Peace

Dear sisters and brothers, dear seekers of the ultimate Truth, I wish to give a talk on peace.

Peace is a most familiar word. Each seeker knows what peace is according to his receptivity’s capacity. I am a seeker. I wish to share with you the peace that I have experienced. By offering my experience, I wish to become totally one, inseparably one, with your life of aspiration and dedication.

What is peace? Peace is our liberation from bondage. What is liberation? Liberation is our universal oneness with God the Unity and God the Multiplicity. What is bondage? Bondage is the dance of our unlit ego. What is ego? Ego is the unreal in us. And what is the real in us? The real in us is Truth; the real in us is God. God and Truth are inseparable, the obverse and reverse of the same coin.

What is peace? Peace is our satisfaction. What is satisfaction? Satisfaction is our conscious and constant oneness with the Will of the Supreme Pilot.

Where does this satisfaction lie? It lies in our self giving and in our God becoming.

Peace, the world needs. We all need peace. But when we think of peace we try to discover it in our mind. We use the term ‘peace of mind.’ We feel that peace can be found only in the mind, and if once we can discover peace in the mind, then our problems will be solved for good. But at this point I wish to say that the mind we are referring to is the physical mind. This mind is the doubting mind, and in the doubting mind we can never feel the presence of peace. We can feel the presence of peace only in the loving heart. The doubting mind leads us to total frustration. The loving heart leads us to complete satisfaction. We doubt, and then we feel a barren desert within us. We love, and then we feel a sea of Reality and Divinity within us.

Peace is not to be found in external knowledge. Most of our external knowledge is founded on information, and information cannot give us any abiding satisfaction. Peace is not to be found in outer efficiency. Peace is found in self mastery.

If we want to achieve peace in our inner and outer life, then we must know the necessity of reciprocal inclusiveness and not mutual exclusiveness. Earth and Heaven must be united. Heaven has the silence of the soul. Earth has the sound of life. The silence of the soul leads us to our Source, the highest Reality; and the sound of life allows us to manifest what is within that highest Reality. In the inclusiveness of earth and Heaven we can achieve peace.

Peace is the only authority in our life of ascent and descent. When we ascend, we learn the song of unity in multiplicity. When we descend, we learn the song of multiplicity in unity.

All of us here are seekers. We are all children of God. We are progressing according to our inner intensity and our soul’s necessity. Each individual member of the world family has a special way of achieving peace. A child feels that he can achieve peace only by making noise. Inside noise, what looms large for him is peace. An adolescent finds peace only in constant activity. A youth finds peace only by creating a new world or by destroying the old world. An old man finds peace in unlearning most of the things he has learned from the ignorant world. When he unlearns, he feels considerable peace. He also achieves peace by placing himself at the Feet of the Supreme Pilot.

Peace is our inner wealth. This inner wealth we can bring to the fore only when we expect nothing from the outer world and everything from the Supreme Pilot within us, at God’s Choice Hour. Often, when we work for the world and serve the world we feel that it is the world’s bounden duty to offer us gratitude or to acknowledge our service. When we expect something from the world, we are bound to meet with frustration. But when we expect from the Inner Pilot, He fulfils us beyond the flight of our imagination. But one thing we must know, and that is that God has an Hour of His own.

Our duty is to pray for peace, meditate on peace, concentrate on peace and contemplate on peace. God’s duty is to inundate us with His Peace. When we know the art of surrender, the kingdom of peace within us cannot separate itself from our living reality. It is our conscious inner surrender, our unconditional surrender to the Inner Pilot that expedites our journey toward the discovery of the all illumining and all fulfilling Peace.

Now we are in the state of Ohio. The state motto is most significant for all seekers: “With God, all things are possible.” The moment we enter into the spiritual life, we feel there can be no better, more encouraging and more illumining message than this. A beginner seeker believes in it. An advanced seeker goes one step further and feels that God is the Doer, God is the Action and God is the Fruit thereof. So, our first lesson in the spiritual life is that everything is possible with God. Then later we come to feel that we do nothing, that it is God who does everything in and through us. This is the great lesson, the ultimate lesson, that we learn from our inner school.

The capital of the state of Ohio is Columbus. In the state of spirituality, there is only one capital, and that is aspiration. On the strength of aspiration we can achieve our Goal. On the strength of aspiration we transcend constantly our earthly reality and existence. No matter in which field we apply aspiration, the mounting flame within us, we are bound to achieve success. The state of Ohio offers us a shining example. From Ohio, seven American Presidents came, and offered their loftiest height and light to the whole country. Not only in the field of politics, but in every walk of life, when we aspire, our aspiration leads us to the destined goal.

Every day the Almighty Father, the ever Compassionate Father, gives us ample opportunity to discover something new. The thing that we are discovering is love, love divine. Love divine is at once eternally ancient and eternally new. When we discover love divine within us, we grow into the very image of God the eternal Lover and God the eternal Beloved, who ever abides within us.

– Sri Chinmoy

February 12th, 1974
Afternoon
Ingman Room New Student Union
University of Toledo
Toledo, Ohio