Question: Is there any contradiction between seeking worldly riches and the seeking of Absolute Truth?
Sri Chinmoy: There will always be a deplorable contradiction between the two. When one cries for name, fame, wealth and so forth and, at the same time, cries for inner Light, abundant Light and infinite Light, there is bound to be a severe contradiction. On the one hand, you are feeding the ordinary desires within you, wanting, let us say, first one house and then two houses; on the other hand, you are approaching the path of aspiration, from which you can enter into the Infinite. There you don't go little by little, you just enter. You want to enter into the Infinitude and you can do so. You just enter and your inner cry brings down God's Grace.When you proceed through desire, there is no end to it. Today your desire is fulfilled and tomorrow you become victim to another desire. First you get a little fame; then you get more fame. Today's desire is increased tomorrow in infinite measure. There is no end to it. Today you are fulfilled, but tomorrow again you will be possessed by another desire.
In the case of aspiration, it is not like that. Here your nature, your very existence, wants to remain in the Infinitude. If one remains in the highest Light, the all-fulfilling Light, then it is for the Light to decide whether it wants to give a specific experience to the seeker by giving him name and fame and so forth. But if the individual seeker himself wants to have both, desire and aspiration, worldly name and fame plus true aspiration for the Highest, then he will stay neither on the spiritual path nor in the ordinary material world because he will constantly be pulled by these two contradictory forces. One force will immediately say that the other is useless. Desire will say, "Aspiration is useless. You will only be building castles in the air." Aspiration will say, "Desire is stupidity, an endless round of stupidity." It is like the camel in the desert. The camel eats thorny bushes and its mouth bleeds badly. But again and again, it goes back and eats the thorns.
So these two are contradictory forces: desire leads you to frustration and aspiration leads you to satisfaction. But there is another subtle point that we should speak about. This is the material world, the physical world. We cannot reject the material world.
Why? Because our spiritual world is inside the physical world. So when it is a matter of the inner world and the outer world, we have to understand that the realisation of the inner world has to be expressed in the outer world. We cannot separate the inner world from the outer world. That is our view, our philosophy. That is our path. Other paths are different. If we leave the outer world and stay in the Himalayan caves, we are not going to realise the Absolute Truth here on earth.
If we say, "Human beings are very bad; let me have an escape," we are separating the inner world from the outer world. Our philosophy is that the outer world has to be a manifestation or an expression of the inner world. In order to manifest the Truth, one first has to have the Truth, and for that, what is necessary is aspiration.
As I said at the beginning, if we try to unite desire and aspiration, we will be ruined. Since they are like the North and South Poles, neither aspiration nor desire will care for us or fulfil us because these two cannot go together. But once, on the strength of aspiration, realisation has been achieved, then you can enter into the field of manifestation. It may even be thrust upon you. No one will blame you at that time for entering into the outer world because it will be a higher Power which will bring the so-called "outer achievement" into you. That higher Power cares only for your own realisation, for your oneness with the highest Absolute. The Power will be in you and for you. That is what God wants from you. That is what God needs from you.
So for a seeker, if he is a true seeker, he has to go through aspiration and not desire. If right now one has aspiration and desire, then should that person leave the spiritual path? No. He has to go through it. He has to see the percentages. If he has 50 per cent aspiration and 50 per cent desire, then what should he do? He should not renounce the ordinary human life, but he should pay more attention to the path of aspiration. Gradually, gradually, the percentage of desire will decrease. Then a day will come when he will really see that it is aspiration that is fulfilling him, giving him whatever joy he experiences. He will see that aspiration will fulfil him forever. At that time, automatically the desire-life will drop off and the life of aspiration will carry him to the end of the road, the real Goal.
