Purity

"To have experiences without the strength of purification is like living in the most dangerous part of the forest. This does not mean that experience must always wait for complete purification. What is actually needed is a good understanding and a true relation between growing experience and growing purification."
  — Sri Chinmoy

Purity is a divine quality of paramount importance in our spiritual life. Everybody knows what purity is, but purity is something that has to be cultivated. Unless we are pure, we cannot achieve anything. Spiritual power will be a curse instead of a boon if we don’t have purity in our body, mind, heart and soul; it will simply burn us to ashes. If we have wisdom without purity, then it will immediately be eclipsed by fear and doubt.

All divine qualities are attainable in our spiritual life. So purity is most certainly attainable, but everything depends upon how sincerely one has accepted the spiritual life. It may take a few days, a few months or a few years, depending upon the individual’s aspiration. And it may take many incarnations if one is not sincerely aspiring at all.

In our path, physical purity is extremely important. Some spiritual seekers neglect the body; they do not care for the physical. But we do care for the physical because we feel that it is in the physical that the soul resides. The fulfilment of our divine mission can only take place here on earth, in the physical body. In the physical, purity is power; so we must keep the body pure. When we establish purity in our nature, only then can the divine power last permanently in us.

If we are impure, wrong thoughts, jealous thoughts, obscure thoughts and death will haunt us. This is the secret I wish to tell you: If we want to be free from the fear of death, then we must be pure. The moment we feel the purity of the soul, at that time we can enter into the very existence of death. When we can consciously enter into something, we are not afraid of it because there we bring our own strength, our own soul’s light.

There are various ways to purify our outer existence. If we do not have any specific method of meditation, we can start with breathing. We should try to breathe in calmly and quietly, and while inhaling just repeat the word “purity”. Or we can say “Supreme”. We need no other secret than this. If we do this, we will feel purity coming down from above our head. Then, when we breathe out, we try to feel our impurities going out with the breath. If we practise this simple exercise, we will see a difference in our nature in this lifetime.

Then we must try to economise in the production of our mouth. Most of us talk daily at least three and a half hours more than necessary. If we want to make true spiritual progress, then we have to minimise our talking. We are not being asked to become a silent Brahman. That is far from what God wants. But we need not enjoy silly, useless, meaningless talk. Very often we ruin our deep inner experiences by talking about them or just talking too much in general. What actually happens is that when we receive some inner truth or inner reality, we feel that it is not inner truth at all but just a kind of meaningless mental hallucination. Why? Because by constant talk, we have alienated ourselves from our real Source. After we have had major experiences or, we can say, minor realisations, we can talk as much as we want. But at that time we will not be able to speak of anything that our inner being does not want us to speak about. So let us try to minimise talk. All of us can practise this golden truth.

Only when we have attained spiritual perfection will we achieve absolute purity. Everybody is impure until the last moment before perfection. But right now, if we can bring down into our mind peace from Above, then inner purity will abide in the mind. Our inner existence is always pure. The soul is always pure. Our divine heart is always pure. It is the physical, earthbound mind that is impure; and that mind, along with our outer existence, can be purified if we bring to the fore the light of the soul. This is not only possible, but practicable and inevitable as we attain spiritual perfection.

From the spiritual point of view. I wish to say that purity is something that will immediately help us to become one with the highest and the lowest at the same time. When we are in the lowest, we will not feel that the lowest is the only thing on earth; and when we are in the highest, we will not feel that the highest is the only thing on earth. At that time, there will no longer be any difference between the highest and the lowest. It will all be one.

When we are pure we are able to expand our mind, our thoughts and our ideas. When we possess real purity, we constantly see that our consciousness is expanding from one individual to another, from one place to another, from the limited to the unlimited. The moment the highest purity is developed or possessed, we feel that the entire world is ours. It is not something apart from us; we belong to the world and the world belongs to us.

In the spiritual world, purity is the secret of oneness, the indivisible oneness between the finite consciousness and the infinite consciousness, between the individual world and the collective world. It is purity that can unite us. It is purity that can permanently establish the divine Kingdom of Heaven here in the physical.

"Have purity first; then only will you never be devoid of power."
  — Sri Chinmoy