Question: Can purity be had overnight?

Sri Chinmoy: No. As we cannot have realisation overnight, also we cannot have purity overnight. It is impossible, impossible, impossible. Your elder brother has been studying for nineteen or twenty years to get his Master's degree. If you are in kindergarten, you cannot get your Master's degree in one day. But again, impossibility exists only in our human world. If the Supreme wants to give you purity overnight, do you think that anybody on earth can prevent you from receiving it? The Miracle-Capacity of the Supreme does exist, but as a general rule He manifests His Reality through gradual progress. Each rule admits of exception, but that kind of exception we very rarely see.

Purity is like a muscle, that can be built up through exercise and practice. You need many years of practice and also God's Grace. If you try to achieve purity, certainly you will get it. If you don't get it today, you will get it in ten years or in your next incarnation. Total purity in the physical, the vital and the mind takes time. You are crying for purity in the heart. You may get it in a few days or a few months, let us say. But it takes more time to get purity in the mind. In the vital it is still more difficult. In the physical, God alone knows how many years it takes. Comparatively it is much easier to get purity inside the heart. The soul is all pure so if you identify with the soul, at that time you are all pure. There you are purity itself. Then from there you are drawing a little bit of purity into the heart. The heart gets it very easily. The heart is like the first room, the mind is the second room, the vital is the third room and the physical is the fourth room. When the flow starts, naturally the heart will be purified before the other members.