Question: Have you ever been possessed by a spirit?

Sri Chinmoy: Spirits come and try to possess spiritual Masters, but they cannot possess us. We do not allow them to. It is God’s Will that we fight them.

Once when I was twenty-one years old, six spirits came and attacked me. I was in my bed and I started to fight with them. By God’s Grace those spirits had to leave, but they returned later. It was around three a.m., and there was such a commotion that all the members of the house — there were eleven or twelve of them — came down. Only my brother, who was there in my room in a bed right next to mine, could see that I was fighting with something and talking in another language. He did not know the meaning of what I was saying, but he wrote what he heard when I was arguing and fighting with them. Afterwards he asked me the meaning of it, but I had forgotten everything. Later I concentrated and meditated and told him the meaning of these foreign words.

These spirits were evil spirits. Very often evil spirits try to take away our spiritual power in our unguarded moments. It is not only spiritual power that they take; if you have honesty, simplicity or, especially, purity, they try to take it away. Purity they take first, because they know that if purity is gone from somebody, then that person cannot progress any further. If one wants to have something lasting in one’s spiritual life, then one must have purity first.