A higher aspect of exaltation is a moral exaltation: when we are sorry for having said or done something unpleasant, when we have asked forgiveness, and humbled ourselves before someone towards whom we were inconsiderate. We have humbled our pride then. Or when we felt a deep gratitude to someone who had done something for us; when we have felt love, sympathy, devotion which seems endless and which seems so great that our heart cannot accommodate it; when we have felt so much pity for someone that we have forgotten ourselves; when we have found a profound happiness in rendering a humble service to someone in need; when we have said a prayer which has come from the bottom of our heart; when we have realized our own limitation and smallness in comparison with the greatness of God; all these experiences lift man up.

The moment we have these experiences, we are not living on earth but in another world. The joy of such experiences is very great, and yet they can be gained without paying anything, whereas sensations cost something. We have to go to the theater, to go to all kinds of entertainments; all these cost something, they cost more than they are worth; but exaltation which is beyond price comes of itself, as soon as we have shown an inclination towards it. It is only a matter of changing our attitude.

Once I visited a great sage in Bengal. I said to him, 'What a blessed life is yours, which gives pleasure and happiness to so many souls.' But he answered, 'How privileged I am myself that a thousand times more pleasure and happiness come to me.'

Exaltation is a purifying process. A moment's exaltation can purify the evil of many years, because it is like bathing in the Ganges, as Hindus say. It is symbolical: exaltation is the Ganges, and if we bathe in it we are purified from all sins. It does not take much to make us exalted: a kind attitude, a sympathetic trend of mind, and it is already there. If we were to notice it, we would find that our eyes shed tears in sympathy with another, we were already exalted, our soul has bathed in the spiritual Ganges. It comes by forgetting self and by destroying selfishness. But remember, we can never claim to be unselfish; however unselfish we may be, we are selfish just the same. But we can be wisely selfish, and if we are to be selfish, it is just as well to be wisely selfish. It is the same thing as what we call unselfishness, and it is profitable to be that instead of being foolishly selfish; because the former gains and the latter loses.