Part III

SCS 80-85. On 29 June 1974, Sri Chinmoy and one of his disciples appeared on //Radio Clyde//, a radio interview programme in Glasgow, Scotland. A transcript of the broadcast follows.

Interviewer: I would like to ask if you feel only spiritual joy is genuine in this life? Do you deny the existence of physical joy?

Sri Chinmoy: No, we do not deny the existence of physical joy. But we feel that if the physical joy becomes an expression of the spiritual joy, only then will it be lasting. Otherwise, it has no backbone, let us say. If there is no real source, if there is no reality behind the physical, then the physical joy cannot last. The Vedic Seers, Indian spiritual figures, came to realise that it is from Joy that we have come into existence; it is in Joy that we exist; and at the end of our journey’s close it is to Joy that we return. But the source has to be spiritual joy, that is to say, God. If God expresses His Light in and through the body, then only will the joy be lasting. Otherwise, if we discard the inner Light, the God-Light, and only care for the physical joy, which is sense-pleasure, then there can never be abiding satisfaction. Right after we indulge in sense-pleasure, we get the experience of frustration; and frustration is followed by destruction. But if the physical becomes a conscious instrument of the spiritual, if the spiritual joy is being expressed through the physical, then the joy lasts.