Question: When you say we have to control our desires in order to realise God, does that mean that desires will be around forever but under the control of the soul?

Sri Chinmoy: Right now our desires are not under any kind of control. Our aspiration is under the control of the soul. When we aspire, the soul says to do something and we do it. But when we are a victim to teeming desires, even when the soul tells us not to do something, we do not listen to it. We do the thing anyway, but the soul will ultimately gain its rightful supremacy. What happens is this: a superior officer comes to an office for the first time to replace someone who has left. At first, the ordinary minor clerks in his office mock at him. They do everything wrong and refuse to listen to him. The superior officer observes this situation in the office, but he knows that he is above it all. Gradually he exercises his authority. When the minor clerks see his power, they are afraid and they listen to him.

Similarly, in spiritual life the soul tolerates everything in the beginning. The body, the vital and the mind are unruly members of the family. They mock and disobey the soul. They are like naughty children who do not want to bathe. They stand in front of the bath but they feel that the water is very cold or very unpleasant, and they do not want to enter. The obedient children enter the bath on their own and are properly bathed. There the mother is very happy with them. She observes the situation of the naughty children for about half an hour, and when she sees that they are not going to get into the bath themselves, she just puts them in herself and compels them to take a bath.

The soul also waits for some time. Inside the soul is the adamantine Will of the Supreme, and God's infinite Light, but the soul is waiting for its hour to strike. There will come a time when the divine Will will be exercised through the soul, but in the beginning the soul remains the witness. It observes who is good and who is bad. The soul welcomes the good and divine members of the family who listen to it. To them it says, "Let us run together." As for the bad members of the family who are deliberately creating problems, the soul refers their case to the Supreme. One day the Supreme will say, "Now the time has come to show your divine light through your divine authority." That is God's Hour for the soul to dispel the darkness of millennia from the human consciousness.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Purity-river wins, Agni Press, 1974
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/prw