Question: I like my professor very much, but sometimes I feel that he is caught in the mind.

Sri Chinmoy: You do not have to tell your professor to lead a simple life. Only tell him to look at a child, or a human being who is very, very simple in every way. When this person talks, there is such simplicity flowing from him. Then the professor may be inspired to become more simple. So with your own simplicity you can go and stand before him. You are young and you have abundant simplicity. The professor will be there with all his intellectual capacities or qualities. But as soon as you offer him a simple smile, a soulful smile, he is bound to feel from you tremendous joy. That particular smile he will never be able to give. Spontaneously you are giving a smile, which is so normal and natural for you. The professor has studied millions of books. He knows the whole world intellectually, but as soon as you smile, he is bound to see something and feel something which he does not have: your simplicity. Your simplicity has tremendous beauty in it. In this regard, he is a beggar. The very thing that he is appreciating, if he is sincere, he will realise that he does not have.

As soon as we see something that has spiritual beauty, we want to claim it for ourselves. When we see a beautiful flower, do we not want to have the fragrance and beauty of a flower in our own heart? When we pray and meditate, do we not want to have the vastness of the sky inside us? When the birds are flying, do we not feel that our inner being should enjoy freedom, so that ordinary thoughts cannot bind us? So anything that is good we appreciate and try to bring into our own lives. It is not that we are trying to grab it; we identify with it. I happen to be a spiritual person and you are in my boat. Something good you are seeing in me; that is why you are trying to identify with my consciousness. So if your professor is a really good person, he will see inside your soulful smile something most valuable and that is your simplicity.

The more we become intellectually great, the sooner we lose our simplicity, sincerity and so on. One can have an illumined mind without reading millions of books. When the mind is ready to receive light from Above or from within, when the mind is longing for something beyond its present grasp, then illumination dawns. Intellectuals always feel they know everything. They do not have the inner hunger to know something more, but their heart is always longing for something more. On the mental level, there will always be another intellectual giant who has more knowledge, though this is difficult for their minds to accept. But when the heart sees something beautiful or somebody who is spiritual, the heart will try to become that beauty or emulate that person.

So coming back to your question, your very presence, your life that is flooded with simplicity, is bound to give your professor joy. That kind of joy he does not have. And joy is what we are all longing for.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy answers, part 17, Agni Press, 1999
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/sca_17