Question: When we are giving meditation classes, how can we make it clear to new seekers why there is no mixing of boys and girls on a true spiritual path?

Sri Chinmoy: It is a matter of consciousness. Our entire philosophy is founded upon consciousness. If you want to remain in an undivine consciousness, then you will always be a beggar. Already spiritual seekers have enough problems, but if they start thinking of girlfriends or boyfriends, then they will descend and descend. When we enter the spiritual life, God becomes our mother, our father, our wife or our husband. God has and God is all the relations. We have to ask ourselves if we want to go forward at the speed of an Indian bullock cart, which is so uncertain. For some time it goes forward. Then the fellow who is driving the cart disappears or something else happens. Like India’s five-year plan, some people join the spiritual life and stay in the spiritual life for forty or fifty years, but their speed is so slow. When our inner speed is slow, it is as good as spiritual death.

In the spiritual life, the mixing of boys and girls, the lower vital, emotional life is as useless as India’s bullock cart. You will take one step, and then you will be filled with uncertainty. You will feel that there is no goal for you. The slower you go in anything, the more uncertainty assails you. The goal remains a far cry. But the faster you go, the more you feel that the goal is right there, only one metre away.

Spirituality without consciousness is nothing but a joke. We have to know at what point consciousness goes up and at what point consciousness goes down. If a boy starts mixing with a girl, his consciousness will become lower than the lowest. He will become a victim to all the lower vital forces. Even if you do not mix physically, the mind is all the time operating. Already you are a victim in the mental world. Are you a fool? Spirituality is not meant for foolish people. One Master said he was ready to be on top of the snow-capped Himalayas, he was ready to be in the Sahara Desert, he was ready to be under the ocean, but he was not ready to mix with fools. If we want to practise spirituality in the purest sense of the term, then we must not be foolish. The goal is not fixed. Today’s goal is tomorrow’s starting point, and today’s goal is still far away. With greatest difficulty, after ten years or twenty years I may reach my goal. Then a new beginning starts. Will I ever reach my first goal if I deliberately put a solid wall in front of me?

If you want to go slowly, if you want to say the goal is there and in God’s Eternity you will reach your goal, then you can do it. But those people who are wise, those who have joined my path or any spiritual path, have felt the supreme necessity of realising God, the supreme necessity of achieving light, delight, peace and bliss. Otherwise, there are millions and billions of people on earth who have not accepted the spiritual life. Why did you accept it? We say that we chose spirituality, but if we are very sincere, we will say, “No, God chose us.” Sri Aurobindo once said, “He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite.” You can say that you have sent your application; you are the one who chose. But I wish to say that my universal being chose you. That is why you came to me. Otherwise, there are countless people on earth who have not been chosen. That is why they have not appeared.