Question: What is the difference between a poem that comes from the higher vital world and a poem that comes from the illumined mental world?

Sri Chinmoy: When you get a poem from the higher vital world, you will get the feeling of what you call a surge. It is like a very, very big wave, a huge wave, that washes ashore from the ocean. It covers the length and breadth of everything and washes away all impurity and everything else it touches. But when you get a poem from the illumined mental world, even if it just touches you, immediately you feel a sense of illumination in your entire being. The one is like a big, surging wave that spreads all around and inundates everything, washing away all impurity. The other totally illumines your whole being. Before, you felt that you were in darkness, that you were the ugliest person, absolutely impure. But when the flash comes from the illumined mind, the things that were dark become fully illumined. Your whole existence may have been in darkness, but as soon as you compose a poem from the illumined mind, immediately your outer being becomes radiant, illumined and totally transformed.