Question: Can anything stand as an obstruction to our aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: Very often we see that death is an obstruction to the aspirant. Almost all souls, in spite of being very great and spiritual, forget their past achievements, past aspirations and deepest inner cry when they take a new incarnation. For twelve or thirteen years they remain in ignorance. Sometimes it happens that spiritual souls do not regain their past aspiration until the age of fifty or sixty. The fifty or sixty years during which these individuals have not been consciously aspiring are absolutely meaningless from the spiritual point of view. So in this incarnation they have lost fifty or sixty years and in their past life also their aspiration was cut short by death. That means that perhaps eighty years have been wasted. In this case death is a real obstruction.

Aspiration should be like a bullet. It should pass through the death-wall. Death is obstruction for the sincere aspirant who cries to realise God in this life here on earth. For non-seekers it will take hundreds or thousands of incarnations to realise God anyway. But for genuine aspirants who cannot live without God-realisation and who want realisation here and now in this incarnation, death is a real obstruction. We have to remove death’s obstruction with our aspiration.