Question: I feel that I am a child of God and I also feel, unfortunately, that I am a child of belief, tradition and all sorts of things. Is it possible to be free from all past beliefs and be absolutely one with God?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, a child of God, a true child of God, can have total oneness with God consciously. You can be one with God without acting on the strength of all the old beliefs, superstitions or unnecessary traditions that you have accumulated from your childhood. Your mind can be totally emptied of the old ideas, traditions and beliefs which you cherished or are still cherishing.

Through sincere aspiration you can get rid of the mental beliefs or worldly beliefs that you have kept in your heart and mind. You can replace them with your soul's spontaneous light, which expresses itself as inevitability or immediate assurance. This feeling of inevitability and assurance, which is based on the soul's light, can be established in your mind and heart. Then the so-called worldly beliefs you can discard as you discard old clothes. It is not only possible but inevitable; in fact it is necessary for God-realisation. Otherwise, these old beliefs in the form of society's dictates or in the form of traditional morality will hamper your spiritual progress.

In human belief there is always a mixture of doubt. Fifty per cent will be belief, fifty per cent will be doubt: or one per cent may be belief and as much as ninety-nine per cent may be doubt. But when you live in the soul and are illumined by the soul's light, at that time you will get assurance not only from the soul but also from the soul's inevitability, which is absolutely one with God's dynamic Reality and God's dynamic Vision. At that time you can go beyond all beliefs and be in direct, constant oneness with God, the highest Reality. Then you will live in the soul constantly and express its highest Truth. At that time, old beliefs will have no place in your life.