Question: Guru, how can we keep our aspiration and not be affected by unpleasant outer situations?

Sri Chinmoy: Your sister is the culprit, or your mother is the culprit, or your father is the culprit, or your friend is the culprit, or your spiritual brother is the culprit, or the customer is the culprit. Right? Or perhaps your own mind is the culprit. So, how can you maintain your aspiration? There are two ways. One way is to feel, “If I had been in her position, in his position, I don’t think I could have done any better.” Always make yourself feel that you could not have done an inch better than the other one who is creating problems. Feel that perhaps you would have done even worse. You are getting an unpleasant experience from so and so. You should feel at that time, “Oh, if I had been in the same situation, or if I had been a victim to wrong thoughts, a wrong environment and wrong ideas, I would have behaved worse than that particular person.” Always make yourself humble and feel your oneness with the other person. In this way, the unpleasantness that you have got from the experience will go away. This is the human way of dealing with the problem.

The other way, the divine way, is to ask for illumination: “O Supreme, grant me illumination.” If your heart is fully illumined, if you yourself become illumination, at that time you don’t see darkness. If you are all light within and without, then how can you see darkness? So, if you become illumination you will always see illumination around you. It is we who are neither completely in light nor completely in darkness who will see somebody as light and somebody else as darkness. But when I become illumination itself, at that time I can’t see anything but illumination. I am that. Again, if I am really all darkness, then I will not be able to see light anywhere, because my consciousness is enveloped totally.

A few days ago in Puerto Rico, a disciple asked me a question. She said, “Sometimes I am afraid of looking at you because I have so much impurity and so many undivine forces. Do you not see them as soon as you look at me?” I said, “When I am in my highest consciousness, at that time I don’t see you even as a human being. I don’t see your mistakes, or your impurity, or your insecurity. No, far from it. When I am in my highest consciousness, at that time I see you as an exact prototype of my own reality. I enjoy myself very nicely as the universal Reality. When I am in this consciousness, the seer and the object of his vision are all one. At that time I see only myself, like in an X-ray. Before the X-ray I am standing and I see myself. So, how can I see impurity or insecurity or anything undivine? But when I am in this ordinary consciousness, which is just a few hundred miles above you, from here I can see how much impurity you have, how much insecurity you have.”

So, when you are in your highest, which is illumination, at that time nothing can affect you because you are not seeing anybody as another person. You are seeing only yourself. If you remain in your mountain-top consciousness, then nothing will affect you. But if you want to stay at the foot of the mountain, then naturally you will see that there are all kinds of animals around you. They are biting you and strangling you. But if you remain on the top of the mountain, there is nothing that will affect you, nothing.