There are many rooms in the house. The thief has stolen all the things from one room and now he is in another room stealing. You can never say that just because a seeker is old, he does not have the same wrong forces that you have: insecurity, lower vital problems, jealousy and so on. Age does not conquer them. Otherwise, everyone seventy or eighty years old would be on the verge of God-realisation. Do you think old people are all better than you young people? Your wrong forces remain in your restless vital; that is why you are caught. In their case, the same forces are there, but in the mental or subtle physical. If the seekers do not consciously conquer these forces, they have to take incarnation again and again to conquer them. If you enter into their mental plane, or any plane except the physical, you will see that the same wrong forces are there. They have them, only it is as if the forces were in another room. You have them in a room in which the windows and doors are open, so everybody sees them. But they have kept their doors and windows closed.
These forces cannot be conquered by the passage of years. The greatest opportunity to conquer wrong forces is when you are young. When you are young, you have a determined will. This determined will is in the subtle mind and strong vital. When the vital becomes weak with age, determination goes away. Subtle mental determination is more powerful than the vital, but when the vital is weak, the physical becomes weak and the mental determination cannot work in and through the vital.
There are some boys and girls who are not mentally strong, but because they have a dynamic vital, they make progress. So this is the time. Now, if anything is wrong in his mind or vital he will be able to conquer it. But when he is fifty or sixty years old, he will be finished. So dear ones, you are all young. Any obstacle you see in your nature try to conquer it now, because tomorrow it will not be so easy.From:Sri Chinmoy,Opportunity and self-transcendence, Agni Press, 1977
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