59. Question: Is the feeling that the outside world is futile really a form of aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: If you feel this, it means that you are approaching the truth in a complicated manner, a perverse manner. You should not think that the outside world is futile. You have to feel that the outside world is yours. You have to accept it, but not the way the world wants you to accept it. You will accept the world with the idea that a day will come when with your own light, with your own delight, with your own divine capacity, you will transform and illumine it. Right now, if you accept the world the way it wants you to accept it, you shall only wallow in the pleasures and meshes of ignorance, for the outer world is much stronger than your own capacity. But one day you will be strong, you will be stronger, you will be strongest. While you are developing your courage and strength, you can’t say that the outside world is hopeless, useless. Only you have to feel that you don’t have enough capacity to illumine it. If you criticise the outside world, if you feel that it is futile and useless, then you will cherish a kind of superior feeling. That superior feeling will bloat your ego and you will feel that it is beneath your dignity to mix with the world even after you get Power, Light and Bliss.

The outside world is like a child, the youngest member in the family. You know your little brother or sister is not doing the right thing. At the same time, you do not have the capacity to correct and perfect the child. But a day will come when you will have enough strength. At that time when you request the child to do something good and divine, the child will do it because he will see something in you that is divine, luminous, supreme. But if you look down upon the child, thinking that the child is doing everything wrong and leading an undivine life, then you will automatically cherish a kind of superior feeling. This superior feeling will separate your reality and existence from that of a child. Today you are aspiring only to strengthen yourself; tomorrow you will aspire to strengthen the ones that are around you. But if you think that everything in the outer life is futile and meaningless, if you do not feel your oneness with the world, then how are you going to illumine it?

Right now the capacity that you have is very limited. But one day you will have boundless capacity and then, at God’s choice Hour, you shall be a perfect instrument to serve the weak ones. But if you think that others are useless, you shall never do any service for the outside world. There will always be a big gap between you and others: “I am all good and they are all bad people. So let good people remain together and forget about the bad.” No. Good people will stay together in the beginning only to gain strength. But once they have gained strength, good people will go and mix with others. The rest of the world is not bad; only you have to say that it is less good. But if you say you represent day and they represent night, then that will be a serious mistake. You have to feel that you have an iota of light more than the world has, and with that iota you are trying to be of help.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My Rose Petals, part 5, Agni Press, 1976
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