Question: Please explain how individuals become collective souls.

Sri Chinmoy: When a group of individuals pray and meditate together, they don’t become individual souls of separativity; but they become a collective soul, a oneness-soul. When ten persons have the same prayer, they grow into one reality. Suppose somebody is sick and ten persons are praying for his recovery. These ten human beings have the same goal: they become one soul. Ten souls become one not in the sense of ego, but in the sense of oneness. Collective soul here means oneness-soul, not the soul that enjoys separativity. It is through joint effort, conscious and constant effort, that the collective soul becomes oneness-soul. Now, how does an individual soul emerge from a collective soul? It is like ten persons who are working in order to support one family. They all lack good education, so they don’t have very good jobs. Each one is getting a very small salary; but when they combine the money, then they have enough to support the family. But then, out of ten persons, one person has some intellectual light. He gets a chance to go to school. Then he leaves the family. He goes out and becomes a man of knowledge and amasses material wealth. Then he tries to bring out another member of the family. Many of the Indian restaurant owners here are from a small town near Chittagong. They are poor people, very poor people, so they stay together in one family. Then one, with greatest difficulty, comes to London. Here he makes some money and then he brings somebody else here. In this way they keep their common goal to bring all to the highest standard. If you see this with your human eyes, you will say collectivity has gone away, because some members have come out of the family. But with the inner eye you will see that they still share the same goals. One has gained more light since he came to the West, so he wants to bring the others here so that they will also gain light.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Father's Day: Father with his European children, Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/fdf