Question: How can we continually aspire for spiritual purity?

Sri Chinmoy: When an individual does not have purity, then he is in no way better than an undivine, aggressive, strangling animal. If you can sincerely feel this, then you are bound to make progress in achieving spiritual purity. See what an individual is when he does not have purity, and then see what he is and what he can be when he has purity. If somebody has been without purity for one week, and the following week he starts developing or crying for purity, then he himself can be the observer or judge. Immediately he will see the difference. When he makes the comparison, he will see that the first week he was leading an animal life and the second week he was leading the life of a saint.

Always try to make a comparison: what you were and what you are and what you are going to become. Just compare yesterday's impure life to today's pure life. When you see the yawning gulf, the enormous distance between the two, automatically the strength of your purity increases. You have to know what you were before you accepted the spiritual life and what you have become and are going to become by walking along the spiritual path. It was a little bit of inner purity that brought you to the spiritual life and, as your purity increased, your progress in the spiritual life also increased. We were animals, we are human and we are going to become divine all by virtue of our inner purity. In this way you can feel the importance of purity in the spiritual life, and if you feel its importance, you are bound to aspire for it.