Question: I would like to know if the advent of the electric light has had any effect on people's inner light.

Sri Chinmoy: The electric light and the inner light are two totally different things. The electric light cannot affect the inner light. First of all, when we touch an electric light or bulb, the electricity can give us a tremendous shock, or the heat of the bulb can burn us. But when it is a matter of the inner light, we can touch it, we can feel it and we can bathe in it; but this light will never burn us. It will only illumine us.

Electric light is only in the physical world. It is absolutely limited. But the inner light is unlimited. The effect of the electric light at any moment can be destruction. But the inner light can never destroy us. Its very function is to illumine. The inner light actually comes from the very depth of our soul, and this light is the food of our outer existence too. If one depends on the inner light, then one’s outer life also will be fed and illumined by this inner light. But the electric light cannot enter into our inner existence. It begins in the physical plane and it ends in the physical plane. But the inner light comes out to grasp or envelop the outer life and then transforms the outer existence. This is the difference between the electric light and the inner light.