rogue thoughts and distractions, and set your sights clearly on your goal.
We want to have everything, and we want to be perfect. We sometimes expect that we should be able to have everything and be perfect for the asking. Indeed, many of us take up meditation with the idea that its practice will enable us to attain perfection, while experiencing and possessing everything we fancy.
Unfortunately, our desire for perfection and our desire to have and possess whatever we want, are almost always on an unseen collision course. The desire to have everything arises from our lower, finite self; whereas perfection is the exclusive prerogative of our higher, infinite self. Our lower self sees its own desire-fulfillment and perfection as one and the same; while our higher self knows perfection can flow only from our emancipation from desire-indulgence.
Sri Chinmoy addressed this predicament when asked: “What keeps us from attaining perfection?”
“What keeps us from attaining perfection? It is our self-indulgence. In self-indulgence we feel that there is something absolutely necessary in our life, and that is pleasure. When we cry for pleasure and want to remain in pleasure, to become pleasure itself, perfection is a far cry. But when we cry for divine Joy, Delight, Bliss, at that time we enter into the ocean of perfection. If we cry continuously, we learn how to swim in the sea of perfection.
“When we have an inner cry for Delight, we jump into the sea of perfection. This is the first step. But when this inner cry becomes constant, we swim in the sea of perfection. When we keep Joy and Delight as our goal, perfection automatically grows in us, and slowly, steadily we become the sea of perfection. But, what now keeps us from perfection is our fondness for pleasure-life and our indulgence in pleasure-life.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Consciousness is expressed in myriad forms and levels. Each level is its own realm of being. From each level of consciousness to the next is a progression, an evolution. From stone to plant consciousness, from plant to animal, from animal to human, each level is a preparation, containing within itself the seeds or precursor of the next, just as the caterpillar embodies the future butterfly.
Between one level and the next, there is no greater leap than from the human to the divine, for here is the leap from the finite to the infinite, from semi-consciousness to super-consciousness, from bondage to liberation. As humans, we prefigure the divine. So, how are we to expedite this leap of evolution, how to embrace and blossom into the divine within?
Sri Chinmoy writes:
“Constantly you have to cry deep within yourself. Then you will see that your human consciousness is bathing in the sea of the divine consciousness. You have to feel the necessity of the divine consciousness inside you and around you. And you have to know that the human consciousness, which you represent right now, is not the goal. If you are totally dissatisfied with the human consciousness, then you have moved one step forward towards your goal. If you feel that the human life has disappointed and deserted you and that the divine life alone can fulfil you, then only the divine consciousness can enter into you. And when the divine consciousness enters into you, then you will feel that this divine consciousness will not negate your human consciousness. On the contrary, it will transform the human consciousness. It does not reject; it does not cast aside anything human. It purifies and illumines the human consciousness and transforms it into its own divine consciousness.”
– Sri Chinmoy
This final part of our series on “The Inner Cry”, comprises Sri Chinmoy’s answers to two questions, and two poems. Both questions concern the process and requirements to progress from our present ignorance to our future perfection.
Firstly, Sri Chinmoy was asked: “What is your process for enlightenment and what do you ask of your disciples?”
Sri Chinmoy came straight to the point, reducing his entire teaching to a single requirement: “There is only one thing that I ask of my disciples: to aspire. By aspiration we mean inner cry. We cry for name and fame in the outer world, but in the inner world we cry for peace, light and bliss in infinite measure. So I ask my disciples to cry inwardly to achieve peace, light and bliss and to grow into peace, light and bliss.”
– Sri Chinmoy
On another occasion, Sri Chinmoy was asked: “You call us ‘seekers’! What has been lost?”
Sri Chinmoy replied:
“What has been lost? Our conscious oneness with the Absolute Supreme has been lost. Through our inner search we are trying to gain or regain our conscious inseparable oneness with Him. We are seeking for Truth and Light. Once upon a time, we were possessors of this infinite Truth and Light. But unfortunately, we made friends with ignorance-night and lost our inseparable oneness with Infinity’s Light and Bliss. It is through conscious seeking — our conscious inner search and inner mounting cry — that at God’s choice Hour we shall once again get back our inner wealth.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Two final poems:
“The outer smile
Is beautiful.
The inner cry
Is infinitely more beautiful
And blissful.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“What illumines my mind?
My inner faith.
What liberates my heart?
My inner sincerity.
What immortalises my life?
My inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“A moment of inner cry is a day of outer prosperity.”
