Question: In relation to Sudha's question, are not other personalities sometimes involved in keeping the soul in its present condition? For example if you are attached to someone?

Sri Chinmoy: It is absolutely true. Very often it happens like that, that if you are connected with someone, you are trying your best to go up, up, up; but the other person keeps pulling you down. And in connection with Sudha’s question, I am glad to say one thing: if we go deep within, we shall see one thing, that the difficulties that we are now facing after we accepted the spiritual life, we had almost ninety-nine percent before we accepted the spiritual life. At that time we were not conscious; we were unconscious of them. Each difficulty we had. Just because you are unconscious while you are eating, whether you are eating rice or bread or fruit, you are still eating. But when you eat consciously, you know whether it is rice or bread or fruit. Similarly in the spiritual life, if we are conscious of the fact, then we will see that these difficulties almost ninety-nine percent of them we had before we accepted the spiritual life. At that time we were blind. We were ignorant. We were foolish. We did not know what actually was happening in our life. But now that we have become conscious, we are aware of the difficulties that rise to fight against us. We are glad not only that we have become conscious but that there is Somebody, there is some higher factor, God and His miraculous Grace, who are more than eager to help us. As we have become conscious, we reach Him, realise Him. So we are most fortunate to be conscious of the difficulties that we have and we must never try to avoid difficulties. Accept them...and we know that with us, for us, and in us is the omnipotent Grace of God.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Earth’s cry meets Heaven’s smile, part 3, Aum Press, Puerto Rico, 1978
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