1972

Question: In your article "New Creation", you say that the best way to use our life, every moment of our life, is through inspiration and aspiration. My question is how can we, in what way can we put forth our utmost effort to bring to the fore our highest inspiration and aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: As an individual disciple, as a seeker, as a child of your spiritual parents, you have to feel that you have a most significant task to perform. Each individual has to feel this. Then when you feel that you have something to do, you will go one step within. What is the message that you will receive from within? From within yourself, the answer will come that you have to become a most perfect instrument, a divine soldier and a unique messenger of Light and Truth.

Now this is not the end of the answer. Once you know what you have to become you will get inspiration and aspiration. But you have to ask yourself, at each moment, when you do something or say something, whether it can be utilised for a divine purpose or can be added to your own dedication or to your surrender to the Will of the Supreme. You have said something, for example. You have spoken for a few minutes. Then you have to ask yourself, “Will this, in any way, help in realising God or in serving God?” For five minutes you have spoken to someone. Now you have to ascertain whether this talking will in any way help you or help him or help anybody else. Then if you feel, “Yes, it has helped me; it is helping my friend; it is helping others,” then I wish to say that everyday you should try to do that kind of thing. It can be used as a service to you and to the one whom you speak to and to others who are around you.

This is all done on the physical plane. It is outer action. When you do something, everybody notices you. But in the mental plane again, you will be the observer and we will be the observers. The Supreme Himself will be the Observer. In the mental plane, when you are seeing someone or saying something, talking to someone inwardly, you have to feel that the action is taking place in the mind. Is it going to be of help to you or is it going to be a hindrance to your spiritual progress? So at each moment, when thought tries to knock at your mental door, you have to be careful, very conscious and alert. Will you allow that particular thought to enter into your mental room or not? If it is a good thought, open wide the mental door. If it is a bad thought, do not allow it in. Just act like a soldier standing at the mental door.

So… action on the mental plane, action on the physical plane can make each person inspire and aspire most soulfully and most profoundly. Each action is responsible either to make you realise God or to take you away from your Goal and to delay you in realising God. Each action, whether on the physical plane or on the mental plane can do that. This is why I say that each thought, each idea is equally responsible, equally important in the spiritual life if one wants to be a man of knowledge or if one wants to do something extraordinary on earth. Each second is most important in the spiritual life.

When you value the breath of a second, the capacity or the gift of a second, then inspiration and aspiration automatically come to you. They have to come because action compels inspiration and aspiration to increase. They are within, but when you throw yourself into the sea of divine activity, they come forward and you can climb to the Highest. Inspiration will take you as high as it can. Then aspiration will come to take you to the Ultimate Goal of the Beyond. These are two friends. The first one takes you quite high but it cannot take you to the Highest. Then the second one takes you to the Ultimate Goal. But the second one also was there all along with the first one. But there comes a time when the first one, inspiration, has played its role and merges into aspiration. At that time, we don’t see inspiration as such because it has lost its identity in aspiration. Then aspiration goes high, higher, highest and there it reaches its Ultimate Height which we call Realisation. After reaching this Height, it merges into realisation itself; they become one. So the three become one: inspiration, aspiration and realisation. And then after they have become one, they try to do something jointly. To do that, they come back here again from where they started. But this time, it is not with imperfection. This time it is with Perfection-Light. They try to manifest Divinity and Immortality here on earth.