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What Does Your Soul Need?

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at the Aum Centre, in Puerto Rico

What does your soul need? Your soul needs absolute fulfilment. It wants to achieve this absolute fulfilment not in Heaven, but here on earth. If you think it impossible, then you may continue to sleep for a few centuries. There is no harm in it. But you must realise that you are anything but fit for a divine life, the life that fulfils you unreservedly. But if you feel it possible, then the soul whispers in your ear, “Arise, awake!” And if you feel it not only possible, but practicable, then the soul smilingly tells you, “Walk, march, run.” Finally, if you feel that the Absolute Fulfilment or the Divine Life is not only possible and practicable, but also inevitable, then alone Immortality will beckon you. Yours is the Goal, yours is the Kingdom of Truth and Delight.

You are absolutely right when, on the strength of your present knowledge, you tell me that there is no soul. Had there been a soul, how is it that during your whole lifetime you have never had a glimpse of it? I humbly tell you that your experience is no proof against the existence of your soul. Can we see the microbe with our naked eye? No, never. Until we have a microscope, the existence of a microbe is pure imagination. But the microscope compels us to revise our proud opinion. In no time it shatters our firm conviction, illumines our unlit ignorance. Similarly, until we have an illumined consciousness or the power of spiritual vision, the existence of the soul may seem to be a giant mental hallucination.

You may wonder if the soul is a portion of your heart. No, it is not. A portion of your mind? Ridiculous. A portion of your sense organs? Absurd. An unseen portion of your physical body? Impossible. What is it then? What is your soul, after all?

It is the self-effulgent messenger of God within you.
It knows no birth, no decay, no death.
It is Eternal.
It is Immortal.

Now where does the soul stay? Indeed, this is a question which is at once worth asking and worth answering. You have not one, not two, but three distinct bodies. The soul stays in these three bodies of yours: Sthula (the physical), Sukshma (the subtle), Karana (the causal). The soul is the master of these three bodies. Like the soul, you can also be the master of these three bodies when you breathe in, consciously and constantly, the Breath of the Supreme, as does your soul. Every one of us here knows that our physical body is composed of gross elements. Our subtle body is a counterpart of the physical body, made of subtle, non-physical elements. The third is the causal body. In size it is the least significant. But in its experience and capacity, it is the most significant portion of the unmanifested cosmic Energy. The physical and subtle bodies are simply the revealed and manifested modes of the causal body. This causal body embodies the characteristics and tendencies of the human being in its seed-state. As the seed is causally related to a tree, so is this body causally related to the life and manifestation of the individual in the creation.

Your soul is unique. You may not believe this, but it is so. Your soul is unique. God wants to manifest and fulfil Himself within you in an unprecedented way. God has a particular divine Mission to fulfil only through your soul. And to fulfil this particular Mission of His, He will utilise your soul and no other soul as His chosen instrument.

Now do you want your life to be of service to God so that you can fulfil His Mission? If so, then here and now give the soul back its throne. You have driven the soul away and placed the ego on its throne. Do cordially welcome the soul and signal it to its Divine Pedestal which it so well deserves. Unite yourself with your soul. Fear leaves you. Ignorance leaves you. Finally, death leaves you. Eternity welcomes you. Infinity welcomes you. Finally, Immortality welcomes you.

Published in AUM – Vol. 3, No. 9,10, Apr. – May 27, 1968