Question: Is the difference between materialism and spirituality that in the one case we try to possess the outer world and in the other case we try to possess the inner world?

Sri Chinmoy: When we practise inner philosophy, we want to capture the spiritual world; we don’t want to capture the material world. We don’t want to possess God’s creation as our own. We only want to possess God and use Him for our own purpose. But again, in spiritual philosophy, in true spirituality, we possess the person for his own purpose or the thing for its own purpose. And if we go higher still in divine philosophy, we do not possess at all. We only enter into infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. Then Infinity, Eternity and Immortality can play their respective roles here on earth in their own way.

The truly divine soldier will always seek Truth, Light, Peace and Bliss for their own manifestation and fulfilment. Here the philosophy is not, “I want for myself”, but the divine philosophy that says, “Let Thy Will be done in Thine own Way.”