Now how can we bring the Truth out of its prison cell? Again, I have to say it is through love. Love for whom? Love for God. And who is God? God is the highest illumined part in us. God is nothing and nobody else. I have a head and two feet. Let us say that my head represents the highest in me and my feet represent the lowest in me, my ignorance. I know that the highest and the lowest are both mine. The lowest has to enter into the highest in order to be transformed, liberated and fulfilled. The highest has to enter into the lowest in order to be revealed and manifested.

In our path, the sense of identification is absolutely necessary. The highest has to feel its total oneness with the lowest. The lowest has to feel its total oneness with the highest. Needless to say, the highest always feels its oneness with the lowest. It is the lowest that finds it extremely difficult to be one with the highest because of its fear, doubt, jealousy and so forth.

What kind of commitment is necessary to follow our path? It is not the kind of commitment that you have to make in other spiritual or cultural organisations. For these organisations, you may have to give a regular fee. But when I ask you to make a commitment, it is different. I say that if you see something in me, if you see or feel light inside me, then if you want to follow our path, you can. There will be no monetary demands. You do not have to give me five dollars or ten dollars or anything like that. No! Here it is a matter of your own aspiration-how sincere and regular you can be in your spiritual life. If you are not sincere, then you will not be able to run fast. But if you are sincere and dedicated, then you will run very fast. The commitment I ask for in our path is regularity in your meditation and aspiration, a sincere inner cry. I ask nothing else from any student.

Our path, the path of the heart, is also the path of acceptance. We have to accept the world. If we enter into a Himalayan cave or sit on a mountain top and cry for our personal achievement and satisfaction, then we are not going to do anything for the world. It will be like this: I shall eat food to my heart's content and let my brothers remain unfed and starving. That is not good. If I am a real human being, I have to see that my brothers also eat along with me. If we eat together, then only we shall get real satisfaction.

Similarly, in the spiritual life, real spiritual Masters feel that it is their bounden duty to eat in front of humanity and share the spiritual food with humanity. Now, if humanity as a whole does not want to eat as it should, if many are still sleeping and have not yet felt the spiritual hunger, then what can the spiritual Master do? But if there are a few sincerely hungry seekers, the spiritual Master tells them, "The meal is ready. Let us eat together."

In our path of acceptance, we have to know that the earth is far from perfection. But unless we accept the earth consciousness, how are we going to perfect it? If someone has some pain, I have to massage him. Then only his pain will go. Similarly, if the earth is imperfect at a particular place, I have to touch it with my aspiration and concern. Then only can I transform it. As long as the earth consciousness is not fully realised, I will try to remain on earth to be of service to mankind with my inner consciousness.

-from The Master and the Disciple, by Sri Chinmoy

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Undoubtedly, I shall reach my destination considerably faster if I fly in a jet plane. Similarly, if we use the aspiring heart and not the doubting mind, we shall reach our goal much faster. The heart is all love. The mind is quite often all confusion. When we say the heart, we mean the spiritual heart, which is flooded with divine love.

The heart is strikingly significant because inside it is the living presence of the soul. True, the consciousness of the soul permeates the entire body, but the actual location of the soul is inside the heart. The soul has everything: Peace, Light and Bliss in infinite measure. We get these divine qualities inside the heart directly from the soul. And from the heart, we can bring them to the mind, to the vital and to the physical proper.

God is extremely simple. It is we who think of Him as someone complicated. God speaks the simplest language, only we don't understand Him. We are all deaf. We have been deaf for millennia. Poor God, He has been talking constantly, tirelessly, but we do not have time to listen to Him.

Our path is the path of simplicity. A child is simple; he loves his mother. He does not have to love anybody else: his mother is his whole world. He devotes himself to his mother. If his mother asks him to do something, he listens to his mother. A child is so simple that he tries to do everything to please his mother; and in pleasing his mother, he is doing the right thing and reaching his highest goal.

In the ordinary life, if someone loves another individual, then he spends most of his time with that particular person. He devotes his precious time to that person. If it is real human love-not divine love, but human love-then he sometimes surrenders to the other's whims even if they are absurd. He surrenders because the two of them have formed an inner and outer bond on the strength of their love. So if one loves another person, then one is ready even to sacrifice one's precious wisdom.

In the spiritual life it is totally different. Divine love never binds us. On the contrary, it expands us and liberates us. When we see and feel that we are being liberated, we feel inwardly a divine obligation to do something for our Inner Pilot. How can we remain aloof from the One who has given us everything, who has brought us the message of divine Love and Compassion? Will it be possible for us not to offer Him something in return? If we remain in the outer life, we only try to grab and possess everything, even what belongs to others. But if we live in the soul, we try to constantly give all that we have and all that we are to the Inner Pilot. Divine love means self giving.

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Since becoming a disciple of Sri Chinmoy, I have from time to time felt a very strong inner presence guiding and protecting me. In the spring of 1995, I was giving a meditation class in Nijmegen, a city in the east of the Netherlands. One beautiful day in June, I was driving there on the highway. The weather was perfect, the windows were open and I was singing happily, watching the blue sky. I was driving in the fourth, far-left lane in dense rush-hour traffic, which was moving at the maximum speed of 120 km/h. Suddenly as lightning, an inner voice, speaking in the dialect of the region where I grew up, told me to say a fast prayer for protection, now! I obeyed immediately, meditated and prayed for protection. Then I looked around. Everything was as perfect and serene as before. Within thirty seconds it all changed. My speed started dropping. I pressed the gas pedal, but it was no use. My speed was dropping very fast. On my left was only the guard rail, with no place to stop. Behind me I saw panicking drivers trying to move to the packed third lane in order to avoid me. I realised that I was on the verge of becoming the cause of a chain crash. Then I saw on my left a break in the guard rail. It was a tiny entrance to a carpool lane that was not in use at the time. I later discovered that this was the only place like this for a hundred kilometers. My speed by now had dropped to less than 20 km/h, and I would not have been able to drive more than a few meters further. As I pulled into the space, I uttered a sigh of relief and gratitude, but then I realised that I was still not safe. Smoke rose up from the engine, and my car was still standing partly in the fourth lane. A few cars almost hit me in the back. Within a few seconds, however, a tiny little fire truck parked behind me and put its blue alarm lights on. I have never seen a fire truck that small before or after this incident, but when it was needed most, it was there. The fireman got out of his truck. He was off-duty but had a mobile phone, which in those days was still a rare device. He called the police, who took at least twenty minutes to arrive, and all that time he protected me and my car. The car had to be transported back to a garage in Amsterdam by the road patrol, and was then declared a total loss. I took a cab home—no more car, no more class, but very much alive.

Aster (Amsterdam)