Question: Is it true that if one aspires to a higher life, to a spiritual level, then one has to totally give up ambition?

Sri Chinmoy: Not at all. But we have to know what is meant by ambition. We have to know what kind of ambition we cherish in the physical world. There is ambition like Julius Caesar's ambition: "I came, I saw, I conquered." This is the ambition of desire. There is also ambition in the vital world and in the mental world. But another form of ambition is wanting to be good, wanting to see God in everyone, wanting to serve all human beings because in them is the living presence of God. That kind of ambition we can and should cherish in the spiritual world.