Question: Has the soul always been perfect?

Sri Chinmoy: The soul has always been perfect but, as I said before about God, we have to know how high the soul is and how much higher it can go. Today's height is perfect for the soul, but tomorrow the soul can envision a higher height, and it has to climb up. The soul-bird is now on a particular branch, which it thinks is the highest branch. But then it looks up and sees that there is a higher branch, so it jumps up to that branch. Then again it sees something higher and goes there. Each time it casts its glance, it sees something higher. Where the soul stands is perfect for the time being, but then it increases its vision and goes high, higher, highest. There is no end to the height it can achieve.

Again, when it is a matter of manifestation, the soul knows how much it revealed or manifested God's Light in its previous incarnations and how much it can manifest in future incarnations. In a previous incarnation it was just a little, in the present incarnation it is a little more, and in future incarnations it will be perhaps much more. So just as high, higher, highest represents the perfection of the soul in terms of height, when it is a matter of manifestation the perfection of the soul is expressed in terms of degrees: much, more, most.