Question: Guru, do they have the potential to be great right from the start? Is it that they are already high souls, and they do not have to evolve as much?
Sri Chinmoy: When the farmer puts seeds under the ground, some germinate. Again, the same type of seed if he puts somewhere else, nothing happens; the soil is barren. There is no hard and fast rule.All the students are studying in the same school, and the teacher, let us say, is super-excellent. One student becomes great, and another becomes deplorable — he does not complete his studies and get a degree. How God’s Grace works, we have no idea. We simply have no idea!
Sri Aurobindo said that the capacities of the great souls — Vashishtha, Vishwamitra, all the sages that came in those days — will one day pale into insignificance. New souls are coming — great souls, greater souls. Sri Aurobindo ends his story “The Ideal of Forgiveness,” which I rendered into Bengali verse, by saying that from Heaven, some mightier souls are coming. They will be so great that the capacities of their predecessors will pale into insignificance. Vashishtha and Vishwamitra are souls of the highest type, but Sri Aurobindo said that new souls will come who will be far superior to the old ones. Whether they have already come or not, God knows!
Sri Aurobindo said that we are not the sons of the past, but the sons of the future. Again, he said that, in the great field of spirituality, the past has to be followed by the future.
When Sri Aurobindo’s knee was fractured, many letters came to him, asking what was the reason. The doctors also asked. To each individual he gave a different answer. Four or five different answers he gave to explain why his knee was fractured. Which one to accept? We have to be satisfied with one particular reason or the other. To the same question, different answers came from Sri Aurobindo.
Some spiritual Masters say that below the knee it is all inconscience, so we have to bring down light into the knee. Then we will be cured. Light, light, light is the cure!
