The Body's Reality and the Soul's Reality

Excerpts from Sri Chinmoy's book - The Inner Promise

The body is constantly seeing and feeling itself in different shapes and forms, feeling that it has no permanent reality. Despite being real, the body feels that it is unreal. It always tries to discover reality in something else, in someone else or somewhere else.

The body, being unsciousness, feels that it lacks Truth, Reality and Plentitude. It always feels that it is a beggar. According to the body, Reality is something static. Feeling that it is nowhere near the eternal Reality, the body seeks it somewhere else, where it is permanent.

Let us take the example of a beautiful girl. Everyone knows that she is extremely beautiful. Beauty is a reality in her. But she is not satisfied with her beauty. She feels that someone else is more beautiful than she, perhaps even someone whom others consider ugly. No matter how many times her dearest ones tell her, "Nobody is as beautiful as you are," she is not satisfied. This is the case not only with physical beauty, but where ever reality exists in the physical realm.

The physical is not and cannot be satisfied with its own possessions. It feels that others have truth, light, beauty and bliss, whereas it does not. The very nature of the physical is to feel that it is an eternal beggar. It wants something from somewhere else, either from human beings or from Heaven. There is always a sense of dissatisfaction in the physical. The physical is naturally the seat of dissatisfaction.

The case of the soul is not like that. The soul constantly feels that it has everything from God in infinite measure and that it has the potentiality to house Infinity. It is satisfied with its reality. The soul is satisfied because it knows what it has and what it can grow into.

The soul now exists in the field of manifestation. It knows that it has the capacity to unveil the Infinite, either today or tomorrow. It is satisfied with what it has right now; and it is also satisfied with what it will have, what it will do and what it will reveal in the Infinite, for the Infinite. The very nature of the soul is to remain satisfied. It lives in divine satisfaction. Very often the body gets joy and still remains unsatisfied. But the soul lives in constant joy, for it sees the eternal Reality. ~ Sri Chinmoy


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