Question: How can we intensely aspire for perfection without having greed enter in?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to know the consequences of greed. A child can eat only one piece of bread, but he is so greedy that with greatest difficulty he takes two pieces. As soon as this happens, he gets indigestion because he does not have the capacity to eat two pieces of bread. If you are greedy and want to get God's Light by hook or by crook, or by pulling beyond your capacity, what happens? If you have a tiny vessel inside you, and you try to bring down Peace, Light and Bliss beyond its capacity to hold these qualities, then the vessel gives way. So always you have to see the capacity of the vessel which you have within you. If it has so much capacity, fill it to that capacity. Then gradually, gradually its capacity increases. The capacity of your inner vessel is like the strength of a muscle, which gradually increases as you take exercise.

Now, how can you be free from greed and, at the same time, get what you want in abundant measure? When we suffer from greed, we try to satisfy the individual in us. If I am greedy, at that time I want to eat everything myself and leave nothing for you. The moment greed enters into me, I separate my existence from yours, because greed is the song of individuality. Immediately my individuality starts singing and my individuality starts dancing, and my universality goes away. I want to eat, I want to be strong; I want to be very powerful. But the moment I feel that I am universal-that you, he, she and everyone all comprise my existence-at that time I have twenty mouths at least, and I also have the capacity of twenty stomachs. When I as an individual am greedy, I have the capacity of only one individual. If I get food for twenty people, how am I going to eat it? But when I become universal, at that time I become twenty people, and naturally I can eat the food of twenty people.

The very fact that you are free from greed allows you to enter into something vast and infinite. When individuality goes away, universality comes. Individuality and greed go together, but universality and Infinity go together. We have to feel that greed limits us to such an extent that we cannot eat more than one piece of bread. But we will be really happy only if we can eat twenty pieces of bread, so we have to transform our individuality into universality.