– Sri Chinmoy
In our outer lives, prosperity is associated with material wealth and riches, popularity and power, comfort and luxury, abundance, wellbeing, winning, high achievement and success in any field. Yet outer prosperity is fleeting, meaningless, unsustainable and unfulfilling if it does not flow from a sincere inner cry. An inner cry is the only reliable guarantor of prosperity’s integrity and longevity.
Beyond prosperity, what we all yearn for, is satisfaction. Satisfaction is the Holy Grail of human longing, embracing our inner and outer existence. There is nothing we want or need more, than to be truly satisfied in all our being.
From where, then, and how does satisfaction arise? On what does it depend?
“Our true satisfaction
Entirely depends
On our own sincere inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry is the source and sustenance of all satisfaction in our life. If we are without an inner cry, then what is there to satisfy? For us to feel and achieve satisfaction, something must be satisfied. What is that something? Our inner cry.
“You can never reach complete satisfaction
In your heavenward journey
Without your heart’s aspiration-cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry envisions our goal, takes aim at the goal, sponsors and guides our journey and ultimately unites us with our satisfaction-goal. Our inner cry is the spark that ignites our aspiration, the fuel that inspires our meditation and the vehicle that carries us to our satisfaction.
Satisfaction is not a final or static state: lasting satisfaction must ever grow, deepen and expand. Lasting satisfaction can flow only from an ever-fresh and continually transcending inner cry.
“My satisfaction-peace
Is not the success
Of my outer smile
But the progress
Of my inner cry.”
– Sri Chinmoy
This is an abridged version of a story by Sri Chinmoy:
“Master, please help me,” said the young man. “For two weeks, I have hardly been able to sleep. I wake up with a desperate feeling in my heart. I feel that I am in desperate need of spirituality. I have tried in vain to understand this feeling. Can you help me?”
The Master replied, “You are crying for the fulfilment of your inner cry. It is not with the mind that you are crying; you are crying from the inmost recesses of your heart. The inner heart has infinite capacity. It is not limited like the mind. One does not approach the highest Truth with the mind.”
“Why am I feeling this cry, Master? What am I really crying for?”
“When we cry deep within,” the Master said, “it is because we feel the necessity of Peace, Light and Bliss. When we have this kind of inner cry, then these qualities either come to the fore from within or descend from above. We can develop the inner cry by giving more importance to what we really need in our life. When we give importance to our true necessity, then automatically our inner cry, our inner sincerity, is bound to increase. The more we feel that we desperately need Peace, Light and Bliss, the sooner our inner cry increases.”
“How can we fulfil this necessity?” asked the seeker.
“In the outer world, when we are hungry we try to fulfil our hunger. Similarly, in the spiritual life when we are really hungry for Peace, Light and Bliss, we will go to a spiritual Master who can fulfil our hunger. First of all he will increase our inner hunger and then he will fulfil it.”
– Sri Chinmoy
“In your outer life
Never
Be sparing in smiling.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Crying and smiling are generally considered to be opposites, and mutually exclusive – we cry when we are sad; we smile when we are happy. And some might consider that an emphasis on the inner cry in our spiritual life, might be reflected in a seriousness or sternness, if not sadness, in our outer expression. Yet in this poem, Sri Chinmoy is advocating at once, an unstinting inner cry alongside an unstinting outer smile.
Crying and smiling are only opposites in our superficial emotions. In the spiritual realm they are twins, intimately connected. In another poem, Sri Chinmoy states succinctly:
“The inner cries
Activate
The outer smiles.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Fleeting pleasure may evoke an outer smile, but this smile will not last. Only true happiness can produce a genuine, lasting smile, and true happiness can only be found within. It has to be searched and cried for. A genuine outer smile thus flows from, indeed cannot exist without a sincere inner cry.
“An inner cry
Is a brighter smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
The inner cry and outer smile and not merely related, they are the two faces of one coin, inseparable:
“Each inner cry
Is indeed
A hope-strengthening
God-Smile.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Our inner cry and outer smile are God’s representatives within us, and our direct connection with God.
“When my inner cry is pure
God’s outer Smile is sure.
My ascending cry
And
God’s descending Smile
Inseparable
Ever shall remain.”
– Sri Chinmoy
Finally, Sri Chinmoy reveals the secret roles of the outer smile and inner cry:
“With our outer smile we touch the Feet of God.
With our inner cry we become the Crown of God.”
– Sri Chinmoy
