U Thant the miracle-embodiment and exponent of an integral life

U Thant, the exponent and embodiment of an integral life, affirms: “Pure intellectual development unaccompanied by a corresponding moral and spiritual development will lead mankind from one crisis to another. Moral qualities of friendship, humility and the desire to understand the other point of view are as important as intellectual excellence.”

On the earth plane, an integral life is the glad unification of intellectual, moral and spiritual fulfilment. An intellectual life need not be an expansion of a dry, aloof and superior feeling. Love of intellect, in its purest sense, is a life that desires to see the reality in its minute and subtle details. In the skies of the mind, this yearning itself is a higher step towards the ultimate heights of the Beyond.

Morality does not mean a life-torturing needle. Morality does not mean a constant vigil over the animal in us. Morality is an illumining reality that takes us from a lesser goal of confusion-bondage to a greater goal of perfection-freedom. Morality is not the rope that strangles us; it is the rope that saves us.

Spirituality is not an act of withdrawal from world activities. Spirituality is not hallucination-reality. Spirituality is not something that has a liking for Heaven and a constant dislike of earth. No! Real spirituality is the conscious awareness of God the Creator and God the creation. It is the feeling of constant oneness with God the One and God the many. It is the continuous transcendence of the animal into the human, of the human into the divine and of the divine into the supreme Reality.

If we view life as a unified experience of an intellectual reality, moral reality and spiritual reality, then this world of ours can be nothing but satisfaction-happiness in God’s cosmic Play.