Question: You have talked about the way a soul remains around after it has left the body to see if people are feeling sorry for the deceased. I have always thought that the soul is perfect. How can it have jealousy and desires?

Sri Chinmoy: That is the way with ordinary souls. They like it if their dear ones cry. When an ordinary soul sees that its dear ones are crying, it feels, “Oh, they really cared for me.” But the good souls will say to those still on earth, “No, no, no. Only try to follow and live a divine life. Try to reveal and manifest the Supreme on earth.”

You have to know what kind of soul we are talking about. The vital has the same relationship to the soul that the physical has to the mind. If too much of the physical is inside the mind, we call it the physical mind. The soul is always good. But if too much of the impure, undivine lower vital is operating in and through the soul, then naturally the soul cannot come forward with its pristine beauty, purity and perfection.

Now, this house is good. It is so beautiful and glowing now that we have decorated it. But if we had put rubbish and junk here, it would give off very bad vibrations. Although the house is now very beautiful, the same place could be made very untidy and unclean, and then the consciousness, the vibrations, would be totally different. The house would then give a very bad vibration.

The soul is like a bird inside the body-cage. If the bird is tortured or mistreated while it is inside the cage, then it will become a very bad bird. Then, when it is released from the cage it will not have its original pure and free qualities. When the soul is hovering around the scene of the body’s death, the vital and the qualities of the vital will still be with it, so it will still maintain all its bondage.

The soul has to leave the vital world. There is a world for the vital, there is a world for the mind and there is a world for the psychic being. The soul has quite a few loads on its shoulders, let us say. After it leaves the body, one by one it will leave the psychic being, the mind and the vital on their own planes.