Question: Is our inner beauty due to the Grace of God?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, inner beauty is undoubtedly the result of God's Grace. Is there anything good, divine or progressive that we can get or do without the Grace of God? Inner beauty is life's satisfaction and life's perfection. How can we get life's satisfaction and perfection from anybody or anything but God? And God and God's Grace, God and God's Compassion, are inseparable.

There is nothing we can do without God's Grace. Just because God's Grace is there, you are praying and meditating and trying to realise God. Perhaps your friends and relatives are leading a very undivine life. Their time has not come. God's Grace has not been received by them. So you have to be so grateful to God that God has awakened you, whereas your friends and relatives are not yet awakened. Anything good that we do, anything good that we become, comes directly from God. Without God's Grace we cannot budge an inch.

I will tell you an interesting incident. Once one of my elder brothers, who is very spiritual, entered into a kind of joking discussion with a mentor of mine. They were very fond of each other, so my brother was cutting jokes with this elderly man. My mentor said, "Without God's Grace nothing can happen. And again, with God's Grace everything can happen." My brother said, "All right, you just give me a gun and I will see whether I need God's Grace to shoot you. Then, after I kill you, let me see what God's Grace can do for you!" So my mentor said, "Just because God knows you are going to shoot me, God is not giving you a gun right now. If this is not God's Grace, what else is God's Grace?" So my brother lost the case.