Question: Do wars result from the fact that we have not been able to reconcile our lives to our souls?

Sri Chinmoy: We have not been able to enter into the soul’s region, so we do not know what the soul wants from us. We do not have free access to the soul. Our soul may want us to do something, but the physical mind is constantly standing in its way. The physical mind does not co-operate at all with our inner existence.

What are we fighting against in the inner world? We are fighting against ignorance. This ignorance has to be nipped in the bud. As long as ignorance remains in our being, we will feel that the world is not ours. We will feel that it is something totally different from us which we have to possess. The moment we are freed from the grip of ignorance, we will feel the world deep within us. At that time, there is no need to possess it, since it is already ours.

Now we are fighting because we feel that a particular plot of land or country is not ours and we want to possess it. But when we are freed from ignorance, in our inner existence we will feel that the whole world is ours. It is not something to be fought for because deep within us it is already our possession.

So you have to be very careful. Remain only in the heart, and not in the unaspiring mind or the unaspiring vital. When the mind and the vital really aspire, they will take their legitimate place alongside the heart. They will reveal and manifest the divine forces as their very own. They will learn the secret that the heart already knows: to claim everything and everyone as their very own and to see everything as an extension of their own consciousness.