Question: How can I win the battle that is going on inside me between the light and the darkness?
Sri Chinmoy: Let us take light and darkness as two inner beings. When we act in accordance with the will of light we may be discouraged by lack of appreciation and so forth. At the same time, the other being, which we call darkness, accuses us of doing the wrong thing. Now why does this happen? We have to realise that we have not yet reached perfect Perfection; we are still far away from that goal.In our inner existence we are constantly fighting with truth and falsehood. Many times it happens that in spite of knowing the truth, we do not follow the truth, because we feel that to follow it would be extremely difficult; while something which is not true may be more convenient to our current outer needs. At that time we commit the greatest blunder.
If we take falsehood as our very own, what happens? Truth remains silent. But if we are eager to follow the truth, then falsehood comes and strikes us, insults us, discourages us. At the same time, truth is not extremely eager to have us as its very own because it has seen how many times we have touched its feet and promised that we would listen to it, but time and again this has been all false promises and idle talk. We say that we will follow the path of truth, but the next moment we go and listen to falsehood because we get more pleasure there. Truth has heard our false promises hundreds and thousands of times.
When we really do try to fulfil the promise that we made to truth, we may feel falsehood pulling at our mind. "Where are you going?" it says. "You promised me that you would always remain with me." But if the day comes when truth sees that we are absolutely sincere, at that time it fights most powerfully against falsehood. And if we become totally one with the truth, we will see that all dark forces inside us and around us have no choice but to surrender.
A supreme test is going on between purity and impurity in our nature. Water is water, but some water may make us sick if we drink it while other water refreshes and energises us. Truth sees whether the seeker wants the purest water or not. When it is fully convinced that our promise is absolutely sincere, that even if we don't get the inner light immediately, we won't go back to falsehood, that our choice is light and nothing else, it will dispossess falsehood totally.
Again, some people cry for light sincerely, but without satisfactory results, simply because God's destined Hour has not yet arrived. If a farmer feels that on the very day that he starts working very hard to cultivate his land he should get a bumper crop, he will get disgusted and abandon the field when he sees no result after a few weeks of sincere effort. But although sincerity is important, time is still a great factor. The field can only produce satisfactory fruit at God's own time. Our timing and God's timing need not be, and very often are not, the same. Then there is the question of surrender. If we are one hundred per cent surrendered, we will feel that if we are not getting the satisfactory results, we will wait forever for God's Hour. But if we are not surrendered, we will not accept God's Will. We will become depressed and disheartened and give up the battle. We will not want to wait for God's Hour, and we will certainly be the losers.
What we sincerely need is light. But if light does not come, we must be ready to wait an Eternity for infinite Light to surcharge our inner and outer being. Falsehood will immediately feel that we are ready to wait for millions of years in order to bathe in the sea of Light, and it will lose its interest in us. If God wants to, He can give us what we want at once, but if He feels that this is not the appropriate time, we have to wait. Then if we have patience, which itself is the extension of light or of consciousness, we can feel that we are increasing the light that we have and the light that is entering into us.
So let us have infinite patience and boundless courage in our quest for the inner light. And if light does not come let us not compromise at all with darkness and falsehood. We must be prepared to sacrifice our life for our goal of divine light. Then truth will win the battle against falsehood permanently.
