Question: Will the process of striving for perfection ever come to an end?

Sri Chinmoy: It will never come to an end, because God Himself does not want to end His Cosmic Game. Today what we feel is the ultimate perfection, tomorrow will be just the starting point of our journey. This is because our consciousness is evolving. When the consciousness evolves to a higher level, our sense of perfection simultaneously goes higher. Let us take perfection as an achievement. When we are a kindergarten student, our achievement in perfection may be very good for that stage. But from kindergarten we go to primary school, high school, college and university. When we get our Master’s degree in perfection our achievement is much greater than what it was when we were in kindergarten. But even then we may feel that there are many things more that we have to learn. Then we will study further and enlarge our consciousness still more. If the child thinks that the Master’s degree will always remain unattainable then he is mistaken. The spiritual ladder has quite a few rungs. If we do not step onto the first rung then how can we climb up to the ultimate rung of the ladder? We start with inspiration, and from there we begin to concentrate, meditate and contemplate. And these three words — concentration, meditation, contemplation — are included in one word: aspiration. We start with inspiration and continue with aspiration. There is no end to aspiration, and there is no end to our achievement of perfection.