Part II — Questions and answers
Question: What is ignorance? I don't understand what it is.
Sri Chinmoy: Ignorance is all the things that stand in your way in your spiritual life. It is your lack of awareness of your true inner cry for God. You have ignorance because you don’t always try to cherish divine thoughts. How many times a day do you become a victim to doubt? How many times a day do you feel that God does not care for you? This is your ignorance. If you can feel that God cares infinitely more for you than you care for God, then you are giving your ignorance to God. The best thing for you is not to doubt your inner life of aspiration. If you doubt, God can never hear you. Or even if He hears, He is not going to answer, because there is no bridge between your doubting mind and God’s Compassion. But if there is aspiration, then immediately there will be a bridge between your cry and God’s Smile.
Sri Chinmoy, The illumination of life-clouds, part 1, Agni Press, 1974